there is so much i miss in books on the first read. for instance, in lady chatterley’s lover, d.h. lawrence describes the clitoris as a bird’s beak waiting to attack: “....she got harder and harder to bring off, and she’d sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you think a woman’s soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you [they] have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till you’re sick. Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting!...And it came back on her like a raving necessity, she had to let herself go, tear tear tear as if she had no sensation in her except at the very top of her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. ”

big clits: notes

in his book making sex, historian thomas laqueur writes, “more words have been shed, i suspect, about the clitoris than about any other organ, or at least about any organ its size.” any organ its size. although it seems like an odd qualifier, laqueur is merely following the focus, since antiquity, on the size of the clitoris. whether emphasizing its smallness (i.e. insignificance) or largeness, the size of the clit is irrevocably linked to the way its read both culturally and textually. in the case of the “enlarged clitoris” this is especially apparent in the literature surrounding the writings of marquise de sade and modern research on the female spotted hyena.

in literature male genitals are often described in detail while female genitals are either eschewed entirely or presented in vague terms, almost never mentioning the clitoris. not so in the writings of marquise de sade. as angela carter argues in the sadeian woman (1974), he is a “moral pornographer” who “made space for woman.” Sade was very much aware of the clitoris as a site of pleasure. In 120 days of sodom (1789), the priest shows Dulcos how to pleasure herself: “what you behold down here…is called a cunt, and this is what you do in order to awaken very felicitous sensations in it. With one finger [...] rub this little protrubence you feel here. It, by the way, is called the clitoris.” in this text, as well as Juliette and Justine, there are countless scenes in which women show their partners how to stimulate their clitoris and vice versa. in Justine, Madame De Sainte-Ange instructs Dolmance: “frigging, my pet, giving oneself pleasure [...] examine my cunt...thus is named the temple of venus. this elevation you notice above it called the mound, which is garnished with hair [...] here above is a little tongue-shaped thing—that is the clitoris, and there lies all a woman’s power of sensation. it is the center of all of mine.”

throughout the majority of sade’s boring, monstrous orgies, the clit is present; however, it is not simply any clit, but following the focus on size, a big clit. In 120 days of sodom, the Four Whores are, in carter’s words “more virile than the libertines.” Madame Champville, for instance, is a tall, fifty-year old woman with a clit that “protrudes three inches when well warmed” and is a self-proclaimed “devotee of Sappho.” sade writes, “her mouth was lovely, still fresh, missing no teeth as yet, she was flat-chested but had a belly which was good…her mound was rather prominent.” Volmar, an inhabitant of the convent where Juliette is educated, is equipped with a three inch long clitoris that enables her to penetrate men and women both vaginally and anally. then, there is Durand, the most fantastic libertine of all. she is utterly luscious, with beautiful breasts, a huge clit, and an obstruction of the vagina and womb, which has prevented her from fucking in the standard heterosexual way her entire life. carter describes Durand as “[...] a virile non-productive mother, who chooses her own children, and seduces them, too. the dead goddess resurrects herself in the form of her antithesis, not as cherishing and nourishment but absence and hunger.” ultimately, Durand can “fuck even nature itself.”

refuting angela carter's feminist analysis—“the women fuck as much as they are fucked”—critic john phillips argues that the aggressive women in sade’s texts are not quite “woman-like,” but rather, “phallic” and “masculinized.” of juliette he writes, “though physically possessing all the usual sadean attributes of feminine beauty, her reproductive potential is underplayed. there is a single reference, for example, to her menstrual periods, and although, she does give birth to a daughter, we are given no details whatever of this event. moreover, she is completely bereft of motherly instincts...” its true sade's libertines glorify non-reproductive sex, often preferring, in phillips words, “the transsexual posterior infinitely preferable to the uniquely feminine vagina.” Juliette is furthermore not “female” because she likes to fuck fuck fuck, sometimes donning a dildo, penetrating both men and women with equal abandon. phillips continues, “in a more general sense, Juliette displays attitudes and characteristics more recognizably male than female: she is promiscuous, goal-oriented, and prioritizes reason over emotion.” more recognizably male. no doubt that Juliette, like all of sade’s women, are products of male fantasy, as manifested in sade, but in phillips interpretation, the symbolic Juliette is stripped of her possible wants and desires; such acts cannot be her fantasies for that might imply that some women enjoy the act of penetration, perhaps preferring it to being penetrated.

the attempt to masculinize women with big clits is not new. the term tribad was often used to refer to women with large clitorises though it could also mean women who actively seek sex with other women, or are mentally ill. large clitorises were perceived as posing a very specific threat: a woman who possesses the physical means by which to penetrate another person in unacceptable in a culture that conceives of the sexually active role as properly restricted to males.

In his two part treatise on gynecology, soranus (1st/2nd century), a physician from Ephesus, advocated the surgical removal (selective clitoridectomy) of a part of the woman’s clitoris if it is “overly large,” a behavior soranus associated with unrestrained sexual behavior. in on acute and chronic diseases, soranus introduces influential idea that tribades were incurable because their problem is rooted in the soul, not the body; he recommends clitoridectomies for women who “behave like men.” aetius of amida, a christian physician writing in greek in the early 6^th century, wrote about women with big clits, using philoumenos, a 2^nd century medical writer, as his source. He describes three main reasons for clitoridectomy: an “overly large” clitoris and to relieve clitoral adhesions as well as release fluid built up within a diseased or cancerous clitoris. like those before him, aetius asserts that an enlarged clitoris will inevitably lead to licentious behavior due to the constant rubbing of the clitoris against one’s undergarments which “stimulates the desire for intercourse.” sinistrari, a roman inquisitor of the early sixteenth century, claimed that women with elongated clitorises could and might rape men, or engage in “sodomy” with other women. in france at around the same time, anatomist claude duval saved a “man” from being burned to death at the stake after he was caught having sex with another woman, a serious crime. After examining the woman’s clitoris, duval rubbed it back and forth until it produced a white substance. Since the clitoris could ejaculate, it was decided that she possessed a penis, was a man, and therefore, no criminal behavior had occurred. In the popular pleasures of the marriage bed (1687) nicholas venette writes: “the lesbian Sappho would never have acquired so wicked a reputation if this part [the clitoris] had been smaller.” Until the late eighteenth century, when clitordectomies were discussed in the West, they were associated with the size of the clitoris. more specifically, an “overly large” or “extended” clitoris believed to be associated with “lasciviousness.” that is—a physical condition (“large clitoris”) associated with a culturally problematic sexual behavior.

consider the female spotted hyena, known for its “enlarged clitoris,” extending, during childbirth, up to seven inches from her body. The spotted hyenas live in clans and are a matriarchy. they have sex, urinate, and give birth through their clitoris. in order to attract a female hyena in heat, males adopt submissive behavior. hyena sex isn’t easy: it takes careful positioning for the male to point his penis up and backwards to enter the female’s clitoris; often males must practice for several months before getting it right. most of the medical literature, as well as websites like wikipedia, refer to their clitoris as a “pseudo-penis” with most dominant behavior described as “male-like.” such aggressive behavior is thought to result from an influx of androgen, an “androgen bath,” during the last phases of gestation. the hyena's transgressive nature, however, was known to pre-Islamic Arabic poets. in such texts, hyenas are routinely depicted as breaching a vast array of social woes: killing and feasting upon gracious hosts, menstruating out in the open, laughing all the while; when a pack of hyenas wander upon a dead warrior, they pleasure themselves with his still stiff cock. in the physiologus—written in egypt around 200-400 C.E., translated into greek and latin and widely available throughout the west—the hyena is portrayed as an “alternating male-female...unclean because it has two natures.”

at UCLA, a research team, BHP, led by dr. lawrence frank, has received ample funding to trace the role of androgens in the development of the spotted hyena’s “female phallus.” early in their studies, BHP concluded: “it has become clear that the spotted hyena’s genitals are a result of a prenatal exposure to androgens.” instead of viewing this “androgen bath” as an evolutionary beneficial aspect of the hyenas, BHP tends to interpret it as an evolutionary oops. however, a team of german researchers argue that the erectile clitoris was selected for and that it functions to restrain male control of reproduction: forced copulations are impossible because the spotted hyena has sex via penetration of the clitoris, which requires much patience and precision. females thus gain control over the mechanism of copulation and male mating success becomes dependant on the relationships they develop with females.

this counterargument however, has been largely ignored largely ignored or scoffed at by the medical community as well as popular consciousness. dr. frank refers to it as the “chastity belt theory.” in 1987 Psychology Today ran an article about BHP and the female spotted hyena, referring to the hyena’s clit as a “psuedo penis.” The name of the article was “Boys will be Boys, Girls will be...Female Spotted Hyena look and act like males.” Google search the hyena today and difficult it is to find articles that go beyond “the female spotted hyena has really weird genitals” (livewire, 2006). In actuality, clitoral variation proves the norm, not the aberration. African elephants, moles (except during mating season), and the new world monkey, all appear “superficially similar” to the opposite sex. In the gibbon monkey, the clitoris is longer than the penis. Rabbits also have a “large clitoris” with a length of about 3 cm as compared. a urogenital canal is present in the clitorises of the spotted hyena, many rodents, moles, and the elephant, and some primates. however, as researcher anna wilson has aptly noted, much like women themselves, “the hyena has moved from being the dangerous, unknowable other into a position of that which can be known, studied, and dissected but that is still other.”

les figues press 4th annual auction at LACE

Les Figues Press: 4th Annual Auction
Sunday OCTOBER 17, 2010 @ LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

Emcees: Anna Joy Springer and Matias Viegener
Performers: Tisa Bryant, Martin Glaz Serup, Vanessa Place & Killsonic Women's Chorus

Food by Saehee Cho of The Sprout and The Bean Catering

In a Boat Shed
Robert Creeley

I waited too long
I waited for you forever and ever

the changing unchanging restlessness
of the signs they didn't put up

or down; the boxes of oranges,
rat poisons, barns, a sled with no runners

snow, refreshments, pineapples
the odor of burnt wood, cigarettes

neither of us should smoke,
but do--

I waited for you.

notes: masters and johnson

after reading masters of sex, i am totally charmed by virgina johnson. for whatever reason, i always thought she was a stiff old doc like bill masters. but i was wrong. some notes:

--seated on a leather lounge chair, a woman, naked except for a pillowcase over her head, rubbed the outside of her vulva with a long, plexiglas penis. attached to a small camera with a plate glass optical eye, this “motor powered phallus” could produce high-quality color-motion photographs. sensors fixed to various parts of the woman’s body recorded her heart rate, electrical impulses of her brain, and nearly every other kind of measurement conceivable. nearby sat researchers william h. masters and virginia johnson along with their staff, all clad in white cotton lab coats. when the woman slipped the dildo inside her vagina and climaxed, she allowed researchers a sustained, precise look at her flushed, contracting vagina. over the next few years this basic experiment would be repeated with hundreds of women. the findings proved explosive: the female orgasm in absolute physiological detail.

--a celebrated obstetrician and fertility specialist with a tenured position at washington university, bill masters began his sex research in 1955. during the next twenty-one months, he interviewed 118 female and 28 male sex workers in st. louis and other cities, meticulously recording their sexual and medical histories. he soon began observing the prostitutes with their clients. he stared on, stunned. by 1956 masters had moved his studies into the controlled settings of a laboratory. however, the course of his research changed radically when a female participant asked him "what if I fake it?" masters blinked, said flatly, “i don’t know what you mean.” the woman tried explain: “that’s what I do for a living, i fake orgasms to hurry up and get the man to come...” bill remained dumbfounded, "i couldn't understand her. i'm not sure i ever did."

--within weeks masters hired virginia johnson, a twice divorced mother of two, to be his secretary. at the time, johnson had little insterest in medicine or a college degree. four months later, he promoted her to research assistant. although classically untrained, johnson's ability to gain the trust of a wide variety of male and female volunteers truly made the Human Sexual Response possible. as one female participant explained, "she made me feel that i was not only getting paid but helping my gender."

--less than a year into their partnership, masters made johnson a proposition: by engaging in sex with each other, they could extend their experiments into actual experience; rather than replying on photographic documentation, they could observe the so-called sex flush themselves, allowing them greater insight into the sexual response cycle. although a forced arrangement, according to the their biographer, masters saw it as consensual where as johnson interpreted it as a job requirement. “bill did it all—i didn’t want him,” she later remarked, “i had a job and i wanted it.”

--the overall effect of human sexual response was that it demanded that the clitoris be studied, described, written about. in fact, the study was so alarming precisely because it was so specific, so full of immutable details. although much of their ‘revelatory findings,’ such as the primacy of the clitoral orgasm, had been established by kinsey, masters and johnson were seen as proving these otherwise speculative assumption via "facts," i.e. hard science and technology.

--after observing over 600 men and women, Masters and Johnson devised their four-phase description of orgasm: (1) excitement, (2) plateau, (3) orgasm, and (4) resolution. they found that men responded in terms of basic physiological changes along the same lines as women; in both sexes, there was an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and in the majority, a “sex flush.” by measuring nearly every aspect of the sexual response imaginable, they uncovered such phenomenon of “vaginal tenting” as well as the source of vaginal lubrication, which is plasma, not glandular secretions, seeping through the vaginal walls.

--echoing kinsey, masters and johnson found that due to the clitoris’s small size, little blood is needed for the clitoris to become erect, and after orgasm, blood quickly floods out, allowing many women to have multiple orgasms. they stressed the clit’s singular, unmatched qualities: “the clitoris is a unique organ in the total of human anatomy,” they wrote. “no such organ exists within the anatomic structure of the human male.”

--the first instance of the word clitoris in playboy in during the 1968 interview with masters and johnson whose research hugh hefner helped fund.

i wake late. walk thirty-six blocks just trying to feel tired again. joggers in too-tight red sweats rush up, dart around, turn back to face me huff huff huff. housewives with babies. housewives without babies. doctors and nurses who smoke; they sit legs-crossed on a sagging wooden bench, discuss colon cancer a tumor large enough to fill the entire lumen. street vendors begin their pitch: potato tacos, chopped pineapples, two dozen coconuts with pink straws shoved deep into their meat, the reddest of roses. nothing depends on season. every kind of luxury vehicle, parked in every two hour metered slot. the impossible wealth of the city never ceases to leave me slack-jawed. i walk until i somehow end up at the apartment again.

"you must set about it more slowly, almost stupidly"

head throb. heatwave. temperature peaking at 113 degrees. i lay on the living room floor, beneath the white overhead fan with all the lights off, blinds snapped shut. tongue still stuck to my teeth: my migraine slows all reactions. like a pant—take two, three little blue pills; pain clears. the rest of the day is mine. spend six hours sitting in the wooden folding chair, typing up three months worth of “notes” for the clitoris project: the female spotted hyena’s six inch clit; henry miller’s “fucked out cunts”; gershon legman’s first brush with erotica: sitting on the floor of his mother’s closet, among a forest of dresses and panties, he reads through volumes of havelock ellis, which his mother kept hidden with all the other “forbidden” texts in the back of her closet.

when i am too tired to read or take walk or fall asleep, i do what i always do, stare out the window. bank tellers in subdued colors swish past, fan themselves with the palms of their hands. beneath the stucco awning to the left, on the 8x10 stucco platform, business men adjust their cuffs, wait for the metro. they wait and wait. the neighbor’s white window with little white shutters, white paint on the glass, even white curtains insofar as transparent gauze can be “white.” sometimes the white window is open, and other times, a small white hand tugs it shut.

first flush of evening traffic then steady accumulation. cars moving in a single mass up del mar, down arryo blvd. beyond this street, another: stiff palm fronds, clumps of green offset by 20ft streetlamps , the occasional weed spidering across the concrete. stink bug on the sill, its mad patience, trying to fly with half its body crushed by a black ashtray.

there are thirty-six single unit apartments in my building. three floors with long long brightly lit halls, like a hotel, with light red carpet, clung close to the floorboards. the number on each door is fake gold. #206. the walls: paper thin, white interrupted by more white or the occasional picture, poster, tattered tapestry. already the cacophony: four different tvs, two phone conversations, a lone dog scratching at the door of his apartment, howling every six, ten minutes. delivery men clutching plastic bags filled with every kind of food; they pound on the door or buzz the call box, punching whatever number into the ten digit key pad lit by a red motion sensor. more often than not, the wrong apartment is called. instead of eating my usual rice and beans, i fantasize about eating my neighbor’s curry or “southern style” wet bbq; my whole face smeared with its gaudy red sauce.

west hollywood bookfair

les figues press & co. at the west hollywood bookfair. readings by harold abramowitz, allison carter, and mathew timmons. love letters by jen hofer.

yesterday was so hot. hard to do anything but sit and stare with yr mouth open. when i got home from the bookfair, my pink dress was still sweat-stuck.

SOMETHING BRIGHT, THEN HOLES
Maggie Nelson

I used to do this, the self I was
used to do this

the selves I no longer am
nor understand.

Something bright, then holes
is how a girl, newly-sighted, once

described a hand. I reread
your letters, and remember

correctly: you wanted to eat
through me. Then fall asleep

with your tongue against
an organ, quiet enough

to hear it kick. Learn everything
there is to know

about loving someone
then walk away, coolly

I’m not ashamed
Love is large and monstrous

Never again will I be so blind, so ungenerous
O bright snatches of flesh, blue

and pink, then four dark furrows, four
funnels, leading into a infinite ditch

The heart, too, is porous;
I lost the water you poured into it

"What are the preconditions for the recognition for an obstacle? And the first assertion is: one can recognize an obstacle--which can mean construct something as an obstacle--only when it can be tolerated. Only through knowing what we think of as an obstacle can we understand our fantasies of continuity."

--Adam Phillips, Looking at Obstacles

from The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

“I was carried away by the conviction that I rejoiced in extraordinary freedom. To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering yourself, it was, in a diametrically opposite move, to raise yourself above all prejudice.”

***

“People also think that darkness protects them. But for some people, me included, it simultaneously opens the space around them up to infinity by making it limitless…In fact, you hardly ever find complete darkness, and people actually usually prefer the vagueness of half-light. I myself would like total blackout because I could then experience the pleasure of sinking into a sea of undifferentiated flesh. On the other hand, I know how to make the most of harsh light, too, because the initial blindness and inability to identity its source dissolve and blur the frontiers of the body. In other words, I am not afraid of being glimpsed unaware because my body is but a mingling part of the air around it and the continuum of other bodies connected to it. I therefore can’t even consider that anyone is looking in from the outside. "

***

“To establish a mercenary relationship, you have to navigate an exchange of words or at least signals, the sort of complicity that forms the basis for all conversations and which would have seemed, to me, closely related to the preliminaries of seduction that I avoided. In both cases, in order to keep your side of the deal, you have to take into account your partner’s attitudes and responses. Now, even at the first contact, I knew how to focus on the body. It is just when I have found my bearings with the body, as it were, when the grain of skin and its particularly pigmentation have become familiar to me, or I have learned to adjust my own body to it, that my attention could focus on the person himself, often to form a sincere and lasting friendship.

sumarr reading series, part four

Performances by Marco Di Domineco, Sam Cohen, Chrysanthe Tan, Henry Perkins, Jon Rutzmoser, Emily St. Amand-Poliakoff, and David Erich Elsenbroich.

i wake too early in the morning. so much sun, already. wide cuts of light on the kitchen tiles. light through the blinds where the cat has snapped off six panels with her little grey paws. a cup of tea. weak weak darjeeling, bought in bulk, two heaping sacks, from the bearded man in the corner store. its windows awash with overripe mangos perched on green plastic tiers next to flowers that look, no matter the color or variety, as if gathered from a wedding reception after all the guests have left. i place the flowers on top of the only bookcase in the apartment and watch the cat sniff at the stems.
fall semester has started. three classes: nonfiction (“travel writing” tho i don't travel), and pop criticism. school signals the end of personal quiet, of solitude. to steep: read, daydream all afternoon my face pressed to the window screen staring down at the street below which is lined with equal parts trash and still-ripe leaves. although, i know: this summer contained no solitude. RS tacks a note to my windshield: 2010 the year i fell in love with all caps and elizabeth hall. his backyard cleared off save two plastic lawn chairs and one weepy palm tree. we sit legs sticking to the plastic. i say no no no.

at night, in bed with M., i watch lee marvin play a hard-nosed chicago detective cruising the streets in his immaculate black ford. movies: the big heat. marvin as “vince” a high-ranking gangster. when he suspects ‘his girl’ of messing round on him he corners her by the fireplace, sets his drink down on the mantle, twists the girl’s arm behind her back. chest-puffed up he shouts oh yeah? does not believe her when she says she saw no one, twists her arms harder and harder oh yeah? in the next room, vince's lackeys sit around a small wooden table, just sitting, listening to the girl’s scream, as if waiting for the final scream, and when it comes, as it must come, it is somehow still a shock: vince throws a pot of boiling coffee on her face, disfiguring her forever. i cannot get enough of these gangster films. the stupid blunt brutality. none of this headache of trying to do right by feeling.

“If there is one thing I’ve learned in analysis, it is to appreciate the infinite diversity of human life and to remove oneself from that diversity or to avoid experience with it is tantamount to amputating an arm or leg.”

--Yvonne Rainer, Feelings Are facts