Women are evil and penis envious!

By -

Green’s subtle feminism throughout Aroma of Righteousness sparked many ideas in my head.

In another course I’m taking, Psychology of Women, we recently discussed Freud’s “groundbreaking” psychological theories of women and girls being born with this innate “penis envy”, yes, penis envy. His theory proposes the idea that men are superior, and when girls get to an age when they realize that they do not have a penis, they realize their inferiority and are therefore envious. As a rebuttal to Freud’s prospections, psychoanalyst Karen Horney proposes that power inequalities, not biology, cause the psychological differences observed in girls and women and that there is more likely to be “Womb envy” present among men- an envy of women’s reproductive ability, which motivated men’s desire to dominate women. This made me think of the ways in which, throughout religion specifically, scent has been so heavily associated with women and their oh so evil seductiveness and sexuality.

I get really confused thinking about the idea of seduction being so evil, when the men are the one’s who allow themselves to be seduced, but whateverrr.

Anyways, a woman’s sexuality is the reason any person has to thank for their very existence, a quite obvious statement that has been made to seem so un-obvious and even terrible, which I feel is relative to the apprehensiveness towards discussion and study of scent in religion, as I feel Green touches on and may agree with to an extent. Is it the truth, possibly, that men for centuries and even thousands of years have had this fear of women? Fear that without oppression, degredation, and domination they’ll realize their power, value, and importance? So much so that they must deem the very reason they are alive to be evil? Possibly. Although it does sound very plausible that the owning of a penis rather than ovaries, a uterus, and vagina that allow life to produce and grow inside of them grants someone superiority. Very, very plausible. Ya ok Freud

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausMarch 1, 2022 at 7:43 AM

    I am so glad you pointed out Green's "subtle feminism." It really pervades her book (like perfume ;-))? Perhaps the rabbis (and so many others) label seduction, sexuality, and the most material senses of taste, touch, and smell as evil, and associate it with women precisely because they fear women's power. They want to constrain it, to preserve the inequity of power Karen Horney points out. So, what do you think we are to do with this situation? I see what you and Green and Karen Horney are doing. You're balancing the inequity of power, by as women re-framing the issue to "restore" women's power. Go for it!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The most primitive sense

By -
Image
Smell the Flowers by Kirsten Star Smell, to me, is the most primitive sense. When most mammals are born, they immediately can recognize their mother’s smell and form an attachment to that smell. Mammals like puppies are almost entirely limited to only the sense of smell until they develop more of their other senses. The sense of smell also becomes the most primitive when considering humans and the phenomenon of perfume. For years, humans hunted certain animals for the purpose of obtaining the musk produced in the anal gland. This musk in small doses can act as an aphrodisiac when put into a perfume even though it has incredibly primitive origins. Though most of Western culture has an aversion to smells considered gross or undesirable, the wealthiest of women are still willing to pay heavy prices to spray a smell once obtained from the anal glands of other animals. The sense of smell is not something that humans can control and adjust but rather it is only changed by evolution over
Read more

Cannibalism and Symbolism

By -
Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I als
Read more

Wrap-Up Post

By -
Image
Alright, let’s tie this up in a nice little bow. I genuinely did not know what to expect coming into this class. The extent of my knowledge of the senses comes from elementary school when we had to make it a little song to get the information through our tiny heads. Beyond that, everything seemed pretty cut and dry. We have five senses. We need to use all of them to survive. It’s as simple as that. I did not know how there was enough to talk about the senses to fill an entire college course, especially one specifically regarding the relationship between the senses and religion. But the fact that we were barely able to fit all the content in before the semester ended proves just how wrong I was. Let’s talk about why that is and what some of the things I learned were. First off, even the most basic assumption about the senses, that there are five of them, was questioned immediately. The sixth sense may not have been as clearly defined as the other senses, but there was certainly a lot to
Read more