Lesbian Asterisk Pussy?
Once or twice before I’ve gotten inbound links from the very hip and very cool Autostraddle, which describes itself as “an intelligent, hilarious & provocative voice and a progressive online community for a new generation of kickass lesbian, bisexual & otherwise inclined ladies.”
I tend to take links from sources like this as a sort of “mission accomplished” compliment. Yes, I’m a straight guy who blogs mostly male-gaze porn with male-gaze commentary. Does that mean I have to be creepy and boys-only about it? I’ve never thought so.
But I’ve got to say, this particular inbound link had some curiously prudish and distancing anchor text that’s got me scratching my head.
The post in question was this one, and contained this line:
THIS is how they used to take a photograph of a pussy. (Emphasis and link in original.)
When they linked this post at Autostraddle, here’s the line of anchor text they used:
“This is how they used to have to take a picture of a p*ssy”
Notice what’s different?
First of all, they added the phrase “have to”. Like there was something repugnant about that perfectly delicious pussy. WTF?
And then, they asterisked the spelling of “pussy”. Again, WTF?
I’m not complaining — I’m happy for the link and the attention. But a site like that’s the last place I would expect to be pussy-squeamish. Maybe there’s another explanation I’m not getting?
Update: Riese from Autostraddle explains.
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=6402
I wouldn’t have thought “pussy” was a word that needed asterixing. And yeah, “have to”? It was an interesting pose, with the wrists under the buttocks – reeked of incincerity – but what set of rules mandate this?
“Pussy”, like “ass” and “dick” or “gay”, has always been a perfectly respectable word in the English language. That it’s “dirty” second meanings eventually hijacked the original usage is not surprising, but it is pathetic that someone would self-censor – for whatever reason – such a word. What next?
Lots of folks self-censor, often for reasons that seem good to them, but “pussy” is not a word I expect self-described “kickass lesbians” to be squeamish about.
I don’t know. It seems lots more women than men have a verbal problem with words like pussy, cunt, or twat. It seems like for some women, one word is ok, but another just rings wrong. Maybe that is why the asterisk… for people who hate the word pussy and don’t want to read it. I used to hate it too. The idea that my parts had to be euphamized and cuted-up, and the fact that it begins with ‘pus’, and the visual it provoked. Not a sexy word. But ‘cunt’ is considered such an extreme word, and isn’t really that sexy either, and it seems like it bothers way more people than ‘pussy’. Anything else feels like trying too hard to me, so I do use ‘pussy’ sometimes, maybe when ‘vagina’ or ‘labia’ aren’t familiar enough.
I find it hilarious that they’ve added “had to” – as if it’s a terrible and thankless chore, “having to” take such a photo … in fact, I just showed this photo to someone close to me and their immediate reaction was a speechless smile followed by a request for me to download said photo immediately …
P.S. I wonder if the “had to” comment is a snide/judgemental reference to the old bushy-versus-hairless-as-current-fashion …?
Wow! That’s TOTALLY not what we meant at all! That’s not what we think/believe and I guess we didn’t think hard enough about how words were arranged in a sentence, but I think in the context of the website (as you mention) and the fact that we are consistently advocating for all-natural, non-airbrushed ladies because — well — that’s what we prefer.
We thought the photo was cool and interesting and real.
We didn’t say it was bad. We said that this was how they used to have to take a picture of a pussy (I don’t really know why it was asteriked, we sort of do that at random, usually as a joke, you’ll see this all over the website) — why is that implicitly negative?
Saying “before cell phones, people used to have to show up to events on time” doesn’t mean we like it better now that people have cell phones they can just text you and be late for everything. “having” to do something isn’t negative. requirements aren’t negative.
I feel like the semantics of this sentence were VERY misinterpreted. i’m going to go change it now.
OKAY UPDATE: Now that I have returned to the post I see that the link had quotation marks around it, which means it was meant to be a direct quote from this website; that’s what we use that format for. So basically someone transcribed it wrong is all that happened.
Oh also in general things are asteriked not out of squeamishness, but b/c we have a hard time getting advertisers already as lesbians who talk about sex and they zoom in on certain words as evidence of our indecency, like “fuck.” now it’s just become sort of funny, we asterik things. that’s all it is. we don’t want to asterik anything.
Personally, I’m rather tired of the hairless fashion. It was refreshing to see a luxuriant bush for a change.
Riese, thanks for stopping by and clearing that up! Your #8 makes sense, I guess it didn’t occur to me that it might just have been a transcription error. Obviously it struck me as editorial-sounding; I’m so glad it wasn’t.
no problem! i really like this website and i read it every week to find stuff for nsfw sunday. thank you for doing what you do!