A Beginners Workshop on Moon, Menses and Magic
March 29th, 5-7pm
Spiral Dance Womyn's Center
www.thespiraldancebookstore.com
Complimentary Tea & Chocolate
Sliding Scale: $8-$12
For many young womyn coming of age is a confusing and sometimes shameful experience. As adult womyn, we learn to suppress these feelings and associate our moon time as taboo or as a negative aspect of femininity. The reality is that womyn bleed to renew life and this “period” of time should be recognized as sacred and profound. Womyn need to fully realize the powerful magic they posses during there menses to heal and renew. We need to celebrate and develop positive sacred blood rituals to carry us through our maiden, mother and crone years. In the workshop we will discuss the taboo’s, share stories and learn to empower and make effective healing rituals during our moon time. This is a “womyn only” workshop.
Denise Cumor is devoted to making vagina's happy and empowered; she has dedicated most of her adult life to this single purpose. Growing up in a patriarchal culture where womyn are objectified, sexually abused and shamed for there acts of sexual exploration, she found herself being pushed under, this is when she began to reclaim her sexuality and to help other womyn do the same. Identifying as a Pagan and learning to embody the Goddess in all her forms has given her the confidence to build on this reclamation. Experiences that have profoundly strengthened her commitment; working as a stripper for 4 years on Baltimore's infamous "Block", teaching OB-GYN protocol to medical students with Johns Hopkins, selling adult novelties with Athena's Home Novelties, working as an Ad Rep for $pread Magazine, Directing and acting in various productions of the Vagina Monologues, being a part of the Spiral Dance Womyn's Center collective, making music with her band Dirty Mothers and making ceramic Goddess’ and vagina rattles. This is her first year vending The Red Tent where she sells adult novelties, sacred feminine art, books/media and organic feminine hygiene products.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
From the shallows of our emerging love by Julia E. Maresca
Here you see a drawing made by me in 1992. I am not the most adept artist I know, however when I look at this picture I see love (being as I was in love - and have been ever since). I see a sincere effort to rejoice in the female vulva and the majesty of its symbolism. This simple drawing brings together elements of gender, movement, flow and texture - things that may be elusive to many. While growing up I always derived such joy just seeking to find images of the female form. At first subconscious but later very much a statement to myself and those who I let part-take in my expressions of love and pride. The warmth, comfort, excitement and exuberance that such expressions would give me were sustaining. I am happy to say that this force, this love, continues to sustain me today.
I also enjoy experiencing the female form in nature. When a lake is still and it’s reflection forms at it’s shore, this too conjures up thoughts of the vulva. When I was young (teens and twenties) lust, sex and desire were often equated with the image, though we know as we grow older these feelings become strongly accompanied by feelings of love and understanding. Both an understanding of our bodies, our passions, and our minds - as it is the mind that brings all the images in the world together to form a contextual basis for the image of the vulva to thrive.
I have always been lucky to have physical health and an innate understanding of the power of the vulva. I also have been lucky to have learned from lovers and friends, mentors and peers, the evolution of the vulva in a personal, cultural and Darwin-esque way. To me the mere representation of a vulva always meant much more to me than an actual picture of a vulva. To me a vulva without context is two dimensional, however the representation of such brings in so many levels of experience, wonder and process, that the representative image far surpasses the actual.
Of course the vulva is not two dimensional. It’s brimming with life. Senses are such that the true pleasure of vulvas is experiencing the wonder of that pleasure through direct physical and mental manifestations. It has not happened yet, but I feel the internet has yet to faithfully bring together the senses of taste, touch, temperature, etc. only the physical world around us comes close – with it’s breathe – wind, it’s life – water, it’s pulse - fire, it’s physics - earth.
The shoulders we have stood on are great – though it is important that we remember that the best experiences are yet to come and may only need to be viewed from the shallows of our emerging love.
Enjoy.
Julia E. Maresca
Friday, February 8, 2008
Jan S.
Because of a disability, I couldn't take my picture by myself. So I got my partner to help me, but I directed with the use of a mirror and a flashlight. It felt good, especially since I did it on the eve of surgery. It was good for my body image, which always takes a blow when I go into a hospital.
For some reason I felt it necessary to crop my asshole out of the picture. I wondered if the folds of skin near the bottom of my vulva were normal, or if my labia were smaller or paler than average. I wondered if other women would think I should have combed or shaven my pubic hair. I liked my vulva, though, and I thought it looked pretty.
I couldn't quite bring myself to post the picture under my full name, so I'm asking Julie just to print my given name and surname initial, Jan S. I think the Vulvalution blog is a terrific idea. Julie rocks. We all rock.
For some reason I felt it necessary to crop my asshole out of the picture. I wondered if the folds of skin near the bottom of my vulva were normal, or if my labia were smaller or paler than average. I wondered if other women would think I should have combed or shaven my pubic hair. I liked my vulva, though, and I thought it looked pretty.
I couldn't quite bring myself to post the picture under my full name, so I'm asking Julie just to print my given name and surname initial, Jan S. I think the Vulvalution blog is a terrific idea. Julie rocks. We all rock.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
The Wondrous Vulva Puppets
I’d like a vulva puppet!
Described on the website,
Hand made in lush velvets and silk satins, Dorrie Lane's gorgeous celebrations of feminine essence are soft, receptive and visually delightful. Rather than evoking embarrassment Wondrous Vulva Puppets encourage thoughtful dialogue, allowing a connection with the emotional and spiritual aspects of sex.
Perfect! They are mighty gorgeous.
Described on the website,
Hand made in lush velvets and silk satins, Dorrie Lane's gorgeous celebrations of feminine essence are soft, receptive and visually delightful. Rather than evoking embarrassment Wondrous Vulva Puppets encourage thoughtful dialogue, allowing a connection with the emotional and spiritual aspects of sex.
Perfect! They are mighty gorgeous.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Why the VULVAlution?
When I was an undergraduate, many years ago, I started to make all of my own cards. I still do today (with the exception of some lovely cards people give me for birthdays or holidays.) In college, with my first set of watercolors, I painted vulvas. My first holiday card were basically green, red, and blue vulvas in an appropriately impressionistic vein so that unless you were cued into the lesbian-feminist genre of art, it may not entirely appear to be a vulva. At least, my grandmother received the card and thought it was just a watercolor.
I expanded my vulva art from cards to t-shirts. There were gorgeous t-shirts made for the Women’s Crisis Center in Ann Arbor, MI where I was a volunteer and on the back with various hues of purple, pink, and white, I painted giant vulvas. I gave them to everyone I knew. Few had the chutzpah to wear them, but my friend cat actually wore hers backward (the vulva was painted on the back, remember) so that during serious conversations, should could scratch her breast, which was just beneath the clitoris. She loved the shirt. Some others just shook their heads.
A few years later, I met a potter who made “crotch pots.” These are gorgeous pottery bowls with flared sides and a clitoris. I still have the one she gave me and keep my business cards in it. It is red and pink with a high gloss on it. I think it is my favorite desk ornament.
Vulval art is not a new innovation. Feminists have been engaging with it consciously since Judy Chicago and many still look at Georgia O’Keefe and fine the power of her vaginal and mammary imagery. It may not be new, but vulval art is some of my favorite art.
The exploration of the female body and making it visual and accessible to women is also not a new feminist action. The Boston Women’s Health Collective which publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves may be one of the most iconic and effective organizations behind that sentiment. In the 1970s, women gathered together in living rooms to see their cervixes. (For those unfamiliar with this, see Fried Green Tomatoes for a visual accounting of these stories.) Women’s sexuality is often hidden and reviled. One feminist response to that is to make it visible, to remove the mystery in order to understand and appreciate it.
These two principles--feminist, vulval art and exploration of the female body as a feminist action--are what inspired the VULVAlution for me. I think that women’s “bits” (as one friend from the UK calls them) are beautiful, at their very best, and at the very least interesting. Being a lesbian for over twenty years now, I’ve seen a few vulvas, though I must hasten to add, not enough. That doesn’t come from my erotic desires or from my sexual orientation, but rather from an intellectual and political understanding that women’s bodies continue to be covered and stigmatized. We must undo that and one way we can is by first claiming our own power over our bodies and examining our own vulvas. Then we can share with others so that they too can come to understand more fully women’s bodies and women’s sexuality.
I think of the sharing as primarily with other women, but I’m aware that the internet is a public entity and men see and share perhaps even equally or more so than women. Many people have said to me when I’ve talked with them about the VULVAlution that I am basically a pornographer. I don’t think anything is farther from the truth. Pornographers photograph or record and distribute images of women’s bodies for pleasure and profit. While I want to be explicit that in many ways, I don’t have any qualms with the business or the practice, what I am doing with the VULVAlution meets neither of those criteria. I’m not interested in distributing images for pleasure of either women or men. The images here are to educate and demystify. The process of doing that may result in more pleasure, but it does not come from the pictures and words themselves. Moreover, I’m not after any profit from this project. So while people may suggest that I’m some sort of pornographer, I think the facts certainly demonstrate something different.
Some have asked in thinking about the VULVAlution (and I appreciate greatly everyone who has blogged about the VULVAlution and raised good and important questions), what is the liberation in posting photographs and even where is the feminism in posting photographs of women’s vulvas? This post is the beginning of my year long answer to that question. Most importantly, however, the entire blog and each entry is the answer to that question. The feminism is in the process and the whole.
I expanded my vulva art from cards to t-shirts. There were gorgeous t-shirts made for the Women’s Crisis Center in Ann Arbor, MI where I was a volunteer and on the back with various hues of purple, pink, and white, I painted giant vulvas. I gave them to everyone I knew. Few had the chutzpah to wear them, but my friend cat actually wore hers backward (the vulva was painted on the back, remember) so that during serious conversations, should could scratch her breast, which was just beneath the clitoris. She loved the shirt. Some others just shook their heads.
A few years later, I met a potter who made “crotch pots.” These are gorgeous pottery bowls with flared sides and a clitoris. I still have the one she gave me and keep my business cards in it. It is red and pink with a high gloss on it. I think it is my favorite desk ornament.
Vulval art is not a new innovation. Feminists have been engaging with it consciously since Judy Chicago and many still look at Georgia O’Keefe and fine the power of her vaginal and mammary imagery. It may not be new, but vulval art is some of my favorite art.
The exploration of the female body and making it visual and accessible to women is also not a new feminist action. The Boston Women’s Health Collective which publishes Our Bodies, Ourselves may be one of the most iconic and effective organizations behind that sentiment. In the 1970s, women gathered together in living rooms to see their cervixes. (For those unfamiliar with this, see Fried Green Tomatoes for a visual accounting of these stories.) Women’s sexuality is often hidden and reviled. One feminist response to that is to make it visible, to remove the mystery in order to understand and appreciate it.
These two principles--feminist, vulval art and exploration of the female body as a feminist action--are what inspired the VULVAlution for me. I think that women’s “bits” (as one friend from the UK calls them) are beautiful, at their very best, and at the very least interesting. Being a lesbian for over twenty years now, I’ve seen a few vulvas, though I must hasten to add, not enough. That doesn’t come from my erotic desires or from my sexual orientation, but rather from an intellectual and political understanding that women’s bodies continue to be covered and stigmatized. We must undo that and one way we can is by first claiming our own power over our bodies and examining our own vulvas. Then we can share with others so that they too can come to understand more fully women’s bodies and women’s sexuality.
I think of the sharing as primarily with other women, but I’m aware that the internet is a public entity and men see and share perhaps even equally or more so than women. Many people have said to me when I’ve talked with them about the VULVAlution that I am basically a pornographer. I don’t think anything is farther from the truth. Pornographers photograph or record and distribute images of women’s bodies for pleasure and profit. While I want to be explicit that in many ways, I don’t have any qualms with the business or the practice, what I am doing with the VULVAlution meets neither of those criteria. I’m not interested in distributing images for pleasure of either women or men. The images here are to educate and demystify. The process of doing that may result in more pleasure, but it does not come from the pictures and words themselves. Moreover, I’m not after any profit from this project. So while people may suggest that I’m some sort of pornographer, I think the facts certainly demonstrate something different.
Some have asked in thinking about the VULVAlution (and I appreciate greatly everyone who has blogged about the VULVAlution and raised good and important questions), what is the liberation in posting photographs and even where is the feminism in posting photographs of women’s vulvas? This post is the beginning of my year long answer to that question. Most importantly, however, the entire blog and each entry is the answer to that question. The feminism is in the process and the whole.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
VULVAlution! the musical score
Hallelujah (Aleluya)
Written by George Friedrich Händel
Adapted by Julie R. Enszer (with thanks to our readers in Oakland for the kernel and inspiration)
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the lord God omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
(VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution)
VULVAlution
The womanhood of this world;
is become
the womanhood of our source,
and of the goddess
and of the goddess
And she shall reign for ever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers
Queen of queens and queer of queers
And she shall reign
And she shall reign
And she shall reign
She shall reign
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens forever and ever
and queer of queers VULVAlution VULVAlution
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens and queer of queers
Queen of queens and queer of queers
And she shall reign forever and ever
Forever and ever and ever and ever
(Queen of queens and queer of queers)
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution
Written by George Friedrich Händel
Adapted by Julie R. Enszer (with thanks to our readers in Oakland for the kernel and inspiration)
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the lord God omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
For the great goddess omnipotent reigneth
(VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution)
VULVAlution
The womanhood of this world;
is become
the womanhood of our source,
and of the goddess
and of the goddess
And she shall reign for ever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
Queen of queens forever and ever VULVAlution VULVAlution
and queers of queers
Queen of queens and queer of queers
And she shall reign
And she shall reign
And she shall reign
She shall reign
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens forever and ever
and queer of queers VULVAlution VULVAlution
And she shall reign forever and ever
Queen of queens and queer of queers
Queen of queens and queer of queers
And she shall reign forever and ever
Forever and ever and ever and ever
(Queen of queens and queer of queers)
VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution VULVAlution
VULVAlution
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Nicki
Within my lips is a centre of me that has been touched only by fingers and mouths. That's right. Fingers and mouths. My own fingers mostly. When I was ten years old I found a way to belong to myself. I have found comfort by understanding touching, needing that thrill to my core. A reminder that I am present, that I have the power to feel. Not really looking until now. Strong and delicate. Open and secret. Here are textures, here are colours. Reds and pinks and browns. And hair that tends itself, that I simply let grow. This is my place.
I want to let you in to watch me at my place. To watch. Not touch.
I have always acknowledged this fantasy of spectacle. Balancing the camera and mirror, wishing I had a contortionist's skill, or an extra hand just for this moment to circle my lips, caress my clitoris, all the time opening my legs wider, wider, I want you to look. I want you to see me. Take everything in. See how this woman makes love to herself.
It is fun one-on-one to imagine you half-concealed, hiding in the shadows of the bedroom door. Of course I know that you're there. I have brought you this close. I can make your face be whoever I want it to be. You can't disappear. You are transfixed.
I perform to wild crowds, raised high on a stage, exaggerating the rocking of my hips, bucking at my hand, wanting this climax and yet not wanting to give up this hold on myself. There is always someone who wants more. Wanting to tease, to soothe, to coax, to draw myself to wetness and greed, to gratitude, fury and tears.
This is my place. When I close my legs I will be calm.
I want to let you in to watch me at my place. To watch. Not touch.
I have always acknowledged this fantasy of spectacle. Balancing the camera and mirror, wishing I had a contortionist's skill, or an extra hand just for this moment to circle my lips, caress my clitoris, all the time opening my legs wider, wider, I want you to look. I want you to see me. Take everything in. See how this woman makes love to herself.
It is fun one-on-one to imagine you half-concealed, hiding in the shadows of the bedroom door. Of course I know that you're there. I have brought you this close. I can make your face be whoever I want it to be. You can't disappear. You are transfixed.
I perform to wild crowds, raised high on a stage, exaggerating the rocking of my hips, bucking at my hand, wanting this climax and yet not wanting to give up this hold on myself. There is always someone who wants more. Wanting to tease, to soothe, to coax, to draw myself to wetness and greed, to gratitude, fury and tears.
This is my place. When I close my legs I will be calm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
