2.13.2006

reasons

i love what i study:

[from Valerie Traub's "The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England"]

"Tribade is a French term derived from the Greek tribas and tribein, to rub. [. . .] 'tribadism,' [is] the sexual penetration of women (and men) by other women, by means of either a dildo or a fantastically large clitoris. [. . .]

Helkiah Crooke in his anatomical treatise, Microcosmographia; or, A Description of the Body of Man (1615) [. . .] picked up on earlier French anatomists' assertions that an enlarged clitoris is associated with 'unnatural' desires in women: 'Sometimes [the clitoris] groweth to such a length that it hangeth without the cleft like a mans member, especially when it is fretted with the touch of the cloaths, and so strutteth and groweth to a rigiditie as doth the yarde [penis] of a man.'"

So there you have it -- before the wandering womb came the wandering clit, and while taking a stroll she might have galloped on man or woman! luv-ly.

[GLQ 7:2, pp.245-263. 2001:Duke University Press.]

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