Trouble at the in

[imomus]

In the double bind of the Virgin-Whore complex, women are supposed to be more pure than men – sugar and spice and all things nice. Yet when they fail to achieve this artificially high standard—especially when young, or drunk, or on the make—they're accused and castigated out of all proportion to their sins, which are usually no worse than the sins of anyone young, drunk or on the make.

One peculiarity of this tendency is that completely harmless tics and traits characteristic of young women are seized on, in a certain type of commentary, as harbingers of moral decline. Ever say "Really?" when someone is telling you something? We all do; it's a sign of respect to the person speaking, a sign you're listening, and an exclamation of surprise. Yet when young women say "Really?" it's suddenly an index of moral decline, a sign of inner vapidity, credulity, and spineless receptivity.

Commenting on my Helsinki street style piece the other day, Erkki Rautio of Tampere drew my attention to the phenomenon of pissis, the Finnish bling-bling girls who piss in the snow because they can't hold their drink like a man. (Finnish men also piss their vodka away in the snow, of course, but for some reason this isn't held to be proof of moral decline. Men, after all, are men, and aren't expected to be either better or worse than men.)

The term pissis, which reminds me of Picasso's series of paintings of pisseuses (picked up by Serge Gainsbourg in his song "Five Easy Pisseuses"), comes, Erkki explains, "from the fact that a stereotypical pissis does not have a shame to urinate in public; a typical pissis goes out with her friends on Friday night, drinks a lot of cider, and as a consequence of heavy drinking has to relieve her bladder in any nearby bush or stairwell."

What interests me in Erkki's article isn't so much the pissing — although obviously the genital focus, and the question of whether these young women have the right to control their own genitals, is central. What's odd is the emphasis on this innocuous word "Really?" as a hallmark of the pissis' moral turpitude. "Pissis is a sort of Finnish version of American white trash bimbo, who talks loud and obscenely in youth slang; every second word being "vittu" or "vitun", or "siis" ("so") or "oikeesti" ("really") or "siis oikeesti", and smokes and drinks heavily."

The focus on the word oikeesti reminded me of similar articles railing against the moral decline of young Japanese women. In the Japan Times, for instance, Kaori Shoji quotes ultra-misogynist Schopenhauer saying there's nothing more destructive than conversing with young women. Why? Because they say maji and maji de ("really?") so much, apparently. And this, apparently, is a sign that "the yamato nadeshiko (the Japanese flower who is impeccably graceful in everything she does and says) is dead. Fifty years ago, they were still around."

"You can tell a girl her brother's dying in the hospital and the response will be, "Maji?" You can tell her she won a cash prize of 10 million yen and she'll say, "Maji?" Actually, think of maji as the equivalent of "really" and you'll get the picture... Variations of maji include cho-maji (super maji) and gero-maji (maji till you want to puke) and majimajimajimajimaji."

Putting on my "psychoanalyist of society" hat, though, I wonder if these two recurring descriptions of young women behaving badly—pissing and saying "really?"—aren't related more closely than at first appears. When we say "really?" we're declaring ourselves open to, ready for, and penetrated by information. "Really" is a vaginal word, as pissing is a vaginal activity. The vagina—how and by whom it's controlled—is also what connects the Virgin and the Whore. The virgin is the one who doesn't say "Really?" but closes her ears, and her sex. The whore is the one who says "Really?" and opens them. Perhaps intemperate information intake (''reallyreallyreallyreally?") leads just as directly to shameless control of the vagina as intake of alcohol.

In an interesting article on Finnish profanity, the Wikipedia tells us that the other word used so much by the pissis, "vittu", is a "profane expression for the female genitalia... used with a similar emphasis to the English word fuck. The often used "fuck you" is often translated as "haista vittu" which means "smell (a) cunt". Often considered extremely profane, its usage is nowadays not only limited to teenager slang, but is often used as an emphasis in a forceful or frustrated utterance or expression. The term is also known to be the basis of a crude illustration of a vagina, the so-called "kirkko-vene" (church-boat), "hämähäkki väärinpäin" (spider on its back) or "vitunkuva" (vittu-image). As such it may come as a surprise that the word is actually quite ancient and it along with the aforementioned vittu-drawing was in fact used in a positive and respectful manner when referring to the female body."

Maybe the "spider on its back" (the whore) isn't so far from "the Japanese flower who is impeccably graceful in everything she does and says" (the virgin). The spider and the flower are the yin and yang of the female genitalia, that crucial social locus in the control of its owner yet open to constant negotiation, discussion, censure. The flower didn't disappear fifty years ago, and the spider wasn't born yesterday. They're both still there if you care to look at, listen to, taste or smell them. Really.

Comments

[gunilla.livejournal.com]

very interesting. Browsing in Internet we already are getting used to hear the same stories over and over - well-known or half-forgotten. And it seems to be something new :)

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

Great bit of thinking. Incidentally, 'vedda vitun paahan' (Finish spelling not my forte) means 'pull your cunt over your head'.

I think it's always interesting to compare Finland and Japan; the Japanese are apparently great Finnophiles, particularly for anything related to Pippy Longstocking and the Moomins, but I don't know if it's in any way mutual.

[(Anonymous)]

"am I bothered"

yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but....

[chuckdarwin.livejournal.com]

Not to over-emphasize the point that your anonymous poster was trying to make, but... Vicky Pollard (http://www.littlebritain.tv/characters_vicky.htm) will probably piss in the snow now that you've written this.

[(Anonymous)]

"When we say "really?" we're declaring ourselves open to, ready for, and penetrated by information. "Really" is a vaginal word, as pissing is a vaginal activity."

What? Analogies and metaphors need to be reasonably accurate to mean anything. I'm not female so can't check right now but I'm pretty sure women don't pee from their vaginas. If anything pissing is more of a clitoral activity. Also "really(?)" can also be interpreted as being as much a doubting, guarded kind of question, one that suggests an uncertainty in or distrust of the reliability of the person questioned. I don't really think this pseudo-Freudian contrivance really works, your pissing/really openness (vaginal/acceptance) could equally be interpreted as a guardedness (clitoral/doubting)where the clitoral requires consistent stimulation for pleasure and the "really" question requires persuasion and discourse rather than the occupation of an open mind. And while this interpretation is no more accurate or reliable than yours, nakedness and 'lewd' behavior are equally likely to be masks.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Of course, for a woman to pee in public means something different than for a man to. When a man pees in a bush or something, he is merely perpetuating a norm in his society. A woman who pees in public is consciously breaking a taboo so it is definitely a rebellious act.

Also, there is a physical difference, in that a man can pee away from himself, but a woman can only pee straight down, into the ground. True or not, it appears unclean, like the urine is going to pool under her and get on her shoes and clothes.

Though I must agree with you that there seems to be a connection between the intellectually ready-to-be-penetrated girl who says "maji de?" and the sexually ready-to-be-penetrated pose of a pissis pissing. Just look at that picture! That pose is the same in all the animal kingdom...

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Apparently Tsujiko Noriko didn't like a translation ロバート-san made of some online interview with her because he made her sound 'ditsy' in English. She doesn't say "maji" but she says "honde" a lot, as a good Osaka-jin.

Is Mr. r. a misogynist too?!?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Is Mr. r. a misogynist too?!?

I'm a little troubled by Mr R's relations with women, to be honest. I mean, he calls his blog GlitchslapTKO (http://glitchslaptko.blogspot.com/), a play on the term "bitch-slap". Correspondents at various Tokyo parties, though, tell me that in reality it tends to be Tokyo that's bitchslapping Mr R.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

"Vedä vittu päähän" is the to-the-T spelling... at least for the most sober variation. Drunk people tend to get grammatically weird.

[d-g-m.livejournal.com]

Vulnerability.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

No list of stereotypical pissis words - and the whole concept is really a piece of youth culture humour, and certainly not severe and grave national discussion - is complete without "niinku", our very own equivalent of that lovable random interjection, "like".

As in, "Like, you know" - "Niinku, tiätsä."

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Now that I'm on the subject, the stereotypical use of "Really" has no question mark. It's not "Really?" the inquiry but "Really!" the random interjection. It can be used as a form of (pathetic) pleading, which would apparently be the specific context here. The exact translation here loses a lot of actual meaning.

Re: yeah, but no, but yeah, but no, but....

[bifteck.livejournal.com]

Precisely what I was thinking!

"oikeesti"

[(Anonymous)]

I think there's a bit of misundertanding here concerning the pissis-expression "oikeesti". i wouldn't translate it as really? with a question mark, it's more like "honestly..." or something like that.
and these pissis-people "really" are quite annoying, two of the kind almost attacked me the other night and verbally abused me.

thespian lesbian.

Re: "oikeesti"

[(Anonymous)]

oh, ha. someone beat me to it.
:)

thessie lezzie.

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

astrid lindgren was swedish, and so is pippi longstockings ... i guess ... but she would piss in the snow, anyway

[metatherian.livejournal.com]

I think there's a fair whack of prejudice based ignorance involved in the common view that women can't pee away from themselves. Just like with a man it's coming out pressurized - it will in most instances arc out.

Swedish, not finnish

[(Anonymous)]

Pippi is Swedish and Mumin is Finland-Swedish, so if anything the japaneese are hung up at swedes (or swedish speaking finnish people), don't you think?

// staffan.produkt@chello.se

[fireflesh.livejournal.com]

What's really cruel is that a woman's anatomy makes her more susceptible to urinary tract infections if she holds in her piss for too long.

But we don't piss from our vaginas.

Promise.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

I don't know how I feel about being called prejudiced and ignorant in the same sentence, but what a thrill!

But women still do not have some jiggly mass of sponges which can be aimed in any direction at will. I mean, look at the girl in that link: that pee is coming out pretty close to her shoes.

I'm not saying women can't pee away from themselves exactly, but it seems much easier for a man.

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

Oh, I guess you could roll on your back and piss, but that doesn't sound so comfortable in the Finnish snow!

[contentlove.livejournal.com]

Pissing is no more a "vaginal activity" for women than it is a "testicular activity" for men. Close but no cigar, so to speak.

Nor is it (and I mention this because I see it in a comment that came in ahead of mine) a "clitoral" activity.

Just for the record, it's a "bladder and urethra" activity.

Glad we got that straight.

[triestine.livejournal.com]

But women still do not have some jiggly mass of sponges which can be aimed in any direction at will.

True, but we can certainly try *g* - have you seen those websites devoted to the feminine art of peeing while standing up? Fabulous stuff.

[(Anonymous)]

Women piss out of their vaginas [sic!], Momuses talk out of their asses. Or: giving psychoanalysis an even worse name. (Nothing required to do it apart from an armchair, solid half-knowledge, and a good brandy to get the free association going, apparently.)

der.

[the-bee-box.livejournal.com]

Tying, what most people would consider unconsciously spoken vernacular, to the virgin/whore complex is a pretty interesting read for the start of the day. The spider on its back versus the Japanese Flower was probably the most persuasive part of the argument. Going back to Greek mythology (I can't help it, this is what I do) I was very intrigued by the relationship between Athena and Medusa. Again, you have a perfect virgin/whore complex. Athena, shielded in armor and one of the Virgin Goddesses (I mean she was denied a traditional birth and instead exploded from Zeus' head already cloaked in her armor) is the classic virgin. She is the wise protectorate of cities and the goddess of warfare in so far as strategy is concerned. Medusa, by contrast, had a face of twisted snakes so ugly her gaze could turn anyone who looked upon it to stone. Newer scholarship has started exploring the relationship between these two women. Medusa's head, many now claim, is representative of the female vulva. It's power being either so strong or so repulsive that it turned men (because most of the Medusa myths only involve men (Perseus) into stone. What is incredibly interesting, at least to me, about all of this is, the stories that explain the origins of Medusa. The most widely accepted one, to my knowledge, is of a beautiful young girl singing into the sea. Poseidon, so moved with lust by her voice and beauty, snatches her up and steals away with her to a temple built in honor of Athena where he proceeds to rape her. Athena, furious at the crime committed in her temple chooses, not to punish Poseidon (the true villain), but the beautiful, molested girl. And so Medusa is born.

It is also of relevance to note Athena was a key player in Medusa's eventual death. Depending upon the translation, it was she who held the polished mirror to Medusa's face so that Perseus could behead her, or she that instructed Perseus to use the shield in such a manner.

It is almost as though Athena creates her own whore complex as a separate, physical creature, only to stick around and be integral in its own destruction.

Ancient Greek and Roman coins often depict Athena on one side and Medusa on the other. This again reinforces the notion that on some level, there was a clear virgin/whore complex created by these two. Medusa is sometimes described as the mirror figure of Athena, a self-created yang to her yin (if you really want to intermingle mythologies and terminology). The story is fascinating in and of itself, but what it really gets at is that the virgin/whore complex seems to have always been a major conundrum to society. It didn't begin with the two Mary's nor will it ended with potentially-loaded vernacular. Human society has never been able to, in so far as history points out, come to terms with a peaceful coexistence of the two. I hope I am wrong. I am by no means an expert on mythology, so if someone else knows of stories that contradict this, please share, I want to hear these stories.

Out of all of this, perhaps what I find most compelling, is Athena and Medusa shared the same coin, but could never face each other. Perhaps the use of the word "really" can be seen as an attempt of stopping this. I understand where you are coming from when you say it is "when we say "really?" we're declaring ourselves open to, ready for, and penetrated by information." Symbolically, on some level, this could be the removal of the ancient armor.