oh and also the throat mimics the appearance of genital imagery: open, raw, wet, pulsing. The throat becomes the place where power, intimacy, and pleasure converge, like a relocation of the clitoris because this one cannot be shown (or in Will’s case it is a symbolic clitoris —the whole thing of female genitalia symbolizing submission etc, etc).
I wish there was more care taken in simply reading what’s been said. At no point did I “insist” that female genitalia inherently means submission (in fsct I even wrote it as “the whole thing”). What I clearly referred to was symbolism in media. Within the collective visual language, particularly in how it appears in cultural and pornographic imagery, it does often symbolize submission.
This isn’t a personal claim, nor a universal truth, but a commentary on representation. To deny that symbolism in these contexts is to ignore the broader mechanisms of meaning-making. And yes, I even addressed this in depth, including how the porn industry constructs such imagery in the post previous and linked to this one.
Saying “it doesn’t symbolize submission” may be true for you, for me, but not in the realm of media analysis, where these patterns are deliberate and repeated. Denying that is disingenuous.
And viewing submission as inherently negative or inferior is its own form of internalized sexism. It’s crucial to move beyond these knee-jerk reactions and actually engage with the nuance.
