Call Her by Her Name
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was wrong. I was startled to find in Melanie Thernstrom’s profile of the concierge gynecologist Sally Greenwald—which extolls the joys, and pricey maintenance, of female-oligarch orgasms—just how far we have not come (“Billionaires’ Vagina Club,” July 6th & 13th). Here, yet again, one of the few remaining publications of note reinforces, via repetition, the diminishment of female sexual anatomy by misidentifying it in both title and text.
The vagina is merely one of the many moving parts—mons pubis, labia majora and minora, clitoris, cervix, uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, numerous glands, endless nerves, and, yes, the adjoining vagina—that compose the vulva and her internal sisters. How would it fly if we all, including social-media influencers and other cultural leaders, conspired to call the penis the perineum? Or maybe the prostate? Oops! Wrong landmark; right neighborhood. So how did “vagina,” the nom du jour for decades now (with ten appearances in the piece, four of them incorrect, three of those introduced by the good doctor herself), come to represent the entire site? And, more interestingly, why?
Kurt Tidmore
Carrigaline, Ireland
Profane and Profound
Louis Menand, in his examination of Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” contends that the outrage the photograph elicited among American Christians in the nineteen-eighties was the opening salvo in the culture wars that rage to this day (Books, July 20th). I was not old enough to participate in the early debates, but speaking today, as a Christian minister, I would like to convince my fellow-believers that this indignation misses something fundamental about the central symbol of our faith. Indeed, Serrano’s image is, to me, comparable to an icon, worthy of sincere contemplation.
The cross represents the most sadistic and extreme form of mockery and humiliation, so if one considers dipping something in urine to be profane, doing this with the crucifix is actually redundant. The cross did much worse to the one whom Christians believe to be the human incarnation of God, yet Jesus’ followers believed that his very crucifixion was the key to unlocking the revelation of God’s grace. In the New Testament, Paul called the idea of a crucified Saviour “a scandal.”
But centuries of casual display has domesticated the image of the cross. For this reason, Serrano’s work, with its uncannily beatific admixture of the sacred and the profane, recovers something of the original impact of Paul’s scandalous proclamation. Serrano’s intentions, which he seems to wish to keep obscured, are beside the point. An understanding of the sacred in which the sacred collapses when it comes into contact with the profane is impoverished, falling short of the transcendence that is worthy of the word “God.”
A foundational insight of Christianity is that the sacred has the power to sanctify the profane. The social implications are crucial: Jesus concretely identified himself with “the least of these,” elevating as sacred the dignity of anyone whose humanity society wishes to piss on or flush away. This, rather than sanctimonious display, is what should motivate Christians.
The Reverend Nathaniel Mahlberg
Philadelphia, Pa.
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
