So what do *you* think about in the shower?

[untonuggan]

FYI: If very literal interpretations of the Garden of Eden/Original Sin are very important to you and your sense of being, probably don't read the following. If however you are open to "[religious text] may be more of an allegory than the literal truth", then maybe we can talk about some thoughts I just had while showering with intense PMS. Also be forewarned, most of my Biblical knowledge is based on several Children's Bibles, a sister who co-majored in Religion, religious friends, and stuff I picked up in history classes on the Protestant/Catholic split.

Herein be thoughts:

OK, so as I understand it in a rough outline that varies across faiths, the "Original Sin" and being booted out of the Garden of Eden story has some of the following parts which maybe incomplete:

1. G-d forbids eating Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
2. Snake tempts Eve.
3. Eve eats fruit, covers "sin" of nakedness with fig leaves.
4. Eve convinces Adam to also eat fruit, same deal.
5. G-d finds out because of fig leaves, kicks two out of Garden.
6. G-d punishes Eve for "Original Sin" with pain of childbirth and PMS for her and all her female offspring forevermore.

I know I may be leaving some things out, and there's differences for different faiths possibly. But rough outline I think covers most points? Correct me if I'm wrong.

So here's where I'm getting stuck:

Don't most female and I'm guessing also hermaphroditic animals (human AND non-human) have really uncomfortably pregnancies, child-birth, even egg-laying? Or other reproductive cycles? Even sex in some cases?

Some examples:

• Male housecats have barbed penises. This is *not* fun for female housecats.
• 17 year cicadas live underground for a 17 year cycle sucking on tree roots, come above ground for 4-6 weeks (or less because they're very helpless and rely on numbers not to be devoured by all the hungry predators), smash bits together to make babies, and die.
• Have you ever seen a dog with diapers on because she's in heat? I have no doubt that dogs have really bad PMS too. They do have a six-month cycle, though. But I think the whole "multiple puppies in one litter" and "possible mix between huge dog and small dog" things have very big downsides.
• Did you see March of the Penguins? Sitting on an egg in the cold for ages?
• What about salmon swimming upstream to lay their eggs and fucking die?

My question then is this. Did all the *other* female species in the Garden of Eden also greatly anger G-d in some way? I mean, I can kind of see housecats (or their ancestors) doing so, if G-d did not have a sense of humor about cat butts in his face for example. But it does seem that the whole "punishment for Original Sin" is not a unique experience to humans.

As far as I can tell (and again, merging 'science' with religious questions doesn't always work well), we're the only ones who wear clothes to "cover our sin." So are we the only ones who annoyed G-d with the whole "Tree of Knowledge" thing? Did the others do something else? Or did maybe cats go, "I am NOT wearing clothes."

Ooooooooooor...maybe the whole "Original Sin" bit was a transcription error that was/is used to shame women for our bodies and sexualities, and the original (sorry, pun) is actually different?

Alternate version which is very, very, very heretical:

If you were Eve, hanging out in this very pretty perfect garden where everything was provided, and another creature came up to you and told you that you were Adam's *second* spouse...that Lilith had been before you but hadn't been obedient enough...and that you were actually created *from Adam's rib* rather than as an independent being...and that maybe you could find out if you ate from the expressly forbidden tree which no one knows *why* it's forbidden...

...don't you think YOU would, after a time, also want to know why the fruit was forbidden?

And maybe your fig leaf would actually be more like fig *leaves* formed into simple camouflage, or maybe you didn't *want* Adam to see you naked because he hadn't earned that right til you two had a Serious Talk?

And maybe you tricked Adam into eating the fruit too because you knew you were going to be exiled from the Garden, and you wanted him out too so there wouldn't be any more women made from ribs? (Though as I understand it in the Qu'ran the rib thing is different.)

This is apparently what I think about when I have really bad PMS and I've been hanging out with cats for awhile and I am bored in the shower.

Comments

[cxcvi]

Being agnostic with a Christian upbringing, I'm not entirely sure how relevant this is to me, but it's certainly interesting. Tho thoughts:

1: It seems that quite a lot of this is set up so that the males are the only ones who get to enjoy the process.

2: I wonder if the pain is supposed to be a pause for thought. "Am I putting myself through this pain for the right mate?"

[untonuggan]

1. Yup.

2. Maybe? But it's not like we can really opt out of periods even with the new birth control, and NO ONE will give me a hysterectomy even today because "it's not an elective surgery." So the horrible PMS/bleeding seems to be non-optional for many people, and a source of "comment from people who are nosey or can't shut up about grandkids" for people who don't menstruate regularly.

[cxcvi]

But it's not like we can really opt out of periods even with the new birth control

A nuance that doesn't immediately come to mind, because reasons. Good point.

[cadenzamuse]

Missing bits of punishing: God also punishes males with having to work the land to get food (as opposed to just picking it from trees I guess?), and work hard on barren land.

God also curses snakes to become what we think of as snakes, and says that women and snakes will be enemies: snakes will bite at their heels, but women will crush their heads. (Christians often take this as an allusion to sin, and how Mary crushes it by having Jesus.)

And there's another bit of the curse on women: "your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

Um, source text links maybe simpler? Genesis 3

I need to get some water in me, or I would expound on some of the weird gross ways that these texts get used, but sometimes I sort of wonder whether the "curse" is passed down and changed acknowledgement of humans becoming beings with menstrual cycles instead of estral cycles?

[untonuggan]

Interesting. Hmm. IDK, this is just making me want to smite this whole section even more, and also want to give the author a lecture about forager versus agricultural society.

Maybe this is why I do better in religions where sacred texts are not emphasized, or the ones that are have only fragments that survived or are very "hey look it's a sutra maybe contemplate the many meanings, but it's only one sutra among many." I deconstruct the text waaaaaaaay too much for it to retain meaning.

[lilysea]

Well, humans have much more difficult births than many mammals because

1) babies have big skulls, women have small pelvises - other mammals tend to have a better skull/pelvis equation

and

2) in the west, humans tend to lie down flat on their backs to give birth because Drs, even though evidence is that standing up, squatting, using a squatting stool, being in a warm pool makes giving birth easier.

[untonuggan]

I think elephants probably have it worse though. If one can measure? (two years of pregnancy! ugh! and have you seen the size of newborn elephants? I don't even...NO hips can fully accommodate for that.)

[pipisafoat]

I like your thoughts but don't have anything to add to them. (Except that I can live without knowing about any more barbed penises or other weird penises or honestly penises at all unless they're fictional and, y'know, human, even though human penises are already weird. ALL EXTERNAL SEXUAL ORGANS LOOK WEIRD TO ME. I don't get it. I don't look at sexual organs and think "ooh, I really want my hand/mouth on that". I just go "well, I love this person, and I want to meet their needs and make them happy, and this is one of the ways in which I do that.")
(which is why i call myself asexual despite my large interest in fictional sex. asexual purists can just leave me alone kthxbi.)

[untonuggan]

Sorry! I used to be a peer health educator in college and I have a problem remembering to filter about things like sex organs and STIs and contraception and consent and things. This has been an issue in restaurants at times. My partner has a special look for this topic, among others.

[untonuggan]

Also, penises are really funny looking to me. I just. Don't get them.

[pipisafoat]

(do you find labia et al to be less funny looking? do you find them visually attractive? questions you don't need to answer if you don't want to but i am genuinely curious now.)

ALSO BUTTS. People are like "oh look at that cute butt!" and I'm like "it's a butt. it poops. good job, butt." I apparently have no appreciation for the visual artistry of the human body. Like, nothing is attractive to me. I like the symmetry of collarbones but I hate the way they tend to just be like HELLO I AM A CLAVICLE, PLEASE LOOK AT ME, I AM INESCAPABLE AND YOUR EYES ARE FOREVER DRAWN TO ME. I've never met a subtle clavicle unless all bones were subtle via relatively thick covering of fat tissue. Even muscle tissue doesn't make clavicles subtle!

NO WAIT I LIKE SPINES. There. One body part I like. Bam. Did it.

[untonuggan]

will try to remember to mention that explicit stuff is behind the cut! sorry about that.

now to your questions! explicitness ahoy.

penises: no offense, but generally just a penis by itself makes me giggle, and they are not pretty. things I can do with a partner I like who has such a thing? that's cool! but probably around where you are in terms of "this by itself does nothing for me."

labia, etc: let's be honest, genitals and bodies are funny looking. but i find them somewhat pretty sometimes? depending on circumstances? sometimes it's also not so much visual as other senses (texture, smell) that I find appealing. in general, the thought of "things I can do with a partner who has such a thing that are mutually pleasurable" are less likely to cause a mental squick with this set of lego pieces. I don't know, maybe if Frida Kahlo had painted a lot of elongated vegetables I'd feel differently. ;)

i am told I have a very nice, er, butt, though usually the word "ass" is used. you have NO IDEA how many times i have been "serenaded" with the song Baby Got Back. (when my partner does it, that's okay, because it's our inside joke. other people, nope.) i used to be very annoyed by my butt, because it's nigh-impossible to buy jeans for this butt with my short legs especially with things like "skinny leg" and "low cut" stuff around. so for a long time i was like WHAT IS WITH BUTTS. but i'm beginning to appreciate my own more, which is helping me appreciate them on others more? idk.

also, i usually don't check out random strangers because it's awkward but the other day there was a person with a really cute dress, lipstick a la Agent Carter, and a shaved head and my brain went, "Okay the nice smile and whatever was pretty, but the shaved head + lipstick and confident walk is what made me actually check this person out to the point where I had to remind myself to stop being rude."

in terms of butt things, have you heard "Milk Milk Lemonade" from Amy Schumer's show? It's about the theme of "why are butts so sexy" and makes fun of songs like "Baby Got Back". I would caution that the lyrics are definitely NSFW in parts and those are the ones I remember when I'm, oh, in a "family dining establishment."

[pipisafoat]

I did not mean to complain about you including that in your post! I just learned that I don't want to know about weird penises (and honestly, with my online life, how is that not something i already knew about myself) and then shared it with you. There is no need for you to apologize for it. (But I am going to request that any future penis information is warned about before I read it, if you remember. But if you forget, it's not like I'm going to unfriend you because of it. It's not triggering or anything for me, just Not Interested Thanks. like those of my friends who post a lot about their MMORPGs; if it's marked that the whole post is that or that part is behind a cut, doesn't bother me in the slightest because I can scroll past very easily.)

[syntaxofthings]

I relate to this whole thread SO MUCH. Thank you. On the other hand, I find sexual organs pleasing to senses other than sight, which is good. Looking at them I go... "erk?"

[lilacsigil]

Male penguins have an equal share in egg sitting!

[untonuggan]

True! Also gay penguins. <3

[chalcopyrite]

Also penguins have a very nifty heat-exchange system in their ankles so their feet don't freeze.

Which is off-topic to sins original and otherwise, but I just think it's an(other) awesome thing about penguins.

[chalcopyrite]

I believe it was Douglas Adams who described the deity of Genesis as "the kind of mentality that likes leaving bricks under hats on the pavement."

IDK about transcription error, but for sure that section's been deployed to tell women we're inferior and Wrong and deserved it all. ::thatface::