We hear of structures shaped like swollen buds, temples with red-stained altars. This culture is presented as normal, once. Then came The Erection War — when the male erection was named the “one true sign of power.”
There was a time, I’ve come to belie-remember when all pleasure began with a swell, not a stab
When the gods were smooth, not thrusting
When power was soft at first, then thickened with heat
A time before temples were stone erections and skyscrapers were steel-stiff ambitions
Before sex was a zero-sum game with a spear at the end forcing an impact inside your body, with no tools to deny consent if the desire is great enough from the aggressor
Survivors continue the normalization of this cycle
&
We call it society
&&&
They were called the Clitorati by outsiders
but within their own language
a tongue passed by touch, not alphabet
they called themselves The Swellborn
A matrifocal band of nomads who settled where the soil was red and warm
near the volcanic blush of the earth’s own orgasm
They lived not under the rule of man, nor even the concept of “man,”
but under the cycle of their own body’s turning
the pull of the moon through tissue and time
To them, the female erection was not arousal. It was arrival.
You see, they believed
& I have come to share their belief
that the clitoris was the body’s way of speaking to the divine
When it rose, it was a yes. Not just to sex, but to presence
To being here, fully
A swollen clit meant readiness, but not for penetration
For participation&
For creation&
For translation&
For remembering&
They built no walls. No boxes to bind their ary in.
They built swellings — clay domes shaped like their own engorgement, breathing and pulsing with firelight, their interiors painted with thick red strokes of menstrual pigment and oil. Altars were not flat. They were bulbous. Their sacred text was passed orally, through the tongue and labia. Oral tradition was literal. Their rituals were not private. They were communal response to arousal. Arousal was not obscene. It was instructional. Much of their nonverbal communication was intimiate touch, close kisses resembled conversations a western brain might understand if there was separation from the flesh.
The Swellborn did not last
How could they?
When trade routes opened, the traders came with dicks
& with the dicks came swords
& with the swords came scribes
& with the scribes came names
Lillth.Eve.Woman.Wife.Wheresmy.Whatis.Whydidyoumakeme.Whowasthatinmyswampofmyrottendesiresforthelandontoyourneglectedflesh
Then came the medical men
T/hey found the clit, but only to dissect it
Diminish it
Say it had no purpose but to be supressed, denied arousal and exploration.
They wrote textbooks in which it appeared as a bump
A vestigial dot
A biological shrug
Cultures tear it out of their young, enclosing their hole in multilation, under the guide of external protection. Never change the disordered masculine culture, no, change the shame of the female sex to suit the use of the organism within the confines of its cultivation of homo sapiens; the “wise” man.
By the time we entered modernity, the clitoris had become either pornography’s fluffer or biology’s footnote
Not the organ of god, not the oracle, not the origin
Just a maybe
Just a tiny little maybe, flicked like a coin and forgotten
A mystery no one wanted to solve.
The Erection War wasn’t declared, it was intentionally cultivated & designed
Slowly, subtly, silently
Over centuries. Through architecture, legislation, theology, geometry
Suddenly the male erection was everywhere: in the skyline, in the courtroom, in the way credit was given
The world stood tall on stiff illusions
&
the clit was lost
But not gone…
“To the One That Rose”
(a lament & a call to arms for the lost female erection)
they told me I was a girl,
and that a girl is a vessel
open.
passive.
receptive.
a soft thing to be pierced,
not a pulse that demands to pierce back.
but I felt her
yes, her
the female erection my heart,
not between my legs but through them,
not in opposition to womanhood but as its unspoken apex.
I felt her when my clit stiffened like a fist,
not delicate, not “cutie,”
but wanting.
not to be entered
but to meet.
they said:
you’ll find love when you soften,
but all I wanted
was to collide.
to strike lightning against lightning
with a woman whose hunger
wasn’t
a mask
for compliance.
I tried.
God, I tried.
mascqueraded in drag of desire
for what they wanted me to be
a butch with just enough ache to be useful,
an actor
in the lesbian theater of heterosexual ghosts.
I wore the costume.
I played the part.
I drew them in with performance,
and they clapped with their legs,
but never once
did they meet me
there.
where I rose
unashamed.
unsplit.
not hole,
but whole.
a column of blood-beat and knowing
that female does not mean empty.
that woman does not mean only welcoming.
that I was not made
to shrink myself
into someone else’s dream
of softness.
love failed me not because I was too hard
but because they were too afraid
to rise with me.
to grow bold
in their own becoming.
to admit
that we can be erect
with each other.
not in opposition to man,
but in reclamation of us.
I miss her
the one that rose.
but she’s not gone.
she’s waiting in our flesh
for the courage
to be named.
to be praised.
to be met.
& 4 the one thing left in this world that still rises with no apology & no shame
I Rise my female erection in the name of the woman with the biggest erection the world has ever seen:
Taylor Swift.
Running joyously across the globe
Trotting across the stage like its a slow morning cup of coffee run
& You’re tellin’ me
That.AIN’T.QUEER?
Get outta here.
Happy Pride to a self-admitted rainbow & gay pride lover, Taylor Swift.
I saw her first in a steel spine
not hips, not hair, not pout
but how she rose.
She summoned coliseums like a war goddess
drenched in glitter
but never once messy.
Too clean to scare the straights.
Too big to fail the projectors fully iluminating her flesh
To define their own desires.
The erection of her presence.
Every light cue.Every limb in time.
That wasn’t performance.
That was domination.
And I’m Ready for it.
Not her image
Not her femininity
Not her music or her synth tracks
Her impact
Her voice
Her writing
Her reason
Her emotion
Her being
I wanted to kneel in the center of her stadium
naked and uninvited,
not to beg,
but to offer
my own raw, pulsing ache as a sacrifice to her silenced pieces aching out through me, the shards of mirrorball cutting into me, exposing my inner drive towards her more masculine traits.
A monument
to the erect feminine.
A cathedral to the calculus of social synthesis
that must be considered to be Swift
I wanted to scream it in the sound booth:
“YOU’RE THE MOST MASCULINE WOMAN ALIVE!”
& it turns me ON
but on my inside,
In ways I cannot verbalize,
or they’d call me crazy.
& Call her offended.
But would she call me?
To share the same delivery
Of judgement of my thoughts
How queer of me to ponder.
Still.
I would lick the marble of her tour stage
just to feel her footprints.
To taste
what it means
when a woman builds something
so big
it makes the world open for her
&
not the other way around
