Concerning the Use of Dildos in Venery
From Amoeba Dick, chapter 16.
If any wight a cruel mistress serves,
Or in dispair, unhappy pines and starves,
Curse eunuch dildo, senseless counterfeit,
Who sooth may fill, but never can beget,
But if revenge, enraged with despair
That such a dwarf his welfare should impair,
Would fain this woman’s secretary know,
Let him attend the marks that I shall show.
The term “dildo” is accorded no stable definition. Thus we have, variously:
RH. “an artificial erect penis, used as a sexual aid”;
C. “an object used as a substitute for an erect penis”;
SM. “an object that is shaped like and used as a substitute for an erect penis”;
PD. “a sex toy often shaped like a penis that is primarily used for masturbation and sexual stimulation of the vagina or anus”.
Following Carlyle [1833], I take it that there is awaiting systematic exposition a latent philosophy of the dildo – what are the essential and what the accidental properties of this admirable instrument, what the semantics of “dildo” and its cognates, and what of dildo epistemology?
Indeed, there is a gesture towards such a design to be found in at least one popular but respectable source:-
W. “A dildo is a sexual device resembling an erect penis in shape, size, and overall appearance. Some expand this definition to include vibrators. Others exclude penis prosthetic aids, which are known as “extensions”. Some include penis-shaped items clearly designed with vaginal penetration in mind even if they are not true approximations of a penis. Some people include devices designed for anal penetration (butt plugs) while others do not. These devices are often used by people of all genders and sexual orientations, for masturbation or for other sexual activity.”.
In what follows, talk of the nature of an individual a is to be apprehended as shorthand for talk about the conjunction of a’s essential properties. The concept of an essential property of a is to be construed in the philosophically standard way, as a property F which a has, which a cannot lose without ceasing to exist. For instance, under this standard construal being human is one of your essential properties. The only thing that can stop you being human is your annihilation. Accordingly, the having of an essential property can be defined by means of the predicate calculus as follows, where the predicate E designates existence:-
ess. a is essentially F =def □(Ea → Fa)
I do not think that all of the foregoing definitions adequately capture the nature of a dildo, in the sense just given of correctly listing the conjunction of the essential properties of a dildo. More particularly, I claim that a dildo’s essential properties are teleo-functional; that is to say, a dildo is one of those objects which can be defined in terms of the purpose for which it is designed. Accordingly, I define a dildo thus:-
D. a dildo =def a sex aid, the primary purpose of which is penetration of bodily orifices.
There now follows a brief discussion of the competing definitions given earlier, and of some of their shortcomings.
RH. “an artificial erect penis, used as a sexual aid”
Two criticisms:-
- It seems implicit in the definition that to be a dildo is to actually be an erect penis. That is, given the principle that an F which is G is F, a dildo actually is an erect penis which also happens to be artificial.
- Alternatively, we interpret RH as a crude paraphrase of SM below. However, intuitively a Rampant Rabbit is a dildo, despite bearing no very close resemblance to a penis except with regard to its primary functions, amongst which is penetration of bodily orifices in accordance with D. That is to say, being penile is not an essential property of a dildo, but RH would make it so. Call this the Rabbit Objection.
C. “an object used as a substitute for an erect penis”
This is satisfactory.
SM. “an object that is shaped like and used as a substitute for an erect penis”
Rabbit Objection.
PD. “a sex toy often shaped like a penis that is primarily used for masturbation and sexual stimulation of the vagina or anus”.
This is ok, thanks to the insertion of the word “often”, allowing for exceptions to penility as is the case with the Rampant Rabbit, thereby vitiating the Rabbit Objection.
At least one source would have it that “the French” have devised a governing law of optimization of dildo species number, this being set out as follows:
The earliest unambiguously dildological artefacts appear to be depictions on Greek vase art of the 1st millennium bc. Dildology rears its head at least twice more in certain lewd comedies of the ancient Greeks: in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes [411bc] and also in Herodas’s Mime vi [3rdc bc]. The latter offering relates the visit of the matron Metro to her friend Koritto, during which Metro attempts to wheedle out of her hostess the provenance of the latter’s new leather dildo, which turns out to have been made to order by one Kerdon, ostensibly a cobbler. An amusing feature of Herodas’s offering is the manner – albeit not particularly blithe – in which the protagonists share the dildo or ‘baubo’ [ibid.] around among each other. Indeed, Koritto complains that a third party Euboula, Bitta’s daughter, borrowed her dildo before she had a chance to use it herself.
A somewhat po-faced interpretation of the place of dildology in the classical Greek tradition is to be found in duBois [2003 p85]. duBois contends that dildos only make their appearance in Greek vase art, because the patriarchy could not conceive of women deriving sexual pleasure from non-penetrative modes of sexual behaviour, and for this reason depictions of lesbianism felt incomplete to the patriarchal Greek mind if a dildo was not present; whereas surely the most reasonable interpretation of the phenomenon is simply that the artisans of dildological vase-art – beastly men, withal – were sufficiently open-minded that they could conceive of women enjoying non-penile modes of penetration.
The earliest extended literary treatment in the English language of dildo-hood to come to my notice has been Thomas Nash’s [1592] Choise of Valentines, or the Merie Ballad of Nash his Dildo, a passage of which is quoted as the preface to the present chapter. The narrator, one Tomalin, seeks out his girlfriend Francis in her rural retreat, but alas!
“Good Justice Dudgeon-haft and Crab-tree-face,
With bills and staves had scared her from the place” [ibid. 21-22]
Nothing daunted, Tomalin tracks Francis down to the town brothel where she has taken refuge. There, he negotiates with the resident madam, a “foggy, three-chinn’d dame” [29], who shows for his delectation a pair of perfectly reasonable trollops. However, Tomalin insists that only Francis can slake his amatory thirst, and agrees to pay extra for an assignation with her. Admitted into her presence, he is at first overcome by nerves, and his honourable member slumbers on the benches. Upon the old chap being cajoled into a biddable rigidity by the guiles of Francis’ practised manus dextris, Tomalin promptly suffers the opposite problem of premature ejaculation. Discerning that Tomalin and his wayward beast are not to be relied upon to satisfy her awakened lust, Francis whips out her glass dildo and finishes herself orff, leaving Tomalin to rue in verse his usurpation by “eunuch dildo”.
Notwithstanding the venal and bawdy reputation enjoyed by Elizabethan culture, Nash was unable to publish his Dildo and it was left to the late Victorian pornographer John Farmer [1899; see earlier fn] finally to print a small number of copies for private subscription, this being the edition since brought to us by the kind agency of Project Gutenberg and cited in the bibliography appended to the present work.
Farmer in his preface is curiously fastidious, not to say mealy-mouthed, both about the literary merits of the Dildo, and about his own reasons for publishing it:-
“Nor would [the Dildo] now be deemed worthy of [being accorded the dignity of print] were the only considerations those of literary merit or intrinsic value: truth to tell there is little of either to recommend it. But, as it has been repeatedly said, and well insisted on, the world cannot afford to lose any “document” whatsoever which bears, or may bear, in the slightest degree, on the story of its own growth and developments, and out of which its true life has to be written.” [Ibid. Introduction]
Even if it is sincere, quod veriter dubitandum sit, this Apologia Agricolae places too low a value upon the Dildo. For Nash evidently has fairly well-founded literary pretensions; indeed, it is tempting to interpret him in some ways as a parodist. For instance, the opening lines of the Dildo bear quite a strong resemblance to Chaucer’s Prologue, as others have remarked before:-
Prologue
“Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,”
Dildo
“It was the merie moneth of Februarie,
When yong men, in their iollie roguerie,
Rose earelie in the morne fore breake of daie,
To seeke them valentines soe trimme and gaie;
With whom they maie consorte in summer sheene,
And dance the haidegaies on our toune-greene,
As alas at Easter, or at Pentecost,
Perambulate the fields that flourish most;
And goe to som village abbordring neere,
To taste the creame and cakes and such good cheere;
Or see a playe of strange moralitie,
Shewen by Bachelrie of Maningtree.
Where to, the contrie franklins flock-meale swarme,
And John and Jone com marching arme in arme.
Euen on the hallowes of that blessed Saint
That doeth true louers with those ioyes acquaint,
I went, poore pilgrime, to my ladies shrine,
To see if she would be my valentine;
But woe, alass, she was not to be found,
For she was shifted to an upper ground”
[ibid.]
An altogether less edifying contribution to dildology is the Signor Dildo of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Thought to have been written in 1673, the Signor is posed as a satirical reaction to the proposed marriage of the then Duke of York – the future James ii (1685-88) – to Mary of Modena. It is to be conceded that the Signor is not lacking in a certain bawdy charm:-
Signor Dildo
“My Lady Southesk, Heav’ns prosper her for’t,
First Cloath’d him in Satten, then brought him to Court;
But his Head in the Circle, he Scarcely durst Show,
So modest a Youth was Signior Dildo.
The good Lady Suffolk thinking no harm,
Had got this poor Stranger hid under her Arm:
Lady Betty by Chance came the Secret to know,
And from her own Mother, Stole Signior Dildo:
The Countesse of Falmouth, of whom People tell
Her Footmen wear Shirts of a Guinea an Ell:
Might Save the Expence, if she did but know
How Lusty a Swinger is Signior Dildo.
By the Help of this Gallant the Countesse of Rafe
Against the feirce Harris preserv’d her Self Safe:
She Stifl’d him almost beneath her Pillow,
So Closely she imbrac’d Signior Dildo.”
… However, Doggerel Bank is ever a risk with low burlesque, and betimes the Signor descends into the margins of that slough:-
“The countess of the Cockpit (who knows not her Name)
She’s famous in Story, for a Killing Dame:
When all her old Lovers forsake her I Trow
She’l then be contented with Signior Dildo.”
[ibid.]
The question which most preoccupied us at this time concerned the provenance of Herod’s own White Willy. Most of the company aboard Pex ‘n’ Quads had heard tell of this dildo. But the greybeards had, until its first appearance strapped to Herod’s groyne, averred that it was a mythical beast, a cobbling together of elements of the imaginaria of wretches and outcasts residing in Tophet and the Vale of Hinnom. However, some declared that an ὄλισβος answering to that name and description – a huge ghastly white opaque inscrutable monster – ploughed the vaginal trenches and sounded the rectal deeps in THE ARCANE PORMFIWM THAT EVERYBODY HAD HEARD OF BUT NOBODY HAD SEEN NOR EVEN KNEW THE NAME OF. And in truth, it seemed possible that Herod had by inducement acquired from some latterday Curll that very ὄλισβος from THE said ARCANE PORMFIWM. How much more likely, tho’, Curlicism being Curlicism, that Herod obtained his White Willy from a latterday Kerdon, who devised that fell instrument himself all the while Curllistically representing it as being of the provenance of THE ARCANE PORMFIWM?