The Cutprice Guignol

There are a few myths that are found across numerous cultures – commonalities in folklore that seem to transcend cultural boundaries and appear, in some way or another, in mythology from societies on opposite sides of the world. This phenomenon, known as comparative mythology, has a few obvious examples – depictions of dragons and sea serpents, giants, and an all-powerful deity who created the world as we know it. But there’s one version that I’d like to talk about today, one myth that appears across a staggering number of cultures, taking on different forms and bending to fit current societal mores – no matter how ridiculous it seems, it’s persisted for centuries, an unshakeable piece of our cultural puzzle. And that is vagina dentata.

Vagina dentata refers to the myth of a vagina with teeth – a pussy that bites back, basically. Though there are a number of variations on the myth (which we’ll get into), the basic premise is simple – a vagina that contains teeth or some other dangerous object causes damage to anything that enters it, often biting off penises of the men unlucky enough to encounter them (a brief note: through not everyone with a vagina is a woman, nor everyone without one a man, this myth is generally focused on vagina dentata as a manifestation of the fear of women’s bodies, and that’s what I’ll be discussing in this article).

It’s hard to pin down exactly when the first records of this myth date from, but it’s been noted across dozens of ancient cultures from thousands of years ago. In North American folklore, hero Coyote is confronted by a witch who has created teeth in the vaginas of her daughter and another woman to use as traps to seduce and murder unlucky men (in this version, Coyote kills two of the women and marries the other after removing her vagina teeth, leaving one behind for the purpose of sexual stimulation). Ainu (an indigenous people in Japan) mythology invokes a formidably-fanged demon that hides in the vagina of a woman and bites off the penises of men on their wedding nights; in Hindiusm, the demon Asi uses a toothed vagina to try and avenge their father’s death.

Historian Marianne Hopman compared Scylla, the monstrous sea creature that sucks unlucky sailors to their doom, to the toothed vagina, a consuming hole that chews men up and leaves them mutilated, or worse. Anthony Alpers quoted a myth that describes a woman named Hine-Nui as having, “in the place that men enter…sharp teeth of obsidian and greenstone”, and Waldemar Bogoras, in his book covering comparative mythology across continents, described a Russian story where a young woman inserts a toothed fish head into her vagina in order to discourage her repulsive husband from having sex with her. Chastity devices used in the 1800s sometimes featured a toothed gate around the vagina, prohibiting penetration without, well, getting stuck at the entrance.

More recently, the myth has persisted in more modern settings; the term vagina dentata, in fact, was coined in the 1900s by Sigmund Freud as a metaphor to describe men’s fear of sexual intimacy with women, and, more specifically, being castrated by them (castration anxiety being the focus of a large amount of Freud’s work, it’s not surprising that he found a way to connect vagina dentata to this). Unsubstantiated myths from American soldiers in the Vietnam war claimed Vietnamese women inserted glass or other sharp objects into their vaginas before seducing Americans in order to castrate and kill them. The notorious 2007 movie Teeth, directed by Mitchell Lichtenstein, focused on a young woman navigating her sexuality after she discovers she has sharp teeth inside her vagina. George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road also depicts several female characters wearing toothed chastity belts, mimicking the vagina dentata myth, and Takashi Miike featured a woman with crocodile jaws between her legs in his movie Tokyo Gore Police.

What I’m saying is – this myth has been around for a long time, in various forms, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But why exactly has it been so enduring? What does it represent that we can’t seem to let go of?

Perhaps the clearest function of the vagina dentata myth is to discourage penetrative rape. Many of these stories revolve around men who are harmed after they tried to force themselves on a woman, a parable about the dangerous of rape. Others act more as fidelity insurance, where men who have sex with the “wrong” woman (for example, one they were not married to) pay the price by losing the offending organ as a result.

Related to that, there’s also a recurring theme of men “overcoming” women in order to have pleasurable sex with them – removing their vaginal teeth in order to marry them and be sexually intimate with them, an invasive process that frames vaginal sex as a reward for the man’s persistence or bravery. Though deeply problematic by today’s standards (and rightly so), it reflects a common approach, both historically and currently, to women’s sexuality, that it is there to be conquered and uncovered by men, and that women’s pleasure doesn’t exist outside penetrative sex with men (which it very, very much does). Vagina dentata depicts women’s sexual organs as inherently dangerous, their sexual desire intertwined with mutilation and even death. It’s not until men de-fang them – literally – that they’re able to enjoy or even have sex.

But there are also several lines of thought that attempt to reclaim the vagina dentata myth as one that restores power to women and their sexuality, by offering women control over who penetrates their vagina and when. In the aforementioned movie Teeth, the main character is sexually assaulted a number of times, her vaginal dentistry providing a protective measure against assault and a visceral, immediate punishment for the men who try to penetrate her. Instead of the passive position women are often placed into in depictions of sex, she’s the one calling the shots – turning from victim to aggressor. It’s a really interesting subversion of the well-worn rape-and-revenge story archetype, where the rapist is harmed literally as a result of their attempt to penetrate, and it’s one that various feminist thinkers have applied to the vagina dentata myth.

In fact, it’s a notion that’s been brought into the real world beyond academic interpretation. Sonette Ehlers, a South African woman who encountered a high number of rape victims in her line of world as a blood transfusion technician, was inspired by a conversation with a victim of sexual assault in 1969 who remarked to Ehlers that she wished she had “teeth down there”. Ehlers went on to develop the Rape aXe, an anti-rape device made up of a sheath inserted into the vagina that inserts spring-loaded barbs into the penis of a would-be attacker, forcing medical intervention to remove it. While it’s faced controversy, the device is a clear example of the reclamation of the vagina dentata myth as a protective and defensive measure for victims of rape.

But the question remains – beyond myth, beyond folklore, and beyond interpretation, does the toothed vagina have any basis in reality?

Well, the short answer is no. There are no records of a vagina being lined with rows of teeth like we might see in the mouth, nor are the muscles of the vagina strong enough to “bite” off a penis or any other body part, toothed or otherwise.

But there are some medical conditions that might have formed the basis for these myths. The first and most common is vaginismus, a disorder caused by involuntary spasming of the muscles of the vaginal walls, which might explain the feeling of squeezing or tightness around a penetrating object that feeds into the idea of a vagina that bites (fun fact: this is how I found out about vagina dentata – I have vaginismus, and it was one of the only explanations of it I could find when I was first diagnosed).

Another theory floated as a potential explanation for the vagina dentata myth is cystic teratoma formed in the reproductive organs. A normally benign tumor, cystic teratoma are made up of a variety of tissue, including skin, sweat glands, bones, and, yes, teeth. They can form almost anywhere in the body, including the reproductive organs, and you can find a picture of them in this article (though, of course, it’s not for the faint of heart or vagina). It’s unlikely these growths could be felt by a penis on penetration, but it’s only fair to mention that, yes, sometimes teeth do turn up in places you wouldn’t expect, including inside the reprodcutive organs.

No matter what the basis for this myth, it’s one that has endured for centuries now, across dozens of cultures and in countless forms – from regressive misogynist stereotypes to feminist retellings, the story of the toothed vagina isn’t going anywhere.

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(header image via The Mary Sue)