on a line from spenser

venus & adonis, georges barbier

among people who believe we can change the world by discussing it differently, one thing they would like the to change is how we talk about—and therefore think about, and therefore act with regards to—sex. the way we talk about sex tends to make the penetrater active and the penetratee passive. they try to come up with ways to express it the other way around. instead of the paradigm of penetration—engulf, envelop.¹ unfortunuately these words bear no reference to actual human experience. they sound like something in an hr manual. engulf, as a sexual word, is purely blank. envelop is like envelopes. furthering the hr feeling. it’s just not sexy.

compare to this:

There wont faire Venus often to enjoy
Her deare Adonis joyous company,
And reape sweet pleasure of the wanton boy;
There yet, some say, in secret he does ly,
Lapped in flowres and pretious spycery,
By her hid from the world, and from the skill
Of Stygian Gods, which doe her love envy;
But she her selfe, when ever that she will,
Possesseth him, and of his sweetnesse takes her fill.

from edmund spenser’s the faerie queene, book iii canto vi stanza xlvi

a quick gloss (spenser was obscure even to his contemporaries jsyk):

there, beautiful venus was in the habit of enjoying her dear adonis’ joyous company, & of harvesting sweet pleasure from the wanton boy; some say that adonis still lays there in secret, surrounded by flowers & precious spices, hidden by venus from the world, and hidden from the mastery of the gods of death, who are jealous of her love; but, whenever she wants, venus possesses him, & takes her fill of her sweetness.

this description of love between a goddess and a human naturally makes her the subject, him the object. & i especially love the last line. it’s so natural, at the same time so evocative—the anglosaxon straightforwardness of “takes her fill”—the way that paired w sweetnesse, the phrase uses eating as a metaphor—& yet it’s too directly physically descriptive to quite be only an eating metaphor—yet direct w/o being obscene—soooo tasteful and natural

& this is in the section called “the legende of britomartis, or of chastitie” & this is about the goodguys, the chaste guys

i haven’t read all or even much of the faerie queene & i keep talking about how refreshing & full of life & surprising it is in the way it talks about love. without saying exactly what i mean. maybe this comes a little closer to explaining it

1. i once saw someone suggest the word ‘valprehend.’ but only once so i dont think its right to include in the body of the post as a common thing. but it’s so memorably silly i had to tell you