Sexuality and Gender

Where it surfaces

• Parturition

  Explicitly addresses male irresponsibility and female superior inferiority, linking childbirth to gendered power dynamics and the female experience.

• Three Moments in Paris

  Explores the tension between female passivity and intellectual awakening, and the performance of gender in public spaces.

• One O’Clock at Night

  The poem explores the speaker's reduction to a 'mere woman' and 'animal woman,' critiquing gendered power dynamics in intellectual and intimate spaces.

• Virgins Plus Curtains Minus Dots

  The poem explores the construction of female virginity as a social and economic commodity, contrasting the restricted lives of virgins with the mobility and agency of men.

• Giovanni Franchi

  The woman's curiosity about Bapini's toes carries erotic undertones, and Franchi's abominable manners and spoiled love-affair highlight gendered dynamics and sexual tension.

• II

  The boy is described as 'delightfully male' and 'gallant,' while the girl is a 'precocious coquette,' highlighting gendered performances of desire.

• The Effectual Marriage

  The chapter starkly contrasts the roles of man and woman, with Gina's domesticity and Miovanni's intellectual detachment, highlighting gendered expectations and the suppression of female desire.

• Lions’ Jaws

  The chapter explores sexual conquest, manipulation of women, and gender dynamics through the rivalries of Gabrunzio, Raminetti, and Bapini.

• Songs to Joannes

  The poem deconstructs romantic and sexual norms, portraying desire as chaotic, mechanical, and ultimately dehumanizing, while critiquing the power dynamics between men and women.

• I

  The poem's imagery of 'Pig Cupid his rosy snout / Rooting erotic garbage' and 'wild oats sown in mucous-membrane' directly engages with raw, bodily sexuality and its messy, organic nature.

• XII

  The poem delves into the humid carnage of flesh and the inseparable delight of physical union, highlighting the passionate and dissonant dynamics between man and woman.

• XXIV

  References to 'Little lusts' and 'lucidities' suggest a conflicted, diminished sexuality, while 'procreative truth' ties desire to reproduction and its failure.

• XXVI

  The poem directly confronts prudery and frames Nature as a 'pornographist,' emphasizing raw sexual and natural impulses.

• XXIX

  The poem directly addresses sexual equality, unnatural selection, and the clash between genders, advocating for differentiation and authentic orgasmic connection.

• Crab-Angel

  The dwarf's ambiguous gender is highlighted through comparisons like 'Helen of Lilliput?' and 'Hercules in a powder puff?' and the phrase 'minnikin of masquerade sex.'

• English Rose

  The chapter dissects the 'Anglo-Saxon phenomenon of Virginity' and the gendered double standard, contrasting Exodus's passionate 'husbandry' with Alice's chaste, defensive purity.