Abstract
During the sexual revolution of the 1960s–1970s, visual and multimodal (image/word/sound) representations of the vulva entered public visual culture. This paper examines two arenas in which these representations took shape: the art world and the countercultural underground press. Feminist “cunt-art” sought to reclaim the female genitalia from associations of shame, impurity, and threat to patriarchal order and addressed aspects of female sexuality such as trauma and menstruation (Dekel 2013, 2021; Meyer 2006; Peters 2023). Practitioners included Hannah Wilke, Faith Wilding, Judy Chicago, Miriam Schapiro, and Tee A. Corinne. Some of them attached spirituality and beauty to the vulva, demystifying it through feminist self-inquiry and political subversion; others adopted graphic strategies and criticized symbolic treatments (Dekel 2013; Wen 2021). Critics also warned that cunt-art risked reducing women to sexuality (Meyer 2006). Concurrently, underground magazines such as Oz and Suck pushed images and texts about the vulva beyond recognition toward a radical expansion of sexual agency and pleasure. In this milieu, Germaine Greer advanced “Cuntpower,” linking women’s sexual pleasure and awareness to political liberation and equality (Le Masurier 2016; Gil-Glazer 2023). Through a cultural-historical comparison of visual and multimodal expressions from these two arenas, we argue that the underground press advanced an explicitly sex-positive vision that prefigured 1980s–1990s pro-sex and anti-anti-porn debates, whereas feminist “cunt-art” aligned more closely with second-wave radical feminism and anticipated themes later amplified by #MeToo. The paper considers the implications of these cultural-historical expressions for contemporary conceptions and discourses of female sexuality and women’s sexual rights.
Presenters
Ya'ara Gil-GlazerSenior Lecturer and Head of the Sexuality Education across the Life Cycle, Department of Education and Department of Multidisciplinary Studies, Tel Hai Academic College, Israel Eva L. Wyss
Professor, German Department, Universität Koblenz, Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Feminist art; Visual/multimodal culture;Cunt-Art; Cuntpower; Germaine Greer
