The Vulva as a Topology of Reciprocity

Before SRS, I had anticipated that (and wondered the extent to which) my “sexual economy” (drives, desires, fantasies) would be influenced by the sheer morphology or shape and form of my genitals. The genital “medium” is not a neutral container for sexual economy but one that actively shapes and conditions that economy. I think that intuition was right.

Before SRS, HRT did a decent amount of work in changing my sexual economy from a less “pornographic” one to a more “erotic” one (I define a “pornographic” sexual economy as one in which desire moves linearly towards a clear aim of self-satisfaction, and define an “erotic” sexual economy as one in which desire circles around mystery, ambiguity, mutuality and play). But for me this was not enough for me to realize the lure of the erotic on a deeper level, and something about the actual morphology of my penis seemed to be an inhibition to that. There’s something about simply having a cylindrical shaft that requires stimulation along its lengthwise axis that locks you into certain patterns of sexual activity, especially if being able to reliably achieve orgasm is important to you. Of course there are non-penis-centric ways of experiencing sexual pleasure with oneself or with others without excluding a penis from being present, but even this feels like a concerted effort to operate elliptically around the penis, which remains a site of sexual power and potency even if it is made to be silent or dormant.

There’s also something about it being a protrusive solid or quasi-“limb” (i.e. third leg) that made me feel constantly “exposed” even when it’s hidden. A related thing that makes me feel like the penis is more “pornographic” than “erotic” is how arousal is visibly manifest in an erection, so that there’s no ambiguity between being desiring and not-desiring — and ambiguity is a key part of what makes the erotic different from the pornographic. The goal-driven modus operandi of the penis, when allowed to try and fulfill its aim as it was “biologically designed” to do, often conditions the entire narrative arc of sexual activity to an externalized, teleological function like ejaculation. This is another way it implicitly elevates the pornographic above of the erotic because narrative closure is a characteristic feature of the pornographic.

In contrast, the pleated folds of the vulva embodies a little more mystery, because even if the clitoris is engorged from arousal it is often tucked away, to varying degrees, in relative secrecy, somewhat along or behind the kissing lips of the labia. While the penis as a cylindrical extrusion takes up space, the folded aperture of the vulva indexes space itself, as the threshold-interface between the inner and outer worlds. While the member which is extruded out to the outside demands to go back in into another in order to feel whole again, the lips which reveal-and-conceal space itself is whole unto itself, not requiring another to be fulfilled because its own autonomous means of self-fulfillment (the clitoris) is already present. She requires no mediation beyond herself to enjoy being, and this makes her an embodiment of the erotic in itself.

When another is accepted in, she’s always the one in the last instance — even if unconsciously — to set the terms of play because her gate is hers to open alone, even if she lets you open her for her. Her cloistered topology is practically shaped to embody reciprocity and mutuality. Whether you have full depth or zero-depth like me, in either case nothing is given outright because what is desired is shrouded in relative enigma — escaping, at least at first, the light of presentational immediacy — even as it pulses silently with causal efficacy. She is not just driven by eros, in a way she embodies it in her very form, in the way she rests nakedly as a liminality between total concealment and pure exhibition.

Of course she is not a complete mystery, a site of absolute alterity or an inaccessible noumenon. When receptive to her in the way that is appropriate, all come to learn and know her ways. This is partly why I, as a person who was born with a penis, could conceive what it might be like to have a vulva, even if that conception could only be intellectual. Yet for me personally, I was not content with just a conceptual appreciation for what it might be like to have a vulva, I needed to realize it for myself from first-person direct experience. Now that I have arrived on the “other shore”, I can see that it is possible to have an accurate intellectual apprehension of what it might be like to have a vulva but it can never stand in for what it means to embody one. Of course my desire to embody a vulva is not just a result of curiosity, but also based in a subtle but deep yearning that is in some sense mine but also not mine — I could not help but be lured towards the erotic in this way, as a total experience.