Hacker News Reader

I'm specifically perfectly okay with "there exist guys who like doing this in every culture". I do not question that. It appears true even today. Personally I interpret "guys do X" as "among guys, doing X is common".

For instance, if I said "guys do MDMA" and showed evidence of MDMA use in different cultures, you wouldn't be convinced right?

MDMA is not ancestral and you won't find guys doing it in ancient Babylon

The point is boys have a penis and they draw penises.

The penis has always been a symbol of fertility because it represents the seed. Semen in English translates to the Italian word seme (which means both sperm and seed) and, no wonders, it comes from Latin semen (pronounced /'se|me|n/), but the Latin word meant "from the same roots". In Greek it's σπέρμα (pronounced /'spέrma/), in Italian the same word is sperma, in English it's sperm.

From σπέρμα (seed) comes the Italian word speme, that means "hope"

In Japanese, Chinese, Sino-Tibetan, Vietnamese, the word is always related to "sprout" and "grow".

The Japanese kanji for sperm has two roots from Chinese alphabet, one means energy, perfect, the second means child.

MDMA is just a synthetic drug of this time and place (mostly the west), it doesn't mean anything for anyone.

So, while girls today are (mostly) free to express their artistic abilities, unlike the ancient past, they prefer to draw vulvas (in various forms from the most realistic to the metaphorical ones) and not dicks, because they do not have one.

There is an Egyptian hieroglyph for penis or at least there is a Unicode character: 𓂸

A cult alternative to nowadays: :banana or :aubergine

Edit: HN trims emojis

TIL!

>Priapus weighting his dick in Pompei

Ah the origin of priapism, it all makes sense now. Not sure if that's an honor or not for the guy.

the cult of Priapus it's very old, it was born in ancient Greece and the story says that he was the son of Aphrodite and another god (some say Dionysus some Zeus himself) and Hera, jealous of her unfaithful husband, gave him a grotesque look and a giant phallus.

It became an auspicious of fertility during Alexander the Great and an important figure in Roman mythology.

So he was born cursed, but then honored.

How do we know all of those artists were men?

because we know.

At least for the things I've showed.

If you know of female roman soldiers walking the Hadrian's wall, female painters in Pompei or female sculptors in ancient Egypt, I'm eager to read about'em.

We know of women artists in Japanese Edo period, but they did not paint penises (AFAIK)

But that's besides the point, the point wasn't if women sometimes draw penises, the point was that 'boys like to draw dicks on things' and historical records show that they kinda always did.

I don't think that Japanese painting supports your point. It also contains vagina-headed people, and appears to have some deeper layers beyond "haha penis so funny".

> and appears to have some deeper layers beyond "haha penis so funny".

most penises drawings don't and the overwhelming majority of them is the work of a man.

BUT, that particular Japanese painting is kept at the British Museum [1] and it depict a parody of the death of Buddha...

So yeah, "ahahaha, penis (and vulva) so funny"

This is an hilarious and inventive – not to say scurrilous – parody of the sacred Buddhist subject of the Buddha's death and passing into a state of nirvana (‘nothingness’). Conventional painted versions of the subject have survived in quite large numbers in Japan, dating from the late 11th century onwards. They were displayed in temples each year for rituals held on the anniversary of the Buddha’s passing, traditionally the fifteenth day of the second month. Here the ‘Penis Buddha’, with golden skin, reclines on a dais resting his ‘head’ on one arm, the same pose taken by the Buddha Shakyamuni in conventional versions. Women with vulva faces gather round to lament, in company with paired couplings of various animals and vegetables. Two penis mourners stand in place of Buddhist guardian kings. At the back, pine trees and a river painted on a screen represent the sal trees and Badaiga River of tradition. Between the trees at the back are two esoteric deities with multiple vulva-heads and multiple arms that hold sex toys in place of their normal attributes.

There is a tradition in Japan since at least the late eighteenth century of comic parodies of the Death of the Buddha

[1] https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/A_2011-3012-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com