Women Beware Women

July 24, 2016 6:02 AM

"The foulest place of mine arse is fairer than thy face" : A worthie Disquisition on Gendered Insults in Earlie Moderne Times, together with a Peroration vppon Farting

Content Warnyng for Slut-Shamyng:

It has, for example, been long been noted how gendered the world of insult was in Tudor and Stuart times. Men were called all kinds of names – women tended to be called whores. In fact, as Laura Gowing memorably argued, so different were the terms of insult aimed at men and women at the time, that male and female notions of ‘honour’ were ‘wholly incommensurable’.

posted by Pallas Athena (13 comments total)

so many user names
posted by XMLicious at 6:19 AM on July 24, 2016 [18 favorites]

What a fun site! Thanks for introducing me to it.
posted by pangolin party at 6:21 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

People might be called ‘shitten whore’, or told ‘a turd in thy teeth’ or – more extravagantly – ‘ten turds I do toss in your teeth’. The fart, meanwhile, was the go-to bodily function for the expression of contempt. ‘I care not a fart’, was a standard dismissal, though some were more creative. When Henry Cotton of Moze (in Essex) was reported in 1592 for not attending church, he came before the local churchwardens, and ‘very unreverently and contemptuously farted unto them and said, “Present that to the court”’.

The first and possibly last time I will ever be amused by a fart joke. Well played.
posted by nightrecordings at 6:55 AM on July 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

"The foulest place of mine arse is fairer than thy face"

Furthermore and to wit, if my canine possesed your countenance, I would depilate it's hindquarters and instruct it to perambulate in reverse.
posted by jonmc at 7:27 AM on July 24, 2016 [17 favorites]

When Henry Cotton of Moze (in Essex) was reported in 1592 for not attending church, he came before the local churchwardens, and ‘very unreverently and contemptuously farted unto them and said, “Present that to the court”’.

Lying here reading on a Sunday, so glad not to have to go to church.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:37 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Lying here reading on a Sunday, so glad not to have to go to church.

Hey now, at least you can be pretty sure Henry Cotton of Moze won't be there. He might be anywhere else....
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:44 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Those interested in reading more about bygone farting should check out Valerie Allen's On Farting: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages. It's an academic book but (fittingly) on the breezier end of things.
posted by vathek at 9:01 AM on July 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

I shouldst ventilate thy discourse with fresh air from mine ventral orifice.
posted by y2karl at 9:09 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Ha, this made me laugh, thanks. :D
posted by Halo in reverse at 10:07 AM on July 24, 2016

Oh, shit - I should also recommend Stephen Greenblatt's essay "Filthy Rites," which is in his book Learning to Curse and also JSTOR. It discusses human waste "as part of a continuing social dialogue about body, spirit, property, and power" in the early modern period, focusing on Rabelais, More, Luther, and Gerard Winstanley. Luther, whose obsession with shit has been endlessly noted, famously was inspired to come up with the doctrine of justification by faith while on the toilet. Always a colorful writer, Luther once addressed Satan: "For note this down, I have shit in the pants, and you can hang them around your neck and wipe your mouth with it." There's an interesting series of chapters in Norman O. Brown's Life Against Death psychoanalyzing historical shit-obsessives that includes a chapter on Luther.

Greenblatt starts his essay with a discussion of the minor classic Scatologic Rites of All Nations, an endless Golden Bough-style nineteenth century anthropological compendium with chapters like "Human Excrement Used in Food by the Insane and Others," "The Ordure of the Grand Lama of Tibet," and "Siberian Hospitality." Free PDF available here for the curious.
posted by vathek at 11:46 AM on July 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

If mine dog hath a face liketh thou, I should shaveth its ass and teacheth it to walke backwards.
posted by 4ster at 12:37 PM on July 24, 2016

Sadly there isn’t, and there hasn’t ever been, a law against being an arsehole.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:12 PM on July 24, 2016

‘Goo home’, Elizabeth Gate of Thruxton, Hampshire, was told by another male neighbour in 1543, ‘and looke thy owne howse be clene for there is no good rule kepte’.

Surely the Tudor equivalent of "Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich".
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:26 AM on July 25, 2016