awellhungboi: Okay, since I'm obsessive-compulsive, and since my initial 'Freud' 'feminism' and 'ultra-fundamentalist' post was perhaps too fatuous to effectively get my point across (although one may admire the alliteration), here, in a nutshell, is the point I'm trying to make, and one I hope everyone will sincerely entertain in the good-natured spirit in which it's offered.
If I write 'Napoleon stood eight feet tall and he is famous for inventing the all-natural cough drop' well, that's a demonstrably false statement. 'Uh-huh,' you reply, 'nope. Ain't a grain of truth to it.' If I write 'The earth is approximately 93 million miles from the sun. It takes the sun's light around eight minutes to reach the earth,' you can go outside, perform some experiments (or look it up in an encyclopedia) and return and post 'By cracky, I think you've got it!'
But if I write 'a steeple is a phallic symbol' that's not a statement of fact, it's an interpretation--a state of mind, if you will. Now, you may respond with 'I find that offensive--a steeple represents the spirtual, and to say it focuses on the corporeal is to degrade it." My response to that is to apologize, because I have no desire to offend, and because I can't argue, "No, you don't find that offensive."
If you respond, "Hey, I like that, since I believe we're made in God's image I think having a symbol of regeneration on the church is very life affirming,' my response is, "cool, interesting idea.' Not, "No, you don't."
But for you to respond that a steeple is absolutely not a phallic symbol, and everyone who believes that is wrong, or worse, stupid, is simply not a tenable position. Symbols are fluid, not rigid (well, so to speak), and what may look like a duck one second, looks like a rabbit the next (to use an analogy)
I don't know if Christopher Wren sat chuckling at his desk, like Butthead, everytime he drew a spire, "hehe, looks like a penis," but it's certainly crossed a lot of people's minds when they look at obelisks. Did you ever see the Simpsons where they go to Washington and they're standing in front of the Washington Monument and Marge leans to Homer and whispers, giggling, into his ear, and Homer rolls his eyes and says, "Oh, Marge, grow up!"
I don't have the time and energy to write a history of Gothic architecture, or Egyptian sun worship, or quote extended passages of Henry Adams. People saw and thought about these things long before Freud, he just codified such things into an extended system. A flawed one, yes.
I feel like Giordano Bruno, just before they burned him. I'm, frankly, a little surprised that people at LPSG find this idea so alarming. I thought it was self-evident, or else I wouldn't have even brought it up.
