There is no castration fear

Hell hath no fury

If fury is a blind rage, and a fury is a woman, does that make woman a blind rage?

According to Wikipedia:

In Greek mythology the Erinyes (Ἐρινύες, pl. of Ἐρίνυς Erinys; lit. "the angry ones") or Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες, pl. of Εὐμενής; lit. "the gracious ones") or Furies in Roman mythology were female, chthonic deities of vengeance or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead.

....

When the Titan Cronus castrated his father Uranus and threw his genitalia into the sea, the Erinyes emerged from the drops of blood, while Aphrodite was born from the seafoam.

Furthermore:

The Erinyes are particularly known for the persecution of Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra.

Cases in point

Glue Stick. July 30. One philanderer found himself held at gunpoint as his wife, two of his mistresses and a sister superglued his penis to his stomach. They had lured them there with a simple ruse in order to exact their revenge....and he found himself in a rather sticky situation.

Flaming Sambuca. August 6. A Greek woman is being hailed as a hero after pouring sambuca on a Englishman's genitals and setting them alight.

By some accounts our drunken limey chose the wrong woman at whom to shake his dick and make sexual advances towards. In Greece, it would seem, revenge is a dish best served hot.

What fellow wouldn't shudder at such a pair of stories? It's not a John Bobbitt de-dicking, but it's still not fun to think about; and if the Copycat Effect is a real phenomenon, we can only warn badly-behaved men to reconsider their ways.

The poetic resonance

This all took place in the Electra bar on the isle of Crete.

Electra is the sister of the aforementioned Orestes, who murdered his mother and her lover to avenge his father's murder. Although the legend is usually about Orestes' revenge and subsequent flight from the avenging Furies, Electra is often depicted as an accomplice. Both Sophocles and Eurip ides named their theatrical version of events after her and she not Orestes is the central character. Indeed, in Euripides' version, when Orestes hesitates to commit matricide, it's Electra who goads him on. She and her brother kill Clytemnestra by making her deep throat a sword.

The so-called "Electra Complex" developed by Freud and given a name by Jung, is said to develop when a young girl discovers she has no penis and becomes sexually attracted to her father, thinking he will impregnate her. He links this to "penis envy" wherein the young girl blames her mother for her "castration." Eventually this resentment goes away when it's trumped by the girl's fear of losing her mother's love. The mother is then internalized and the cycle starts all over again.

But these Electra myths, resonant in their themes of revenge, symbolic castration and death by phallus, are more important as a trigger to evoke the Furies, those vengeful woman who in some versions of the Orestes story transform from vengeful bloodthirsty Erinyes into merciful Eumenides, symbolizing the "good side" of justice. Wikipedia again:

Nonetheless, many scholars believe that when they were originally referred to as the Eumenides, it was not to reference their good sides but as a euphemism to avoid the wrath that would ensue from calling them by their true name.

So remember that the next time you feel like calling a fury, er--a woman--a bitch; just say "yes, dear" instead.

Yeah, sorry; cheap joke. Especially when just a day before the nut roast a turdling by the name George Sodini charged into a health club and killed 3 woman and injured nine others before turning the gun on himself, mainly because he couldn't get laid.

War of the sexes indeed....

(Pre) Zeus on the Loose

NYT article about excavations at Mount Lykaion, in the region of Greece known as Arcadia. Digging in a sactuary to Zeus, archeologists have come across the remains of sacrifices estimated to date from around 3000 BCE, nearly a millenium before the arrival of the Greek-speaking peoples who established Zeus as the pre-eminent deity of the land.

The article makes some interesting observations about how cultures adopt and transform pre-existing religious traditions as their own.