The Shemale As A Figure in Art

The overriding purpose of displacement, Beyst contends, is to beautify the genitals and "to soothe the anxiety provoked by the idea of the lurid wound"; the movement toward displacement, he says, results from the attempt of the eye to replace "touch and genital feeling" and, in turn, "culminates in the emergence of the phallic woman and the vaginal man." As examples of such displacement, Beyst cites "arms and legs" that "are not only hard and veined, just like fingers and toes, but muscled as well, which can only endorse the evocation of the force of the erect penis" or the nose, which serves as a phallic symbol because, like the penis, "it secretes slime, its back reminds of the shaft and the nostrils of the scrotum, while a moustache is an obvious substitute for the pubic hair." The same sort of displacement occurs with regard to the female genitals and various other body parts, Beyst declares, offering such examples as "Not only the penis, also the vagina is substituted with more aesthetic parts of the body in the periphery. The most obvious substitutes are the lips. These have colour, shape and structure in common with the labia, without being slimy. Often the focus is more on the opening: With the eye, the eyelids remind of the labia, the eyelashes or the eyebrows remind of the pubic hair, the tear gland of the clitoris and the pupil of the vaginal opening: The auricle is a hollow surrounded by folds reminding of the labia. The armpits are a fold surrounded by hair, and they have the odour in common with the vagina. Also the parting of the hair on the head is often read as a vagina." Sometimes, these associations can become quite complex, as when "The spinal column is an extension of the anal cleft," on either side of which "bundles of muscles . . . function as substitutes for the labia, while the whole is covered with undamaged skin: hollow, but not cut," which "heals" the "wound" to which the vagina, in the imagination, is often compared.