CLASS DESCRIPTION

The myth of the Vagina Dentata — the toothed vagina — recurs across cultures and centuries as a story of fear, fascination, and control. From Melanesian and Hindu origin myths to Native American trickster tales and Japanese yōkai legends of the demon yoni, these stories warn of the dangerous, devouring feminine: a pussy that bites back.
This lecture examines the Vagina Dentata as both a mythic archetype and a psychoanalytic symptom, tracing how the image of the toothed vagina has been used to contain, pathologise, and perhaps — more recently — reclaim female power. We’ll move from Freud’s theory of castration anxiety to Julia Kristeva’s writings on abjection and Luce Irigaray’s reimagining of the vulva as a site of multiplicity, pleasure, and relationality.
We’ll also explore how, In many traditional versions of this tale, the vagina’s teeth must be broken, defanged, or conquered by a male hero — a pervasive and troubled narrative of heterosexual domination that exposes a series of equally pervasive anxieties. We’ll consider how these myths converge around the figure of ‘the Great and Terrible Mother’, and what they reveal about cultural anxieties surrounding desire, reproduction, and women’s agency.
The lecture also situates the Vagina Dentata within contemporary frameworks of misogyny, exploring how its underlying fears resurface in online subcultures such as incel communities and in broader patterns of male resentment and sexual entitlement.
Finally, we’ll turn to the Vagina Dentata in the twenty-first century, tracing how the motif has been visualised and reimagined across pop culture and art history — from feminist performance art and surrealist film to horror cinema and digital media. Along the way, we’ll also meet her counterpart, the Vagina Loquens — the mythic “talking vagina” — as another disruptive, speaking body that refuses silence.

ABOUT OUR LECTURER

The Director of The Feminist Lecture Program, Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her) studied Textiles Design at London College of Fashion before turning to Fine Art and studying at the Royal Drawing School in 2014. A practicing artist as well as lecturer and Creative Director, Luisa has recently completed her MA at City and Guilds of London Art School. A founding member of the London Drawing Group since its inception in 2016, Luisa teaches drawing, and Feminist Art History classes across London, as well as exhibiting regularly in solo and group shows across the country. Her work specializes in Feminist Art History and with a particular interest in Ecology, Magico-Religious Practices and our Deep Past.

WEBSITE: https://www.luisamariamaccormack.co.uk/
INSTAGRAM: @luisamariamfineart

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This is a recording of a live session hosted by The Feminist Lecture Program in October 2025. The reading list for the class can be found alongside this rental.

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