“Womb carrier” sounds like a participant in some weird religious ceremony. “First enters the priest, berobed and bedecked in silver and gold, followed by the four Womb Carriers, bearing on their shoulders the Ark of the Holy Womb of Mary…”.
I was imagining a line of initiants carrying inflated pigs’ bladders painted red. Obviously a fertility dance.
There was a Roman ritual called the Lupercalia.
“At the Lupercal altar, a male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter’s chief priest.[13] An offering was also made of salted mealcakes, prepared by the Vestal Virgins.[14] After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci approached the altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to laugh.
The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs (known as februa) from the flayed skin of the animal, and ran with these, naked or near-naked, along the old Palatine boundary, in an anticlockwise direction around the hill. In Plutarch’s description of the Lupercalia, written during the early Empire,
…many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.”
‘Up to?’ Is that 49%? or 1%?
Because wombs are symbionts who utilize their hosts mainly as carriers. See also: My Mother the Car. :P
“Womb carrier” sounds like a participant in some weird religious ceremony. “First enters the priest, berobed and bedecked in silver and gold, followed by the four Womb Carriers, bearing on their shoulders the Ark of the Holy Womb of Mary…”.
@Maroon – my thoughts exactly.
I was imagining a line of initiants carrying inflated pigs’ bladders painted red. Obviously a fertility dance.
There was a Roman ritual called the Lupercalia.
“At the Lupercal altar, a male goat (or goats) and a dog were sacrificed by one or another of the Luperci, under the supervision of the Flamen dialis, Jupiter’s chief priest.[13] An offering was also made of salted mealcakes, prepared by the Vestal Virgins.[14] After the blood sacrifice, two Luperci approached the altar. Their foreheads were anointed with blood from the sacrificial knife, then wiped clean with wool soaked in milk, after which they were expected to laugh.
The sacrificial feast followed, after which the Luperci cut thongs (known as februa) from the flayed skin of the animal, and ran with these, naked or near-naked, along the old Palatine boundary, in an anticlockwise direction around the hill. In Plutarch’s description of the Lupercalia, written during the early Empire,
…many of the noble youths and of the magistrates run up and down through the city naked, for sport and laughter striking those they meet with shaggy thongs. And many women of rank also purposely get in their way, and like children at school present their hands to be struck, believing that the pregnant will thus be helped in delivery, and the barren to pregnancy.”
Competition between Indian Health Services and Verso Books, I see.
“Native womb carriers”?
It was exactly this kind of dehumanization that led to mass sterilization of Native WOMEN.