#i felt somewhat foolish afterwards but like i've been burnt before by media that purports to be feminist having some fuckboy be the hero in

[onemistressandnomaster]

just watched teeth (2007) on netflix and had some thoughts

so the movie is about a girl, dawn, who is a part of a pro-abstinence group complete with purity ring and all that jazz. she develops a crush on this dude, tobey, and they go out to a cave one day, where they start making out, and then tobey predictably tries to rape her, and dawn discovers she has vagina dentata when her vagina bites his dick right off. hijinks ensue.

pretty much all the men are terrible in this movie, except dawn’s stepdad is kind of okay, if you look over the fact that he lets his creepy, abusive son stay in the house despite raising a ton of red flags like beating his girlfriend, sexually harassing dawn, and literally doing target practice with real bullets in the house. but seriously, all the men? Bad

tobey? he knows dawn is a fanatic about abstinence, and pretends to be one too. then he admits that actually he’s not really a virgin. then he starts making out with dawn. then he starts touching dawn’s breasts, even though she tells him not to. then he says, “you won’t have to do anything, you’ll still be pure in his [god’s] eyes”, strips off his pants, bangs dawn’s head against the cave wall, and tries to rape her, only for his dick to get snapped right off. that scene was actually hard to watch, mostly because dawn’s reactions to the attempted rape were real and upsetting, but also because you straight up see the dick fall onto the cave floor, and I find dicks gross when they aren’t all bloody, so that was kind of hard to get through.

creepy gynecologist? dawn goes to him to figure out what’s wrong with her after looking up ‘female genital mutation’, and he, being a fucking male gyno, decides to attempt to finger her in the guise of “examining” her. obviously she clues into what’s happening, and her vagina snaps his fingers right off. this is one of my worst nightmares (not that vagina detanta thing, the bad experience at the gynecologist). I am utterly terrified of going to a gynecologist, even though I know that female doctors can be requested, because of the vulnerability inherent in that kind of situation. that scene probably hit me the hardest, since it is one of my real life fears, though they kind of undercut the seriousness/horror of the scene when the doctor starts screaming, “AHH IT’S REAL VAGINA DENTATA VAGINA DENTATA!!!!”

ryan? okay, I almost stopped watching the movie because I thought this fucker wasn’t going to get his comeuppance. first of all, he looks almost exactly like tobey, so I spent the first fifteen minutes utterly confused about who was who. anyway, ryan is a dork who is shown to have a crush on dawn. he tries to ask her out, but since she had just recently snapped a dude’s dick off with her vagina, she was understandably not keen on going out with anyone else for the foreseeable future. this does not make ryan happy. so then later, dawn goes to his house in tears after her gyno visit because she thinks she needs a ~male hero~ to conquer her vagina dentata. and the filmmaker tricked me, I tell you, into making me think that ryan was really going to be the hero despite him very obviously being a dipshit. he drugs dawn while she’s taking a bath, then gives her wine, then fingers her with a vibrator, then has sex with her, and since she’s, you know, high, her teeth don’t activate. now I was fuming because I was thinking, “this motherfucker just raped her again! wake up, vagina dentata! snip snip!” but! the next day, dawn is getting ready to leave, and ryan is all, “let’s have sex again.” as they’re doing it, ryan gets a call from his friend. turns out the two had a bet--could ryan get prissy little dawn into bed? dipshit ryan decides to tell dawn about this bet while he’s balls-deep in her, prompting her to snap his dick off. and damn if that didn’t just restore my faith in this film, because I really was worried that the male director was going to fuck up and make this incel-looking ass be the conquering hero. but he wasn’t! though he does get his dick sewn back on later.

brad, the creepy brother? leaving aside the fact that his actor looks like a straight up demon (no offense), there are basically no redeemable qualities to this asshole. in the opening scene, he (as a child) whips his dick out to dawn, and then demands to see her genitals. then he tries to stick his finger up her vagina, but since she had the vagina dentata since infancy, she snipped the tip of his finger clean off. neither of them fully remember these events, but that is our introduction to brad, the ~8 year old trying to finger his little stepsister. and he continues to harbor a twisted crush on her. eventually, in the course of beating his girlfriend while they have sex, his stepmom/dawn’s mom collapses, but brad does nothing because, you know, who cares. the mother dies, and when dawn finds out that brad basically heard the mother screaming and falling and did nothing, she decides to snap his dick off. though she is trying to ~seduce~ him in a way, he tries to anally rape her, but she fights him off and gets him to stick his dick in her vagina, which promptly bites it off. he tries to insist that he loves her, and pleads with her not to leave him, but she isn’t fooled. it’s ambiguous as to whether he bled out or not, although there’s no chance of him getting his penis sewn back on because his dog, named mother, ate it. (this film is not particularly subtle. seriously. it’s a pretty good movie, but it is Not Subtle)

dawn’s character is interesting. she’s so naive, your heart almost breaks for her. and she’s so clearly been brainwashed by this abstinence group. she has sexual desires, but her mind links those desires to things like the gorgons, snakes, and scorpions. she’s never touched herself, because that is considered impure, so she has no idea what she has down there. there’s a scene that also hit me hard--in dawn’s health textbook, there’s a sticker over the diagram of the female genitalia because it is considered improper for students to see a vulva. there is no sticker over the penis diagram. about halfway through the film, dawn gets the sticker off and sees the diagram for the first time. there’s a funny kind of confusion there, with her even glancing down at her crotch in alarm, but for me, it’s so real. I could diagram a penis in 7th grade, no problem, but I had no idea what my body, my genitals, looked like. I had no idea how I was supposed to pleasure myself. boys were almost expected to masturbate, plus we went over extensively the whole phenomenon of nocturnal emissions, but girls? figure it out on your own, or never figure it out, who cares? it’s not like your pleasure is important. as tobey says when he starts his attempted rape, “you won’t even have to do anything.”

it is even sadder, though, that dawn basically has no sexual experiences throughout the movie that are 100% consensual and enjoyable. she tries to touch herself, only for her mind to force the image of a scorpion monster from a movie on her. tobey tries to rape her. ryan has “enjoyable sex” with her, but it’s only because she’s hopped up on drugs, and he wasn’t doing it because he cared about her, but because he wanted to prove his own masculinity to his friends. and then her sexuality basically becomes a weapon. on the one hand, I almost wanted a vagina dentata myself so I could be safe, knowing I had natural protection. on the other hand, is there any hope for women? it’s kill or be killed, dog eat dog. I should rephrase that--is there any hope for women with men? can dawn, after the events of the movie, ever find someone who will actually care about her sexual needs/desires, or will the men she meets only try to take advantage of her? even when someone like ryan comes along, who seems like he cares, he’s only pretending. who knows if this was the filmmaker’s intent, but the message of this movie to me is: trust no man. all men are out to get you. never forget that, never let your guard down, and always be prepared to use the weapons at your disposal. consider investing in a vagina dentata.

overall: I wouldn’t call any piece of media created by a man “feminist”, because I don’t think men can truly be feminists, only allies. however, I do think this movie had feminist takeaways and feminist undertones, and so I would recommend it to anybody interested in horror movies or horror/comedy movies (though probably no one will read this word vomit lol). don’t watch if attempted rape and body mutilation upsets you; do watch if watching shitty dudes getting their dicks snapped off is something you’re interested in.