Message-Id: <199309211352.AA03184@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Tue, 21 Sep 1993 09:46:48 EDT
Reply-To: C_Burke%SEMPERFI@MWMGATE1.MITRE.ORG
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: C_Burke%SEMPERFI@MWMGATE1.MITRE.ORG
Subject:      Re: clitoris (and associated sexual organs)
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
Status: RO

Art Protin sez:
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>If I understand the term pinji it means

>   - A genital protrusion with extreme amounts of nerves and
>     sensors.  When unmodified it refers to the penis, the
>     clitoris, or other organ depending on both gender and
>     species of the owner of said organ.
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Mark Shoulson rebuts:
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Hrm.  That's okay, so far as it goes, I guess, but that means we have to be
more specific than we were before.  After all, when {pinji} just meant
"penis", that could mean "the organ housing the external end of the
urethra" (cf. Esperanto slang "pisilo").  Now, about this nerve-packed
quality....  I don't know for sure about the sensations involved in most of
these animals, but I don't know for sure if all of them necessarily get
stimulated the same way...  The third arm from the right on an octopus.
That's the one the male inserts into the female; it's got a groove down the
side in which the sperm-packets travel.  Is that a pinji?  What about the
hemipenes of some snakes?  Or the huge (relative to body-size) penis of the
barnacle?  Or you could get strange and deal with some microbe that
undergoes conjugation by means of a pseudopod or something (and not joining
side-by-side like paramecia).  Is that pseudopod a pinji?  I suppose these
things aren't {pinji}, since they're just organs for the transfer of
genetic material, and should be called by a lujvo expressing that.  Is this
what we want?  Maybe.
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Perhaps, if pinji is the nerve-filled protrusion connotatively associated
with sexual reproduction, then vibna is the organ for transmission/acceptance
of genetic material, with associations dependent upon the sex and species
(and preferences?/technologies?) of the referenced individual.
<<my word list isn't handy; I'm remembering 'vibna' as 'vagina'>>
In (most? all?) mammals, the male penis is also the inseminating vagina
and the urinating organ; 'nakni vibna' would have different connotations
for some cultures such as aboriginal Australians, however! (%^O ouch!)
<<the unkindest cut of all?>>

Carl Burke