SEX, AGE & ICOLONOCLASM: Cultural Discourses of Power, Taboo, and the Crone Figure

DESCRIPTION

A woman for the state, is a socio-political construct, a category produced and maintained through institutional power to channel bodies into reproductive, economic, and social functions, while systematically restricting autonomy to preserve structural control. This Reproductive Axis of Control is a conceptual reference line along which directional movement is regulated as womanhood occupies ontological statuses and performative spaces—maiden, mother, and crone. 

This session investigates the censorship and discomfort surrounding aging goddesses. Through comparative visual analysis, it examines how patriarchal religious frameworks suppress divine femme figures who defy reproductive utility. Their seductive gaze, erotic bodies, and transgressive presence challenge patriarchally sanitized devotional norms. By tracing visual erasure, it argues that the aging erotic goddess is marginalized not for obscenity, but for embodying sovereign, post-reproductive power, thus disrupting sacred aesthetics shaped by gendered taboos and discomfort with feminine autonomy beyond motherhood. This visual censorship enforces a sociopolitical narrative that maidens embody virginal femininity, mothers serve reproductive functions, and crones, having surpassed reproductive age, are expelled from societal and political relevance and stripped of any sexual desirability.

Through an analysis of religious sculptures, iconography, and cultural texts, this research reveals the intersection of ageism, sexism, and power differentials in regulating female bodies and identities. It argues that the censorship of the crone figure reflects broader mechanisms of control that reinforce heteronormative and patriarchal structures by erasing older women’s visibility and agency.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to analyze the Reproductive Axis of Control as a conceptual framework, identifying how patriarchal religious and institutional structures regulate female bodies across the ontological statuses of maiden, mother, and crone.
2. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to evaluate the mechanisms by which the aging erotic goddess is systematically marginalized in religious iconography, distinguishing between censorship motivated by obscenity and censorship motivated by the threat of sovereign, post-reproductive feminine power.
3. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to apply an intersectional analysis of ageism, sexism, and institutional power to interpret the visual erasure of crone figures across religious and cultural texts, articulating how such erasure enforces heteronormative and patriarchal structures that strip older women of visibility, agency, and sexual subjectivity.

AVAILABLE ON

ErosCoaching	AASECT CE · Standard Access	Access Now
The Elsewheres	AASECT CE · Collective Access	Access Now
Forbidden Tickets	Community Access	Access Now
Eventbrite	Open Access	Access Now

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Access Key
Standard Access: Full course access with AASECT Continuing Education credits. Ideal for licensed clinicians and certified professionals fulfilling CE requirements (First-come, first-served).
Collective Access: Full course access with AASECT Continuing Education credits, offered at a lower price point to support decolonial participation across professional communities (First-come, first-served).
Community Access: Full course access without AASECT CE credits, designed for BIPOC, queer, kink+, and sex-positive community members engaging outside of a clinical or certification context.
Open Access: Registration open to all, including international students. No AASECT CE credits

EDUCATOR BIO