10 Questions: Miriam Robbins Dexter on the Power of Female
Display Miriam Robbins Dexter, a lecturer in the Department of
Women's Studies and expert on ancient heroines and goddesses,
and a co-author have completed a cross-cultural study of stories
and artifacts in which women lift their skirts and expose their
genitals, a performance that drives away enemies and returns joy
and fertility to the land. Miriam Robbins Dexter, who earned
both her BA and her PhD at UCLA, translates some 20 classical
Indo-European and Near Eastern languages. With Victor Mair,
professor of Chinese language and literature at the University
of Pennsylvania, the UCLA lecturer in Women's Studies has
published a study of women in the ancient Near East, Asia and
Europe — in stories, artifacts, and also real life — who expose
their genitals to empowering effect (Sacred Display: Divine and
Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, Cambria Press, 2010).
Although the work may bump up against contemporary Western
taboos about sex, the fact remains t