I had to scroll back in my saved posts to a million years ago to resurrect this.
Thanks for surfacing this one, it's always fun to get the older perspective and realising they're very human.
That metaphor (breasts as fruit) transcends language though. Whatever you call fruits you'll end up calling breasts. Here's the song of Solomon which was semetic.
I said, ‘I will go up to the palm tree; I will take hold of the boughs thereof.’ Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples.
Instead of viewing things like this etymologically, it's better to see them as universal metaphors that transcend language and culture. Similar to light and darkness.
And boobs
In German and Dutch it's way worse: "Säugetier" and "zoogdier". Both can roughly be translated to "sucking animals". I was taught in school that it's called that because babies suck on the mother's breasts to be fed and this is a unique trait to mammals. So in conclusion, we all suck.
in swedish it's basically that except we say "nursing animals", which is more specific
Same in Slovene. Sesalec - Sucker.
"fastfouriertransfem" is a great username
To be fair, tits are pretty awesome.
( @ )( @ )
Even heterosexual females enjoy a nice pair of boobies.
I don't know, I prefer butts. Tits are nice, but only half the population have them.
I've never seen a perfect butt though. I've seen a great one, but it had a crack in it.
an amendable issue
I like butts, but I prefer tits. I'm a simple man.
My son just called it "the tittieverse" and now I hate ALL of you.
This new naming scheme sounds like a great contribution to societitty.
Contriboobtion
Ackshully, "galaxy" (or rather, "galaxias") means "Milky Way" already, it's just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.
Of course, we realize there's more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.
Of the organs that are unique to us mammals, tits are more fun to play with than placentas.
I mean... I think we can all agree that boobs are at least universally non-threatening, even without counting the symbolisms of nourishment, nurturance, life, fertility, etc. At least I don't think we're at the point where hiding machine guns or hellish snakes in boobs is viable. ... Right?
You should watch Austin Powers. Machine gun tits back in the 90s, lol.
Bring in the fem- BOOOOTS
Also Mazinger (may be known under a different name in some countries). One of the robots (Aphrodite A) had titty missiles: https://tenor.com/en-CA/view/afrodita-aphrodite-mech-anime-gif-16897967
Just wait till you know the etymology of mastodon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon
Edit to save a click: "A mastodon, (from Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós), meaning "breast, and ὀδούς (odoús) "tooth")"
Edit 2: the "mast" in "mastodon" is the same one as in "mastectomy"
In the defense of the ancients who were naming things like other things they sort of looked like.... what OTHER substance was around at that time that was both white and liquid?
...
Because maybe we should be grateful for the milk metaphor instead of the option that only nuts would choose...
\ >.> Would you rather it be called after dough?
I'm okay with that.
In polish mammals = ssaki, and ssaki = suckers
I've always thought my defining characteristic was my nipples.
We're the only(?) species that have evolved them to become more than their basic function. Other species use colors and other features for mating signals, humans use shapes. Definitely wired to be interested in them.
Hold up, are other hominids interested in boobs? Any other mammal? Any non mammals into boobs? How much tiddy science have we really done here? I need tiddy facts.
This might be pseudoscience I got taught 20 years ago, but I have been under the impression that human evolution of breasts as a secondary sexual characteristic has to do with the shift to becoming bipedal. Like a lot of animals, early hominids would see the rear end of a fellow hominid and know this as a trigger for copulation. But when homo erectus started standing upright, butts weren't so universally erotic anymore. They had a whole back and head above them now. Breasts didn't need to be very large to fill their function, but an increase in size gave them a curvy appearance similar to a set of butt cheeks. And early humans were like, yeah, I think that's right, and selected for increased (or at least variable) breast size.
Listen, I'm not trying to refute anything here. I'm just saying that some extra tiddy experiments are probably required in order to fully understand this phenomena. I know that not everyone is cut out for this kind of thing, so I'm willing to take one for the team here. I just need a little funding and a steady supply of consenting tiddy owners.
It's probably part of it, but there's definitely also other stuff like the fact that human breasts are always prominent, unlike most other animals where the sexual display stuff waxes and wanes with them being fertile.
The best hypothesis i'm aware of is that human sexuality is just really strange and kinda.. slutty.. (this applies to everyone). Like it seems that our default way of going about things before civilization fucked it up was to just kinda have fun with anyone who caught our fancy and reciprocated the feelings, so our dicks evolved to scoop out sperm and tits evolved to always be on display so no one can tell if you're fertile or not, and presumably same thing with us having no mating season to speak of.
Just try to be attractive so as many people as possible will want to bang you, and maybe if you're lucky you can even find someone who likes you enough that they actively avoid banging others, which is pretty damn sweet because you know that kid will be yours. But in the end it doesn't really matter whose kid is whose, because everyone will help raise them.
I'm not aware of any other species sexually selecting for mammary size. Some birds do a puffy chest thing.
It might be a learned association rather than anything instinctive about tiddies. There's this one study where they gave rats a backpack fetish, but it has a sad ending because then they murdered all the rats. They did phrase the murder like they were doing a Satanic ritual though, and that kind of took some of the murdery edge off it for me.
I've been looking forward to like 20 years from now when all the incels will be into girls with too many fingers.
All mammals are interested in boobs, but typically only when they are pups. Boobs = food
To be fair, men got to name everything so what do you expect really. In my view it's Freudian.
I finally understand why galactose (greek word for milk) is a component of lactose (latin word for milk). It's milk all the way down.
Aliens are gonna have a field day with their translators.
[off topic]
A while back I imagined a race of intelligent crocodiles that not only ate their own young, they'd cooktyhem and serve them to honored guests as a sign of respect.
Boobworld, it's a world for you, but it's actually two!
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