Just have a think about it. Ancient civilizations like the Greeks, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Romans and even the Vikings and Germanic tribes had a Goddess that represented the Moon. Keyword Goddess. An incredibly beautiful and powerful female being always represented the Moon, and was often caught in compromising situations, such as being seen bathing naked by an unsuspecting villager. Always this Goddess is totally unobtainable by mortals, and punishes those that try, but this only makes others lust after her more.

By the 20th century, we had been to the moon, obtained the unobtainable, but even after we knew for certain that the moon was an ugly lump of grey rock that floats around the planet, we still described it as a “she”. Modern poets and writers describe the “soft caress of moonlight” or refer to the moon as a mistress, furthering that link with femininity and sexuality.

Even to reach the moon we built rather phallic-looking spacecraft that were propelled towards the moon by ‘thrusters’. We thrusted the moon. Furthermore once on the moon, a flag was forcefully ‘thrust’ into the surface of the moon, almost as a sign that we had conquered ‘her’. Indeed, one of the euphemisms used to describe an erection is “raising the flag” and we certainly raised our flag on the moon.

So next time your outside at night and you see the moon, stop and have a think about why that dead, lifeless, inactive, crater ridden cheese ball has had humans lusting after it for centuries