The “Vagina Lady”, Eve Ensler, has launched the latest aspect of her “vagina franchise”, an arts festival focusing on violence against women. The New York Times has an interview and article here.
Now, I respect Ms Ensler for almost everything that she has done. She works hard for her charity and her play, The Vagina Monologues, has brought the issue of women’s body image into the spotlight.
What frustrates me, however, is the fact that she originally used the word “vagina” to describe women’s genitals, and that the subsequent notoriety of the play has helped to entrench people’s belief that the word “vagina” is the correct term.
It’s not.
Read my lips. The word is vulva, ladies and gentlemen. Vul-va. Roll it around your mouth a little. Enjoy the sound. Think about how sexy it is.
OK, OK, I know that it sounds like a boxy Swedish car (or a nice coconut biscuit to Australians) but it’s the proper scientific word for that area of a woman’s body.
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Now, I realise that this makes me sound like the sort of pedantic nerd who gets upset at missing apostrophes, but there is a perfectly good reason to feel grumpy about this ongoing cultural linguistic mix-up.
Using the word “vagina” to describe a woman’s sexual parts helps perpetuate sexual misunderstanding.
It encourages people to think that the vagina, not the clitoris, is a woman’s primary sex organ. It carries on the old-fashioned idea that a woman’s sexuality primarily exists in the realm of reproduction, not pleasure. It reduces the wonder of a woman’s genitals to a mere “penis sleeve” and reinforces the idea that “real sex” involves vaginal intercourse to male orgasm – anything else is peripheral.
I’m sure it also confuses young people, brought up with the phrase “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina.” It suggests that the vagina, not the clitoris, is the female equivalent of the penis. It implies that the vagina is just an inside-out version of a penis.
And the result? Well, think about how many people have sex and expect that a penis rubbing within the vagina will automatically result in female orgasm.
You know, I don’t think I even encountered the word “clitoris” until I was about 14, and even then I didn’t know what it was for. I only learned to pronounce it properly after I saw the film “Shirley Valentine.” Vagina was all I ever got and yes, I was pretty damned confused about things for a while.
The sad thing is, I suspect the kids of today aren’t much better informed.
What’s more, there’s now even less reason to keep misusing vagina.
The day before the NY Times published their Ensler article, the BBC reported on the ongoing anatomical research by urologist Dr Helen O’Connell. Dr O’Connell made headlines in 1998 with her groundbreaking work revealing that the clitoris was much larger than originally thought. She has since conducted a great deal of further study into the clit using MRI scans and discovered that the clit is more of a massive pelvic iceberg than a little man in a boat.
“The vaginal wall is, in fact, the clitoris,” said Dr O’Connell, who is based in Melbourne.
“If you lift the skin off the vagina on the side walls, you get the bulbs of the clitoris – triangular, crescental masses of erectile tissue.”
Apparently the clit is like a huge pyramid, surrounding the vagina and urethra with nerves and spongy erectile flesh that fills with blood when aroused. It makes the vagina look positively inanimate and boring.
The clit is where it’s at. Indeed, if we have to keep mislabelling women’s genitals can we at least say “boys have a penis, girls have a clitoris”?
But even that isn’t good enough, because it doesn’t take in the whole picture. A woman’s vulva is a beautiful wonderland of nerves and sensuality combined with functionality. The vulva is the sum of its parts, just as our sexual experience is often a combination of many different forms of stimulation.
On her V-Day site, Eve Ensler says this:
“I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking.”
She’s right. But if you’re going to name things, you should use the correct name.
So, I’d like to call upon Eve Ensler to change the name of her play to The Vulva Monologues, to properly reflect scientific fact and also to further improve women’s understanding of their bodies. Which is, I believe, the main aim of the play. The subsequent media attention will do more to educate people than anything else I can possibly suggest.
Consider this to be the first vulva monologue.
By the way, the wonderful Vulva Puppet pic is from the House of Chicks site. Their puppets are very clever.
We have much to learn from the Proper Words Song: http://www.goodiebag.tv/odds/proper_words_song.htm
Shakes, you have made my day with that song. That is absolutely bloody hilarious.
Well you now have me looking up anatomical drawings of female parts on the web.
I do not think I have ever said the word vulva outloud or written it for that matter.
I am converting to vulva. An old dog can learn new tricks.
*smiles* at you.
– Enigma
I just picked up on this fact myself… WHY aren’t we taught the correct words from the time we are old enough to talk? My mom always called my vulva my “cookie.” Which is very cute and all, and I love to tease my husband with that these days, but I wish I’d known VULVA way sooner. Wikipedia has a pretty nifty entry for vulva too if you search for it. 🙂
Thanks for this post!!!!
If your focus is the entire area then yes vulva is correct, but then shouldn’t you include the testicles with the penis when referring to male genitalia? Vagina and penis are both only part of the package, so they match. What’s the match to vulva?
There is no overarching scientific term for the male genitalia (beyond “male genitalia”) and beyond that, society has never mislabelled the penis, scrotum or testicles which is really my point. I mean, if you were brought up thinking that your testicles were the main pleasure-giving organ during sex, you’d feel a little confused and frustrated, wouldn’t you?
As I say in my post, the clitoris – not the vagina – is analgous to the penis, while the scrotum has more in common with the outer labia. Using vulva (or clitoris) rather than “vagina” in our discourse is more accurate and ultimately better for everyone.
Nah, they’re not really all that better educated these days either. My brother’s seventeen and he only knows what and where a clitoris is because, in discussing whether he was sexually intimate with his girlfriend, I asked him — and he looked very confused and said, “No, what’s that?”
Interviewing all of my close friends and a couple of coworkers has confirmed for me that none of them were introduced to the word “clitoris” until well past their mandatory “health class” which may or may not have included specific information for sexual health.
Yeah, it’s a bit sad.