I was taken aback. I only ever use "cute" names for my stuff when I am around others, because there are women that are deeply offended by the V word. However, at home, it is always called a vagina. My girls have grown up knowing and using the anatomic names for not only their own junk, but the junk of the opposite sex as well.
When my oldest daughter was young, maybe 2 or so, we were hanging out at my cousin's house. Kate was riding a trike when she slid forward and whacked her vagina on the middle bar thingy. We saw what happened, and my cousin asked her, "Did you hurt your cookie?" Well.. Kate looked at her oddly, she had no cookie.. what was this about cookies.. did everyone else get a cookie when she wasn't looking? To save my poor confused child, I said, "Did you hit your vagina?" Kate replied that she had, but wanted to know more about those cookies. I thought my cousin was going to shit on herself! How can you use that filthy word! Thinking that I had unknowingly said fuck or something, I asked which word, and apologized for being offensive. Vagina, she said.. how can you teach your kid to say THAT word.. it is a horrible nasty disgusting word.. you should be ashamed.
Oh.. really?
Much like my friend, I don't KNOW why people are terrified of the words vagina and penis. They are after all, just words.. like tree and donut and blue.. yet as a majority, we see these words as dirty. More than likely, our aversion to the use of vagina and penis stems from our overall suppression of all things sex.
We are a country of mixed messages. We are unable to discuss sex except in the most abstract of terms, yet we expect our kids to have a concrete grasp on sexual behavior. We dress our daughters in hyper-sexualized clothing, then demand they remain virginal. We encourage our sons to view females as sexual objects, then do not enforce a behavior of respect. It reminds me of the gypsy culture currently being shown on tv. These girls, from as young as 4 and 5, put on the barest minimum of clothing and dance about like strippers. The boys force girls into dark corners and pinch, push, and belittle them into giving a kiss. It is against culture to be sexually active before marriage, yet the messages being sent are nothing but sexual in nature.
How about this.. let's all teach our kids, and ourselves, some new words. Vagina and penis.. say it.. V-a-g-i-n-a and P-e-n-i-s.. now, talk about them. Talk about sex. Talk about how great it feels, how scary the first time is, how it isn't a shameful act and anyone that makes you feel bad about having sex is wrong, how it's better to wait until you are older because sex is powerful and sometimes it's hard to handle the emotions even when you are an adult, how to protect yourself with condoms and birth control, how it's ok to share your body with someone else but maybe not with everyone else.. don't sugar coat it, but don't make it a horror story. Break out of the sex shaming and bring sex, vagina and penis out into the light.
We can not expect a person who can only call a vagina a ho-ha to have anything other than a repressed and dim knowledge of healthy sex. At the very least, just imagine the dirty talk.. oh yea baby, put your dingle in my ya-ya.. ummmmm.. nope.
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