I spent my afternoon, as one is wont to do, getting interviewed on my thoughts regarding vaginas and vulvas. (As one is wont to do, WHEN ONE IS ME, I should perhaps have specified.) I’ll share that piece with y’all when it’s published—but in the meantime, an observation: ain’t it wonderful how brains are pliable, and how writing plies them?
See, I wrote this post last fall about our cultural reluctance—and my own personal resistance—to using the word “vulva.” Today, what I found? Personal resistance gone! Another plank of internalized misogyny fallen! Appears I am now fully aboard the vulva-train.
And so I invite you to join me in raising a glass to the liberation of sexual bodies and sexual vocabulary alike, and to tell me about a time you wrote yourself into a different way of thinking.
Just please refrain from using the word “moist” in your comment.
*shudder*
“Moist” is never gonna happen.
In a revelation that will shock exactly zero readers of this blog, I must confess that I’ve always been obsessive about using words correctly. About knowing both literal and connotative meanings. About finding le mot juste for every occasion.
Add gender into the lexical mix? At that point, “obsessive” becomes, well…
Lemme put it to you this way. I still feel pissy about the idiotic joke made by some fellow Unitarians when I was 11 and the UUA was revising the official church hymnal to remove gender-exclusive language: “Maybe we should just call this new HYM-nal an IT-nal, since you hate men so much.”
[Picture here a tween-sized Alice, hands on her hips, fuming at her male peers. . . and more than a few grownass male grownups.^]
In those days, if I heard you call someone a “girl” who was clearly a grownass female grownup? Them were fightin’ words, far as I was concerned.
I’ve since…
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Had to go back and read the vulva post again and holy crap, it has to be one of your best, along with the comments. I will simply share, because your honesty screams for some in return, that I think you need to do a post on the mons veneris. Things happen there, rather by choice or by nature, and it is the protector of the vulva after all.
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“Things happen there” is such a delightfully mysterious way to phrase it! Or perhaps I’ll write about the pudendal cleft. I’m sure many dark deeds of choice or nature happen in the cleft as well…
Only the Cleft knows for sure.
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My head spins after reading this post!
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My job here is done. *winks conspiratorially*
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My UU congregation is a “fellow”ship.
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Yeah, mine have always been fellowships, too. Hard to get that normative gendering all the way out of our languages, ain’t it.
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I am drawing a blank on how I could respond to this post without utilizing the aforementioned “M” word… kind of funny because for me, the “M” word is a version of matrimony, shudder. =)
How come we got around to naming our girl bits after all the pretty/exciting/cool words were taken? Vulva sounds too much like VULGAR to me… of course, going back to classical Latin, one can make a connection to volvere, an infinitive form of volvo… HEY! =) Like the high end car that’s all sleek. Ok, liking this correlation here, Alice! =) =)
I will continue to call my kitty and general surrounding areas either “my happy place” or “vajayjay.” Cat’s out of the bag, so to speak… I like fun to say words. =)
As always, glad you are here to keep the important issues at the forefront of my brain… lest it become muddled with too much maths… =) =)
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Uh. I’d respond to the rest of your comment, but I’m too stuck on wondering how exactly “testicle” qualifies as one of the already-taken “pretty/exciting/cool words”…
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Then of course there’s scrotum…
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Idk, not that one… I meant words like cabbages, and cerulean and pilfering and soporific. Never testicles… just eww. =)
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FWIW I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘vajayjay’ also, on account of it being a term that definitely originated from women themselves talking about their parts. It’s fun, *and* kinda feminist 🙂
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Kasey, YES!!! Totally taking it back… had not thought of it that way and is SO PERFECT! =) =)
And to dig myself into the inevitable hole here, I DO love the connection to Shonda… lmao! =)
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Agreed!
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