Vulva

When we say vagina, we’re collectively ignoring the visual aspect of female anatomy, the clitoris and the labia, with language. The vagina is the way that guys who have sex with girls come. Since Kinsey’s 1953 landmark book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, we’ve known that most women need direct clitoral stimulation (by a hand, a mouth, or some other object) to have an orgasm. And yet, how many times do we still see, in movies or television, the depiction of a woman’s orgasm as a result of cock-penetration alone? That we call the female gentials “the vagina” speaks volumes about the politics of sex. “Vagina” keeps the focus on straight male pleasure.

Dr. Mithu Sanyal, author of VULVA, a cultural history of the vulva, believes ideas about the body are marshaled through words. “Language is connected to our perception of the world. What we can’t name, we can’t talk about, and ultimately, can’t think about,” she writes. Clinical psychologist Dr. Harriet Lerner calls this phenomenon of disregarding the clitoris and the labia “psychic genital mutilation.” According to her, “Language can be as powerful and swift as the surgeon’s knife. What is not named does not exist.”

Always.

From “Stop calling it a vagina” by Mary Katherine Tramontana in Vice. 

Been Team Vulva for a long time around here.