V is for Vagina
Jessica Walsh discusses the costs of nudity-shaming and wonders why we can't all just call a spade a... well, a vagina actually. This article features discussion of sexual abuse.
It was difficult for me to describe to the police officer, sat opposite me in my living room, how I was abused. There was a lot of hand gesturing, blushing and reference to 'thingies'. At ten years old I still believed I had a 'front bum' and a 'back bum'. I wasn't entirely sure where one began and the other ended. I shuddered to think about what came out of each. Now that I am a mother, I intend to ensure my daughter knows what lies beneath her clothing and between her legs.
Once, a few years before I’d made my disclosure, I spent the day off sick from school. I recall my grandparents asking what I had been up to on my day off, and to their horror, my uncensored seven year old self responding that I had learned how babies were made. I'd been watching an educational TV show aimed at teenagers. "The man puts his penis into the woman's vagina," I began, and went on in great detail, colourfully describing erections, ejaculation and a sketchy journey through fertilisation. I'm sure that in some way they were glad I had been watching educational telly, but my diatribe collided with their Catholic modesty without warning. As soon as I took a breath, the subject was changed. It was an uncomfortable topic. It was an inappropriate topic.
Though this televisual learning left me remarkably educated, I disassociated it from myself. Penises and vaginas were alien concepts which belonged to strangers. Meanwhile I, my friends and my family were endowed with “front bums” and “willies,” because they were the words I’d been taught, directly and indirectly, by my nearest and dearest.
Needless to say, a few years later, when the policewoman told me that what I had described was sexual abuse, I thought her to be mistaken. How could that be? Surely I'd need a vagina for that to be the case?
I have grown accustomed to nudity-shaming. Society has taught me I have 'private parts' that need covering up; not merely because they are private, but because they are shameful and ugly. Until I was in my early twenties I had no idea what the inside of a vagina consisted of, let alone what my own vagina looked like. I still try to find a quiet corner in the gym changing rooms in order to spare other people the sight of my pound of flesh. In retrospect, I have no doubt in my mind that had I been brought up in a culture that spoke openly and frankly about my sexual organs and intimate body parts, I would not have been as vulnerable a target to my abuser.
My husband has admitted that initially he felt perturbed at the thought of hearing small children describing or naming their sexual organs. "Isn't it sexualising them; telling them more than they need to know? Making them grow up too fast?" His rhetoric played out loud. "Would you feel as perturbed if they were naming limbs? Their arms, or legs, or feet for example? Even metatarsals or ribs?" I quizzed. The answer, as expected, was an outright no.
As a preventative, safeguarding, and empowering process, I intend to only use correct physiological terminology around my daughter, wherever possible. The words she hears now at six months old may not mean anything, but they will become familiar, normal, nothing to be ashamed of. I explain to her that I am changing her nappy and do not shy away from naming her vulva, perineum, buttocks or vagina. Why should I use any other words? Do I solely refer to her eyes as 'peepers' or her hands as 'grabbers'? To imagine my daughter coyly pointing to her mouth and reporting a 'gnasher-ache' is preposterous, so why do the innuendos remain elsewhere? My daughter has a vagina just as much as she has a face, feet, lungs and a heart. It is hoped that in time, she not only feels comfortable having a vagina, but perhaps feels proud of hers in the same way she may take pride in any other part of herself.