I had a fight on Facebook. Somebody posted not a very funny meme about cunnilingus in one of the sex-positive groups I belong to. I thought the whole thing (the meme itself) was mildly revolting but it was the anatomical error in the joke that jarred me more than anything.
I’ll get to it, hold on. First the meme (insert puke emoji here):
I joined this group a while ago because I was working on an article about self-published romance novels. I never left because I actually enjoyed the unabashed, trashy discussions between its members. From posting photos of shirtless men, to horny-auntie-level jokes about sex, frequent mentions of porn, to recommendations for most-smut-for-your-buck books, the group showed me a new side of women, an equivalent to the male locker-room talk but actually a lot raunchier. I didn’t get the cheesy humour some of the time but I like weirdness as much as the next guy. And I was totally charmed by everyone’s enthusiasm when one of their self-published authors announced there was an NSFW picture of a fictional character attached in the latest newsletter (you could see the character’s peen, which is a word for “penis” in those circles).
Those kinds of announcements would get hundreds of comments, women swooning over the cheesy cartoon of a badly drawn anime dude with a dick the size of a small rabbit. I’ve never seen anyone get this happy about art. I suppose jokes about dentures shouldn’t be much of a surprise in the group where anything goes. But the anatomical error in the meme was a surprise because this was, after all, a group of women who are very outspoken about their desires and specific about how they arrive at having those quenched.
I felt like some kind of an uppity British lord when I chimed in something along the lines how it would be difficult for someone to lick someone’s vagina, how it probably wouldn’t lead to an orgasm—let’s just set those dentures aside for now, for good—and how the author perhaps means vulva… For good measure, I added something how I was sick of having female body parts mislabeled and how we should celebrate what we have by perhaps learning what it’s called and where it’s located exactly. I turned off notifications after that because people were yelling at me and telling me to go and lighten up.
I know that knowing names of the body parts that bring sexual gratification isn’t necessary to having the said gratification. I understand that “vagina “is used colloquially to describe a vulva and perhaps the word “vulva” is kind of clunky and weirdly unsexy (to me, okay, not to you) and that cute lil’ ol’ “vagina” just sounds better …but I don’t know, don’t be sloppy: use it, please it, and name it!
I know that sex-ed is barely up to par (in schools) and that it’s not unusual for women to never see what their own parts look like until they actually seek out that information on their own. I can’t remember when exactly I came across the advice to hold a mirror between my legs (and why do I always think of some New-Agey group of tight-ass yoga chicks on healing retreats when I think of that scenario), and examine all those mysterious places that were much fun. But it was definitely late in adulthood and I think that’s kind of sad that I lived without a map to my own territory of pleasure for so long. And the fact that women themselves can be so dismissive as what we call our intimate parts is perhaps an indicator of how dismissive we are of our goddess-given right to enjoy our awesome bodies. So my superior, British lord-snottery aside, let’s educate ourselves and give our beautiful cunt a credit where a credit is due, okay? It is a self-respecting thing to do.