To be annoyed DH knows nothing about female anatomy

[Sproutieboolaa]

DH, to whom I've been married for 15 years, and with whom I've had 3 children, was astonished yesterday when I pointed out that a vulva includes 2 holes. I had to show him a diagram.

Aibu to find this really annoying? I mean I had noticed I did all the childbearing work but he clearly didn't bother to look at a single book or website about pregnancy or even pay attention in all those birth classes. I am still cross.

I know what I should and shouldn't be doing to continue living. I piss, I have periods. Both are mildly inconvenient. i have never seen inside my own privates or any other woman's. Why is that strange?

Meh I wouldn't be able to locate my cervix with two hands and a torch

(Again I vaguely know where it is but not the specifics)

YY to the car analogy

I told DH about this thread this morning. His face was that adults could be so ignorant of basic anatomy. We are both quite shocked to be honest.

Oh and I have actually seen a woman whose urethra was just inside her vagina. That one stumped the nurse trying to catheterise her

Be shocked about shit that matters! It makes no odds to you or your DH if people don't know their own anatomy!

Hmm, I wonder if it's less a result of education and more to so with reading habits as a young teenager. Eighties bonkbusters, Germaine Greer, Judy Blume - I'm sure they all encouraged this sort of familiarity.

I haven't read The Female Eunuch for decades but can still recall the author saying that a medic once narrowly missed shaving off her clitoris while prepping her for an operation

Shock is not faux here!

Could be - I never read the Female Eunuch (although I did have the misfortune of paying good money to see GG speak once) or Judy Blume - I was reading Shaun Hutson and Stephen King in the 80s

I read bits of Judy Blume at that age. And read Greer much later. But I have never much thought about it. I accept it's good to know enough anatomy to know whether your body is healthy, but I don't think it is particularly odd not to spend time introspecting on what you can or can't feel in particular places.

Though, I did know a woman at university who confided that she couldn't make herself come without feeling as if she was about to urinate, and I do remember vaguely wondering if she was maybe in the wrong place!

I don't think it's odd not to either. I was raised by a Catholic who refused to buy me tampons or discuss sex and contraception. Her own mother didn't know why her periods stopped a few months after marriage. My own DD thought it was normal and expected to remove every scrap of pubic hair - funny how things change.

This comes up fairly often. On "Things you learned embarrassingly late in life" threads someone always says "Women have three holes not two ." And someone always responds "What do you mean?!"

On previous threads of this nature there was a MNer with the rare but not super-rare abnormality which meant her urethra was inside her vagina. She was generally agreed to have an acceptable excuse for not knowing .

I have literally no interest in how my body works

This is a public health issue that all of us are paying for.

No wonder cancer/heart disease rates are so high.

I know what food I'm supposed to eat and that I'm supposed to exercise. I just don't have any interest in vaginas - mine or anyone else's.

It isn't so much that I'm shocked that some individuals haven't been taught/worked this out, so much as I'm shocked that schools/parents aren't teaching this, or that it is such a taboo to talk about this part of our biology to such an extent that apparently a fairly large number of women don't know this.

I don't even know when I learnt this - it's just something I've always known like how many toes I have and what color my eyes are. How come we have a fairly large number of people who apparently don't have access to learning this? Some people are saying they've almost deliberately not bothered (I didn't listen in school etc) but there are plenty saying that they just were never taught. This isn't some kind of secret or taboo - people should have a basic idea of how their bodies work.

How do you know if it isn't work correctly if you don't know what 'correct' is - people can have problems without noticing symptoms. Surely some idea of what is within the range of 'normal' should be understood by people?

I was shit at biology and so was the teaching I received. I have never discussed it with my DM or seen anyone's vagina. It sounds like plenty of other people didn't know it either. If you discuss it with your kids then good for you.

I won't be having children so it isn't an issue for me - am also celibate so that part of me is basically functional but a bit pointless.

I agree, kick.

But I think people also go too far the other way, and claim it's immediately obvious (like the examples you give of numbers of toes!). I'm a feministy lesbian with (obviously) a fair interest in figuring out how women's bodies work, what's down there, and how to fill in the gaps in inadequate teaching about the female body. But I still disagree with the general tone of certain posters on this thread, who think everyone's body is just like theirs and that everyone can just 'feel' that vagina and urethra are in different places.

Everyone can't. It's not going to help women to feel less self-conscious to say so.

(I know you weren't saying that, btw. Just thinking how the examples you give work.)

Do you think that some (not all by any means) of the confusion may be connected with inaccurate naming of parts?
So if you regularly call your external genital area your vagina (as in "I'm getting my vagina waxed"), then it makes sense that your urethra is inside your vagina and you will be sceptical when someone else tells you that you wee out of somewhere completely different to your vagina.

Just asked DH - he reckoned four or five? Cue me going until he clarified, three holes, but you have some spare bits

YY. And also referring to the lot as 'down there' (which I've just done, with a fair amount of eye-rolling).

I very clearly remember the girls only talk at school (Y7) where we were told that there was no chance of putting a tampon in the wrong hole as one was too small and the other too far back :)

I have a friend who doesn't have any visible part of her clitoris above surface, a recessed clitoris I believe it's called, so not all are simple to find.

I made sure to learn a bit more about female anatomy when I first started sleeping with women too, so I knew where not to go by sight and not just (mostly) touch as with myself.

I'm not 100% sure what bit the vulva is. It's all just a fanny to me.

I have managed to have three children so I know enough to get me by...

I had a patient once who I needed to quickly catheterise to get an accurate urine specimen. When I told her she said there was no point at the moment as her period had started. I said its ok and not to be embarrassed about that. She said but they'll be blood in it contaminating the sample and I kind of got a little bit what she meant and said to her something like don't worry it's the other hole I need and she looked at me like what the hell do you mean type face and went 'Ohh'
I brushed it off and did the job but now Im thinking she probably had no clue.

I had a urine test during my period a few months ago and the sample was contaminated