Should We Be Renaming The Vagina?

[FrothyDragon]

"THE nastiest name ever to be given to the female sex organ is ''vagina''. ''Vagina'' is Latin for ''scabbard'' or ''sword sheath''. A scabbard is owned by the same person as owns the sword that it exists to house."

(Taken from the Greer review of Wolf's latest book)

So. Given the connotations of the word, I propose that women rename their "vagina", to give us a word for it which doesn't imply male ownership.

Thoughts?

I wonder if Naomi would win back any MN brownie points if she renamed subsequent editions "Fanjo: a Biography"

Doctrine, I just woke up Sir Scream-A-Lot and Lord Woofington laughing, thank you very much...

Sorry FD!

I'd be interested to know what you lot think about the Wolfe book and this review of it.
Unless there is already a thread about it, in which case I'll slope off there.

Hi Eldritch

Earmark a bit of time and some tissues for the tears of laughter on the webchat:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_live_events/1556371-Naomi-Wolf-live-webchat-TODAY-Thursday-6-September-12pm-to-1pm

On FWR try
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1559795-Naomi-Woolf-Vagina-a-quick-question
and
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/1564726-Another-review-of-Wolfs-Vagina-this-time-by-Germaine

I am always happy to talk rudely more about the Wolf book.

I am so sad I missed the webchat but it was highly amusing. Have you been able to get hold of a copy EC? I've only read extracts.

Ooh, thanks for those links. I'll make a cup of tea and work my way through them.

No, don't fancy buying it, I'll have to wait until the library has it. My mother was
quite amusing reading the Guardian review and pursing her lips about it. Her view-'I only want/need to know about my own'.

I've never read any Naomi Wolf, get the distinct impression that in feminist terms she's a bit 'sus'. Is that fair?

I like sheath. A sheath protects something- vaginas the protectors of penises since time began.

actually- maybe men should be offended

Oh, that's rather nice, I like that!

Still, not sure it's fair on men, as you say!

I like the word mink better, sounds like a cute furry animal. Vagina sounds like some sort of disease!

I wish I had found this thread right at the beginning, but never mind.

It seems a little ridiculous to be rejecting a word based on its etymology, especially when that etymology is not known by the vast majority of people who use the the word.

I posted on another thread, not too long ago, about the word "woman", which has an unpleasant etymology too (it basically boils down to "female pudenda+ man"). Yes, this is not nice. But so what? Some other words have downright odd provenance. Take "lady", for example, which stems from the meaning "breadmaker" All very interesting, but the meaning of all of these words has moved on. Etymology is just that - history, not current meaning.

Why can we not just use words like vagina and woman and other words of unsavoury etymology, in the sense that they have in today's language, and laugh at their passage through time.

Gosh, that Wolf's a smug piece, isn't she? I sort of laughed, but actually, given the profile she gets, the joke's on aLl of us, really.

I tend to agree about ignoring etymology. Vagina is fine but cunt is better.

I think of the vagina as the 'birth canal'. Its main function is giving birth - insemination can happen without penetration.

There would be no human species if there were no pathway to exit the female body.

KittensInaHalfShell
"I like sheath. A sheath protects something- vaginas the protectors of penises since time began."

"actually- maybe men should be offended"

On the contrary; men will say they need all the protection they can get.

"I think of the vagina as the 'birth canal'. Its main function is giving birth - insemination can happen without penetration.

There would be no human species if there were no pathway to exit the female body."

Speak for yourself, none of my children ever went that way and I've no regrets about that.

If you think of the vagina mainly as the birth channel you may as well think of women mainly as precious vessel with the purpose of giving birth. Rather reductionist if you ask me.

But then I've never subscribed to the red tented womb woo branch of feminism.

Widow, I think you uwill find c-section is a fairly new method of delivery. We would not exist as a species with out the good old fashioned baby out the fanny birth.

Personally I think of all humans as animals and all animals have a primary function which is to make more animals, as humans we have a choice about it but at the end of the day it's still our primary function. . That's not woo

And there's plenty of women who've never given birth - neither vaginally nor abdominally. Are their vaginas of a lesser kind?

no, but it doens't change that that's what it was evolved for. I have an oven does the fact that I don't use make it not an oven.

Well, in that case, like it or not, but it is as much evolved for being penetrated as for pushing out babies.

"And there's plenty of women who've never given birth - neither vaginally nor abdominally. Are their vaginas of a lesser kind?"

Up until recently, no-one entered this world by any means other than by the vagina. So even if no baby has come out of yours, you came out of one and that is pretty special.

Also, to have never given birth doesn't mean a lesser kind of vagina, just that their vagina has never had a baby out of it. No judgement. But I delivered one of my babies myself - don't want to go into too much detail - but through the tactile experience of it, I realised that the vagina is an amazing design when in birth mode - and that when not in birth mode many of the functions are 'at rest'. So a vagina that has never been in labour has never been fully switched on - or woken from rest- as it were.

"So a vagina that has never been in labour has never been fully switched on - or woken from rest- as it were. "

Prime example of reductionist red-tented womb woo.

(ETA: the amazing thing is that a full creature grows out of two little cells which melted into each other - how it came out in the end is pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things)

Another vote for vagine.

Just feels right.