I just say with a head teacher and argued with her that her fanny diagram was incorrectly labelled - and it's all the fault of you harpies..

[ProudVulvaOwner]

MyY2 child had their 'correct names for body parts' lesson today - all about labelling the external genitalia. We were forewarned they would be learning new words - penis, testicles, and vagina.

As a longstanding mumsnetter and part time feminist, I emailed in to ask how they would be labelling vaginas on pictures of external bodies - surely they would be labelling vulvas? (For avoidance of doubt, I was and am happy for my child to learn all the correct words and what they bits they refer to 'do', but today's lesson was specifically on the outside bits')

Anyhow, I was told this was the wording on approved DfE materials and they had to use it.

So like the true feminist mumsnetter I am, I queried this and asked to see the materials. Sure enough, some plonker at an organisation called 'Jigsaw' who supply DfE approved PSHE materials has labelled all external girl bits as a 'vagina'. Boys bits were correctly labelled.

So I made no progress at all in changing the vocab in the lesson, and have had shared several unforgettably minutes with a nice, but entirely bemused Headteacher looking at a fanny diagram and arguing that it was mislabelled and yes it DOES MATTER. It was not 5 minutes either of us will forget 😳. Thanks for that, Jigsaw 😡

Heh

Well done on taking one for the team

Say = sat (in title), sorry!
waves to sister who is also a mumsnetter and has already heard this rant..

Bravo you

Thanks AnyFucker 👍🙂 One day in a gazillion years from now women will not need to insist that their bits have the right bloody labels!

You will be the talk of the wash house until the end of term!

Well done you though!

So are you going to take on Jigsaw?

Yes, I shall email Jigsaw and point out that they quite literally don't know their vaginas from their elbows, but I imagine it will just all to all the people rolling their eyes at me..

Was it this do you think www.jigsawpshe.com/fgm-jigsaw-pshe/ - it's the module on FGM.

How do they expect to be able to talk about FGM if they can't label all the parts of a woman's external anatomy? Their own blurb says:

Jigsaw does not cover the concepts discretely

I may be nitpicking, but wording the particular piece of content with:

Children identify the parts of the body that make boys different from girls, and can use the correct, scientific names for them

Is just a touch, well, penisy - like when we tell kids that boys have a penis and girls don't. It's not incorrect, but it would be better to say that boys have a penis and girls have a vulva and vagina - ie. we're not missing a bit, instead we have a different bit.

I would re-write that to say

Children identify the parts of the body that are different in boys and girls

Good for you.

Are you going to contact Jigsaw?

Think I might tweet them if you don't.

Well done OP!

Jigsaw is a bought in curriculum that the school will have chosen (I looked at it for our school curriculum but ultimately we couldn't afford it at the time) so to say they can't and apparently won't change the labelling to the correct vocabulary is a bit shit . Surely the teacher could use a bit of tipex or whatever to make sure the diagram is right and that the kids are learning accurately. If they had maths materials with a mistake such as 2 + 2 = 5 surely they would correct that!

Just being DoE approved doesn't mean it's free from mistakes. Plenty of exams each year get published with errors, and they should have been checked many times over. So it's absurd to say they can't correct the material if they find an error.

Quite. They absolutely could change it if they wanted. The DfE has not renamed female genitalia. That was a fobbing off...

Well done you.

Well done OP. Yes, it does matter

Well done, OP. What a disappointment that Jigsaw doesn't know the correct terms. Did the Headmistress tell the teachers to use the correct labels? I do hope so.

Well quite, Ilove. They are literally saying they will teach the children something incorrect, even if they know it is wrong.

It doesn't say a great deal about their standards. What the hell else might they be teaching?

No, she clearly thought I was deranged.

She said that teaching the word 'vulva' and the distinctions between it and a 'vagina' was for a later key stage, but it was ok for 'vagina' to cover it all for now. My insistence that if you're going to pick one word and just use that one then it's all the more important that it's the right bloody word went unheard 🙄

I may just have used the word 'vagina' to a head teacher in 60 seconds more than any woman in the history of ranting..

The boys, I must say, were allowed several words for their bits, and it wasn't too complicated for Y2 children to learn them all and what they were. It's just girl bits that are all so complicated that's single (wrong) term has to do the job..

Isn't referring to a vulva as a vagina akin to referring to your face as a nostril? Makes no sense!

They may be approved supplier, but this surely can't be approved content?
It's awful.. They will be (should be) in conflict with science lessons..
Hope to God it's not the company above that would be

Good on you for raising it - the school should be embarrassed about buying in a curriculum with incorrect terms.

For the record, I think the terms other way round makes more sense. When they are doing the content on outside bits, use the 'outside' term, and later do all the inside bits with the inside terms.
It's more like asking boys to start off with calling their penis the vans deference 'for ease'

I bet the company suspiciously is private funded by a consort of a government minister or mp.
The jigsaw company you mention above is about 7 years old. Wasn't it 2010,the tory win????

Good for you. Is a shame that biology and science is dismissed in this way.