Guardian: people unable to identify or name women's genitalia

[Lettera]

The cognitive dissonance beggars belief

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/may/30/most-britons-cannot-name-parts-vulva-survey

I tried reading it and replacing all those pesky uses of the words women and female by the much more appropriate 'people with a cervix'.

It would be a fun game if it wasn't so ridiculous.

I had a doctor a few years tell me whilst looking at my vulva that he ‘had no idea what he was looking at’ . He then proceeded to try to catheterise my clitoris - seriously . He was an FY2 so not a student . His excuse was that I’d had surgery a few years prior so it looked ‘wrong’ - funnily enough the female student he was with disagreed very loudly ! Little wonder the public don’t know if even doctors can get away with not knowing .

@Tibtom

That might explain why some men think we can control period blood in the same way as urine flow.

I’d never thought of that but I bet you’re right. It would explain all the blokes who get annoyed about campaigns to provide period products, if they think we just can’t be bothered to hold it in until we get to a toilet.

I'm not that surprised. Women's anatomy is not as obvious as men's in many cases - lots of women have never seen their urethral opening for example, so when they see a diagram or hear it talked about, they may interpret what they hear through the lens of what they have seen of themselves. The perineum too, can seem like a bit of a non-space, especially if you've never had kids - like an unnamed stretch road between two towns.

I had a nurse refer to my vagina as my "middle bottom". She was concerned that as I was a lesbian I wouldn't know where it was, particularly as she thought I might not use a tampon . Surely lesbians are more likely to understand women's anatomy! She then asked me what my job was and subsequently asked me for some legal advice whilst poking around down there. Definitely one of the strangest medical appointments I've ever had.

"Everything’s pretty well arranged in us women. Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris. I asked Mother one time what that little bump was, and she said she didn’t know. She can really play dumb when she wants to!
....The upper part has a couple of small holes in it, which is where the urine comes out. The lower part looks as if it were just skin, and yet that’s where the vagina is." The Diary of Anne Frank: The Definitive Edition.

50-70 years ago people were incredibly deferential to doctors, before you add a male Dr/female patient dynamic. Mothers spoke euphemistically to their daughters, if at all, about their anatomy. In short, we don't ask because we're socialised not to.

(I was 7, and precocious, so asked anyway).

At the risk of lots of posters saying how could you not know!

I didn't know there was a third hole till a few years back.

I never had any reason to think about it etc. I went for a wee, piss came out from the general front genital area... Just never gave it a thought!

Agree with others and the piece that. Given a diagram of the internal bits- fallopian tubes etc I think I would be fine. The external bits weren't mentioned at school.

The fact that hardly anyone knows about the internal structure of the clitoris is a pretty depressing thing as well.

'A lot of women don’t understand the difference between urinary incontinence and a prolapse'

Ok. But how would you? Unless you've had that? I wouldn't have a clue.

Female genitals have always been somehow more unmentionable then male. On here every other week there's a thread saying what do I call my daughter's genitals. And it's front bottom, flower, privates etc. There's no equivalent to Willy/ balls. And there's a reason for that.

Women die from vulval cancer - and if it is found early you can get really good results. So, this is just depressing stuff.

There was an episode of Call the Midwife a few years ago that discussed this. Many women only knew that they had “down belows”.

Nurse Trixie met a middle-aged woman who had suffered with a treatable gynaecological problem for years (possibly a prolapse). When asked why she hadn’t sought medical help, the woman replied, “I couldn’t. I didn’t have the words.”

So I was in school in 80's and everyone I know has this knowledge.
So at what age was it no longer taught in school?
Or is it that people just forgot.

@Whythesadface

So I was in school in 80's and everyone I know has this knowledge. So at what age was it no longer taught in school? Or is it that people just forgot.

From what I remember, the 'Let children be Children' protests from people wanting to keep their daughters (mostly) ignorant of their bodies revved up in the 1990s. It's when I recall seeing sad face parents in news articles complaining that telling children the names of their body parts was exactly the same as telling five year olds to have gay sex. Purely anecdotally (as is all of this), it seemed to coincide with an increase in Evangelical Christianity, particularly in the wish to provide PSHEE education in schools.

I was particularly enraged by my eldest's sex ed in year 7/8, though. yes, it was provided by a Youth Worker. A Youth Worker from the Evangelical Church.

I expected the usual diseases, pregnancy and suchlike from them - what I didn't expect was that the diagram of the outer parts of a woman would be quite so heavily edited. It had urethra, vagina and anus - but not only were there no labia, the clitoris had also literally been masked off by paper and then the sheet had been photocopied, so they had deliberately chosen to take away most of the information relating to female biology (and without intending to I hope therefore made it impossible for any girl at risk of or having experienced FGM to know what was actually normal).

The clitoris also usually lacks a reproductive function. While few animals urinate through the clitoris or use it reproductively, the spotted hyena, which has an especially large clitoris, urinates, mates, and gives birth via the organ. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris

Blimey.

I missed a lecture at university, on economic history, which apparently referred to the Victorian 'discovery' of the (function of?) the clitoris, and I was really sorry to have missed it.

I'm not surprised.
Loads of people lack really important, basic knowledge. I was shocked during the Brexit years how many people, born and bred in the UK didn't have a clue what the UK (never mind the EU) or Britain actually are.

@Whythesadface

So I was in school in 80's and everyone I know has this knowledge. So at what age was it no longer taught in school? Or is it that people just forgot.

I was at school in the 80s and don't recall being taught that.

It was all inside bits related to pregnancy.

Average adult literacy level in the UK is that of a 12 year-old.

For the health literacy (combination of literacy and numeracy) - it's equivalent to a 9 year-old.

The results aren't surprising and lend weight to the reality that health messages need to be as plain as possible.