CARNAL NATION

Looking for sympathy, I recently wanted to tell my partner that I had a small itch on my outer labia (don't worry, nothing majora). Half-way through my complaint, though, I had to stop abruptly, because I didn't know what words to use to describe "down there." And it wasn't even that I didn't know which words would be appropriate; it was that I didn't even have words to describe a part of my body. As someone who likes to think of herself as comfortable with her body and her sexuality, I became far more disturbed about this than the original itch I had.

We all know there are lots of words used to describe female genitalia—just in the English language, there is "genitalia," which in itself is a gross word, but also the two that most often spring to mind are "pussy" and "cunt," of course. There's also the common British phrase "fanny," used to describe the front and not the back of a woman's body.

“Cunt,” in and of itself, seems like far too harsh and horrible a word to describe such a soft, luscious area of a woman's body. For me, though, the fact that it is often used as an insult points to how much disregard and lack of respect there is for women and our bodies. I find these words pretty appalling, and would not want to use any of them to describe parts of my body."Cunt," in and of itself, seems like far too harsh and horrible a word to describe such a soft, luscious area of a woman's body. For me, though, the fact that it is often used as an insult points to how much disregard and lack of respect there is for women and our bodies. I find these words pretty appalling, and would not want to use any of them to describe parts of my body. "Pussy," I think, is just a weird word to describe such a beautiful, complicated area of our bodies—not to mention the fact that the double entendre is used ad nauseum (as anyone who's watched BBC reruns of Are You Being Served? can attest to). And anyway, I'm a woman not a cat.

Of course, there are also words that seem to stem from the hope that if you give body parts puerile, euphemistic names, somehow they will go away and everything will be fine. These differ from region to region and language to language. I think the most amusing, if depressing, one for me is "coochie," although "hoohaw" and "vajayjay" are pretty close... the list goes on and on, and I won't even pretend that I have heard them all.

It isn't just women's bodies, though, that end up being framed and discussed in phrases that lurch from the juvenile to the demeaning to the derogatory—words we use to describe men's genitalia aren't that great either. Gentlemen, you tell me—do you like words such as "cock," "dick" or "weiner"? How can there be serious discussions about male sexuality, about what it means to be a straight or a gay man in the 21st century, when you're dealing with phrases such as "purple-headed yogurt slinger"?

Moving on from just one to multiple bodies, we have all heard all kinds of euphemisms for sex, which I won't attempt to list here—we've all had our fill of those, I'm sure.

All this baby talk, however, makes me wonder how much the childish and/or derisive language we use to describe our sexual body parts affects how we think about them, how we think about our sexuality and how we think about sex in general. Perhaps it is a chicken and egg scenario—are we all uncomfortable with our bodies and sex, and so we come up with these silly words to describe them, or did we come up with these silly phrases and so can only view our bodies and sex in very narrow, laughable, embarrassment-induced whispers and derision?

Talking about sex (and writing about it) is funny and often very difficult, especially when there are few words that feel appropriate, few that convey what female or male sexuality is, few that can respectfully describe our bodies and sex in all its forms. No wonder so many of us feel uncomfortable with these things! It's also little wonder that so many children are not being given proper sex education—if the grown-ups can't even talk about sex in a grown-up manner, how can we expect kids to learn anything?

That being said, sex is talked and written about much more freely and openly than it once was in the mainstream—think of all the sex advice columnists that are out there now, and all the "adult" jokes TV shows can make which they never could fifty years ago. However, I do wonder whether all this talk is helping people to have better sex and to better appreciate their bodies, or whether we need to totally reframe the discussion.

I think we do need to reframe it, and come up with ways of talking about our bodies and sex that are respectful—and also more satisfying! Then, perhaps, we can all complain about all the itches we have—no matter where they are on our bodies.