CARNAL NATION

My son has eyes like two sparkling spring-fed pools nestled in the lush forest that is his... face.

Oops, sorry. I can see that's not going to work.

They really are unusually beautiful eyes, though: wide set, star bright, and extravagantly lashed. They make you want to smile at him. So when he fixed our nanny with his guileless toddler gaze and solicitously inquired, "Lisa happiness?," she beamed at him and was about to assure him that she was indeed happy.  Who would not be in his presence? But she stopped short when what he'd really said snapped suddenly into aural focus: “Lisa have penis?”

We have twins, one of each, so each of life's experiments comes with a built-in control. We have noted, for instance, a statistically significant difference in how fascinated each child is by his or her respective boy or girl parts.  Our daughter seems just curious enough about hers, while our son checks in about his regularly, without anxiety but with a fair amount of concern. He's making sure it's still there and still called a penis.  He wants to know if mommy has one ("Mommy happiness?"), and if daddy has one.  What about his sister? He has been known to point to random strangers (the grocery store check-out is a common site for this) and inquire about their happiness, which, while potentially mortifying, can't hold a mortification candle to what a friend's husband saw in the check-out line a few weeks ago:

A mother pointed to the checker's nametag and announced, "Oh, look [Brittany], you both have the same name!"
Little girl: "Your name is Brittany, too? "
Checker: "Yes!"
Little girl, loudly: "Did your penis come in yet?"
Checker: (speechless)
Little girl, in a reassuring tone: "Oh, don't worry, mine hasn't yet either!"

My son has never suffered from undescended penis syndrome, and we've been discussing his for a good year now (he's two and a half). He knows what it's called because he asked ("dat?") and we, of course, told him: "Dat?" "That's your head." "Dat?" "Nose." "Dat?" "Belly button." "Dat?" "Penis." "Dat?" "Penis." "Dat?" "Still your penis." "Dat?" "That's your butt!" And then he'd laugh a slightly scandalized laugh, like "Oh no you di'nt!", and start over.

My daughter came to "dat?"-ing her body parts a little later and with a touch of diffidence. When she'd "dat?" her crotch, we'd answer, but you could tell she really just wanted to get to "butt" so she could start laughing. If her brother thought "butt" was funny, she thought it was hysterical. Why "butt" is intrinsically so much funnier than "nose" or even "elbow," I've never been sure, but I'd really like to know if it's a universal trait. These were babies, not toddlers, and certainly not smutty-minded preschoolers, who you expect to be all about the poop jokes. They were babies; they knew nothing, and yet they knew "butt" was funny. I was impressed.

Penis is a fine word. It's easy to say, crisply Latinate, confusing to pluralize—but we'll worry about that later.  A penis is easily identified and simple to label—literally, if you happen to have a sticker handy, which toddlers often do. I never questioned my choice of "penis" for his penis, and can't imagine why I would.

Most of us, educated and—we'd like to think—enlightened, believe that using the proper words is the right thing to do, normalizing sexuality and laying the groundwork for a shame-free and empowered coming-of-age. You manage the unintended consequences of your sincere efforts with the most aplomb you can muster on the spot. "Teaching my kids the proper words for body parts seemed like a good idea," notes my friend Julie, "Until the day we were in a public rest room and she shouted, ‘MOMMY WHY DO YOU HAVE HAIR ON YOUR VAGINA!’"

About that "vagina"...

I started off, dutifully, with "vulva."  I've been a sex educator for 20 years, and there are a few perennial hobby horses you can expect a sex educator to ride in on and out again: no means no; size doesn't matter (or does, depending on the sex educator—we all have an opinion); and the visible, external portions of the female primary sexual characteristics are collectively called the vulva, never vagina. The vagina itself, the sex educator continues, is neither hole nor tunnel but potential space, like a tube sock. And then the sex educator apologizes for the inelegant simile. I could go on, and have, but all I really need to say is that I feel I should say "vulva," and I have said "vulva."  But I really don't want to.

Sometimes I just punt the whole thing. When my daughter crawls under my skirt and stares straight up (she's short) and demands to know "What's that?" I usually just shoo her out.  However, a helpful friend has pointed out that "mommy's underpants" would be a perfectly adequate answer. But I am certainly not about to say "mommy's vulva," which manages to sound at once vulgar, prissy, and smug.  Not only is it weirdly porny for a technical term, it doesn't map precisely to penis (that would be your clitoris), so it doesn't even seem necessarily as "correct" as the Our Bodies, Ourselves-ites would have it.  Neither does vagina  (or "bagina"), of course.  So I have offered my kids both terms, noting that girls get two things instead of one (except that boys have balls, too, and everyone gets a butt).  I have been gratified to discover that "vulva," which irritates my friends and me with its prissy self-righteousness (it puts the P.C. in pubococcygeus) seems equally (and mysteriously) unappealing to toddlers. I say "vulva;" she says "bagina." And she is not alone.

"I don't like the word either," says my friend Selene, “But it seemed silly to teach the wrong thing out of an irrational dislike of a word, so I taught my girls 'vulva.'"

"They say 'vagina.'"

I feel bad about it, I really do. I have vulva guilt. I feel like I ought to embrace the vulva, and I am sure I have seen that done in at least one piece of feminist performance art since I've been living in San Francisco. But the culture says vagina. The kids say vagina. Increasingly I hear myself say vagina, too.

Let's just say the mons veneris is not a hill I'm willing to die on.