With issues concerning women consistently headlining in the news in not just the past few weeks (ex. Malala Yousafzai), but for months now with examples like Todd Akin, I want to take some time to write about one aspect that goes unmentioned. Many of these discussions about women show a fear and lack of understanding and appreciation of women, feminine energy and female bodies. This fear and misunderstanding goes down to even the naming of our bodily parts.
From The Vagina Monologues to vajazzling, consistently the name of the female genital area in English is incorrectly used. It is not the vagina, that is just the pathway to the cervix; the entire region is actually called the vulva. Now if we get that wrong and don’t care to correct it, what does that say about how we address a female’s body and women in general (cis-gendered, transgendered and others in between). We are basically reduced down to our uterus and the pathway to it.
If we look back in time through the figures and statues left behind, we see that the female genital was not hidden, but looked at as powerful:
