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Anxiety

How Women Talk About Their Lady-Parts

From "creeks and cracks" to a vagina.

Peter Paul Rubens/wikimedia commons
Source: Peter Paul Rubens/Wikimedia Commons

Years ago, a friend took her talkative toddler Anne on an airplane en route to see her grandma. Anne was young enough to sit in a car seat, with the car seat’s seatbelt going between her legs. As the plane was descending to land, Anne announced, loudly, “Mama, the seatbelt is tickling my vagina!” The cabin fell silent. My friend said, “I wanted to die.”

My reaction to the story was, “Wow! How did Anne learn that word?” When I was her age, I didn’t know I had anything nameable “down there,” and when I learned that I do, it was called my “creeks and cracks” by my otherwise articulate and precise mother. Gotta love those southern euphemisms! I learned that those parts of me were special: they had a metaphorical name.

There was a phase right around puberty when I didn’t know the difference between my vagina and my uterus: I thought they were the same thing. There also was a moment of deep embarrassment in my early twenties when a fatherly doctor referred to the nurse he worked with having a medical issue “related to her womb.” I had to wend my way through the terminology, pausing briefly at the King James Bible, the only place I had encountered women with wombs, to realize that she might be going to have a hysterectomy.

I learned many other words that name the things down there, including at least some of the vulgar ones. The c-word—okay, okay, yes, it did take me a moment to realize what the expression “c-word” referred to when I first heard it—is often perceived as the worse insult against women, either because it reduces us to our sexual parts or because it profanes our sexual parts.

Luckily, my clients these days use the established medical terminology—vagina, uterus, hysterectomy—rather than the various ranges of diction I’ve mentioned here when they talk about their sexual anatomy and problems therewith. Their terminology keeps me from wandering off into the euphemisms, etymology, denotations, and connotations rather than the implications of what they are telling me.

Because women now have words like vagina and uterus, instead of being a nerdy philologist, I can be an empathetic therapist as they tell me about the struggles of severe anxiety surrounding sexual orientation, or depression about a severe case of adenomyosis, or their reactions to having had a hysterectomy before menopause. All serious stuff, difficult to talk about, kept close to the heart. Here’s a little bit about those stories, for those of us that didn’t grow up knowing how to talk about our female equipment.

First, the hysterectomy stories: a friend has revealed some pretty hefty experiences in the course of our relationship, including details after her husband’s death after repeated kidney transplants. This week we were visiting together in a room heated by a wood stove, and I suddenly was very warm and commented on it, ending in typical middle-aged fashion, “I don’t think it’s a hot flash; I think I’m done with those.” “I wouldn’t know about that,” Andrea said. “I had a hysterectomy and didn’t go through any of that stuff.” My initial thought was, “Lucky you!” but when I looked at her, I saw that her face was sad. She has a child, but her husband died right around the time she would have hit menopause—too many changes at once, too many shifts in identity at one time, too much loss.

Andrea reminds me of an old friend who showed me a quilt she had made. Fiona had never had children and had wanted a baby. Her marital circumstances—a husband who didn’t want kids, and then another husband but too late for a viable pregnancy—had filled her with disappointment and regret, and the gynecological issues had necessitated a hysterectomy. The quilt was gorgeous, and I thought at first it was a Valentine’s Day celebration of love: a big heart, surrounded by small red shapes. “How fun! How beautiful!” I said. She looked at me and I realized I had read it all wrong. I waited. “Each of those,” she explained, pointing at the small red drops, “are the eggs I lost when I had my hysterectomy. I calculated approximately how many times I would have ovulated before menopause, and put one ovum in for each time. Each one could have become the baby I didn’t have.” She didn’t look at me. I put my hand on her hand as it held the quilt symbolizing her loss. “I’m so sorry, Fiona. You have made a beautiful memorial to—” It felt too weird to say “a beautiful memorial to your ova.” “A beautiful memorial to what should have been.” She finally looked at me, eyes shining with tears, and nodded.

The woman with severe anxiety about sexual orientation, Leah, tells me that sometimes at work she gets so caught up in questioning whether she’s straight, bisexual, or a lesbian that she has to go to the bathroom and have an orgasm. She’s a Physician’s Assistant and knows anatomy very well. We talk about how anxiety tenses the body, and obsessive thoughts cycling in her brain keep the anxiety pulsing through her. Some of us find our shoulders are tight, others get pain in our chests when we are repeatedly and acutely anxious. Leah’s tension occurs lower down. She’s able to laugh, even though she’s crying too: “I guess I don’t have to decide if I want to have sex with a guy or a girl,” she says. “I can just have sex with Anxiety.” She agrees to practice relaxing her vaginal muscles when she feels the obsessive thoughts taking over.

Margo, the woman with severe adenomyosis, has had surgery to alleviate pain during sex, and then physical therapy to help strengthen her pelvic floor. But the pain didn’t go away completely, and the highly-specialized physical therapist has suggested another therapeutic method in addition to “having things put inside me to strengthen my pelvic muscles.” Margo looks up, meets my eyes with a mildly challenging gaze, and says with a smile in her voice, “Did you know that there is such a thing as vaginal biofeedback?” I can’t help myself and snort with laughter. “No! Do tell!” She grins and tells me about it—pretty much what you’d think it is: electrodes attached to the vagina give feedback about tension and relaxation so she can learn what to tighten and what to relax for greater comfort.

Women expend huge amounts of emotion, energy, and thought on what Margo calls, with heavy irony, “our lady-parts.” It’s hard work to be a woman. Luckily, some of the expenditure is fun—tickling the vagina, if you will—and some of it is deeply gratifying—having a baby, being aware of the subtle ways our bodies communicate with us, listening to the spirit within.

Women are no longer compelled to treat their sexuality as a taboo: with silence, raunch, or euphemism. Unlike the c-word of taboo, “vagina” is a beautiful, euphonious word. What a relief that women now have a range of positive language to talk directly and confidently about our bodies, and in doing so to share the joys and pains of having [smile] lady-parts.

Duval, La Naissance de Venus/wikimedia commons
Source: Duval, La Naissance de Venus/Wikimedia Commons
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