Origins of words, and conversations in anatomy class

One of the fun things for me about studying midwifery was learning the origins of many words: midwife, vagina, and cunt, among others. One of the fun things about studying anatomy at massage school is having these come back up.

The cunt came up in a particularly interesting conversation about the bones of the foot. Yes, you have cunts in your foot. Well, cuniforms, anyway: three of the seven tarsal bones in your foot are the medial, intermediate and lateral cuniforms. When the instructor mentioned the cuniforms in class, my head popped up; I had heard that word before. I asked what cuniform meant (dude, it was 9pm, after 2.5 hours of anatomy lecture; I was tired!), she said she didn’t know, and BAM, it came to me! I’d heard it before, in the root of cunt! “Cuniform” means “wedge”; “cunt” refers to the wedge of the visible pubic mons. Problem was I’d said “Oh!”, and then, of course, she wanted to know… And while I have absolutely no compunctions using “cunt” in a casual setting, or when discussing it academically, I was sitting in a room with a half dozen others I barely know, most of them little old ladies, on the spot, and the damn teacher wasn’t taking any hints. I believe the phrase “woman’s private parts” crossed my lips, at which point my inner feminist keeled over, disowned me, and burst into flames, all at once. “Oh, cunt!” exclaimed the teacher, who might or might not be gay, but who has a truly impressive tie collection. “Yup”, said the mortified I — I was tripping over cunt? Really? Had my ovaries walked away without giving notification? Was I going to have to hand in my ballsy woman card? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, alas. However, I will never forget the names of at least three of the tarsals in the human foot.

The other fun one came the following week when same teacher was discussing the tendon sheath. “Pretend this pencil is a tendon. And my hand here” making an O “is the sheath. The tendon just goes in there and moves around in the sheath, slides in and out, the sheath providing moisture for easy gliding…” making the appropriate motions, at which point I am burying my head in the table trying not to snigger too loudly. My friend sitting next to me looks at me as though thinking I simply have a dirty mind. On a note (I have learned my lesson about speaking up with these things), I tell her “vagina is latin for sheath”. “Really?” she mouths. Oh yes, I nod. And by now we both are sniggering noticeably, and probably pissing off the rest of the q-tip haired ladies.

As a language geek, I vastly prefer the meaning of cunt to the meaning of vagina: the wedge of the visible mons when a woman stands erect and proud, versus the entirely internal sheath for a man’s “weapon”; which symbolism do you prefer? And yet which do we use in “polite” company, and which has ended up one of the seven unspeakable words? Coincidence? Perhaps… Due to its history, I cannot quite bring myself to advocate the reclamation of cunt, but nor would I hinder it. I surely would celebrate anything that moves our understanding of female genitalia from male-centric (vagina) to female-centric (the rest of it).

And in the meantime, don’t take an anatomy class with me unless you want to alienate the other students. But at least we’ll laugh, and remember some things very well.