Tag Archives: anatomy

It all falls down

For the 20th time since the Boychick was born, my uterus sheds its endometrial lining. For the 20th time since the Boychick was born, it all slides down my vagina, falls between my lips, is absorbed by the cloth between my legs. I’ve talked about that before.

Here’s what I don’t talk about: all month, all cycle, I am falling out, falling down. My rectum falls forward, my bladder back. My uterus to the left, cervix perforce to the right (deduction rather is vice versa: os is found to the right, therefore uterus must be falling left).

It’s not something that bothers me — except when it does. It’s not something I talk about — except now I am.

The technical terms sound sweet, seem sinister: rectocele, cystocele. This one doesn’t even sound pretty with my eyes closed: uterine prolapse.

Well, prolapse, maybe. Pro-laps. Doesn’t sound too bad, if I don’t think too hard.

A fact: the suffixes -rrhoid and -rrhage both mean the same thing. And yet hemorrhoid and hemorrhage? Not so much. Go figure.

I have the ‘rrhoids, too.

True story (no really, this is relevant): when I was 12 years old, I went on a rickety old wooden roller coaster, was lifted out of my seat, and slammed back down. I’ve had low back and sacrum problems ever since. It’s also probably why my coccyx is, itself, fallen — in, forward, to the right. And that one hurts.

How these are connected: every. single. time I talk to anyone about my coccyx pain (chiropractors, doctors, massage therapists, cis women with similar issues), the answer is a variation on this: “Have you considered internal coccygeal adjustments?” “Maybe you should see a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic muscles.” “I know an acupuncturist who does vaginal treatments.” Every. Time. If I mention the rectocele as well? They redouble their recommendations. (Silly ideas about anatomy, and connection of internal organs. Pfft.)

Everyone, it seems, wants their hands — or their needles, and as much as I love acupuncture I’m trying not to think about that one — in my pussy.

OK, so it’s a nice pussy. I don’t really blame them.

But pardon me if I’m also disinclined to allow them.

And yet…

Why?

I went to a midwife who knew the uselessness of vaginal exams in pregnancy, knew how rarely they were indicated in labor. The only time in the last five years fingers other than mine or my lover’s (or, as they were sliding out in birth, my child’s) have touched my vagina were after birth, examining for tears (I had none). That is as it should be, it seems to me. Too quick are OB/GYNs to poke us, prod us. Too often “medical need” is code for “physician habit” and becomes client’s trauma. I know this, and so I am wary of exams, wary of allowing unnecessary violation of my bodily integrity.

But, might there not be necessary non-violations? Or, even desirable, beneficial, honoring touches?

I’m sure there must be. I am told — by women I trust, women who trust their bodies — that there are.

Still, I resist.

And I hurt.

And I still resist.

And I still hurt.

I don’t like talking about pelvic organ prolapse. Inevitably, it seems, someone is going to blame my weight, my big baby (10lb 6oz, and no I wasn’t diabetic, thank you very much), my homebirth, is going to say I simply need surgery. From the other side will come pronouncements that I’m Doing It All Wrong — I’m not eating right, sitting right, standing right, breathing right. (And that I might even believe, because the mostly-sedentary American life I live is entirely unnatural and unhealthy on the human body, especially those of us with cis female anatomies.)

From any side might come fatalism, a proclamation of the profound brokenness of my body. But I don’t feel broken (except my tailbone, sometimes); I don’t want to feel broken. I don’t want to be warned off having another baby (eventually! not now!); I don’t want to be told I am too far gone to be helpable, fixable. I am, in short, afraid — afraid I will be told I am broken, afraid that I will discover it to be true.

My brain’s a little whacked too.

But if I am ever going to do anything that has a prayer of helping (have I mentioned the coccyx pain? Truly, it is a pain in my ass), I have to be able to talk about it. And so I am.

Today, it all falls down: my uterine lining, for the 20th time since the Boychick’s birth. My pelvic organs, constantly, always, starting well before his birth. My walls and defenses and impenetrable, impossible silences: now, and forever more.

10 Comments | Posted on 23 November 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: anatomy, Health, Menstruation, pregnancy

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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.

5 Comments | Posted on 20 February 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: anatomy, Gender, language, massage

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I am not a vagina

(I promise I’ll post thoughtful, substantive, probably curse-free posts that actually mention the Boychick soon — I have several ideas that are just waiting to get fleshed out — but while my butt is being kicked and my energy sapped by the Cold of DOOM, you get short, pissed off, off-topic, substance-”lite” rants. Sorry. Only not.)

I don’t care if it’s a metaphor; I don’t care if you’re simultaneously getting your radfem on and calling out the colluders (although there seems something misogynistic in dismissing someone one disagrees with with accusations of pandering to the patriarchy, even if supporting hegemony is a result of the acts, but whatever); I don’t care if you’re using it ironically to point out the obvious sexism in choosing an anti-woman woman candidate to try to capture the woman vote:

Stop calling women vaginas.

Seriously. Just fucking stop. Stop using vagina as the badge of womanhood. Stop calling the token woman the vagina candidate. Stop saying the only difference between (cisgendered!*) men and women are penises and vaginas.

I’m so sick of hearing about women and vaginas. It may have been radical once, but by now, unless you are talking about vaginal birth, The Vagina Monologues, or where to put a tampon or diaphragm, the use of “vagina” is just both overused and underimpressive — and it is really, really offensive. And yes, misogynistic.

So just. fucking. stop already.

*Seriously, can the use of “vagina=women” get more cissexist? Not only is vagina so not the be all end all of womanhood — and yes, I don’t care if you think you’re pointing out the fallacy, or phallusy, of that tired meme, you are supporting and perpetuating it — it’s not even the most accurate if you want to get all scary stupid gender essentialist. How about uterus? That gets more to the “core” of the matter, and (bonus!) manages to exclude and offend even more women, whose uteri have retired, or been removed, or who were both without one for whatever reason. If you’re going to be a sexist pig, might as well do it whole hog.

5 Comments | Posted on 2 February 2009 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: anatomy, Gender, language, misogyny

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Penises, vulvas, and other interesting things

June 2010 Note: This post reflects my thinking at the time it was written. Although I stand behind the message about language and the words vulva and penis, this post contains cissexist ideology and imagery, with only a dismissive parenthetical acknowledgment of transsexual/transgender ways of being. I apologize for any pain this post has caused, and assure you I would write vastly it differently today.

The Boychick is 21 months old. His vocabulary is not even trackable, it is so large and growing so quickly. Two of his favorite words are penis (“peenee”, which amuses me no end) and vulva. He knows mama wipes her vulva and her butt, and he knows he wipes his penis and his butt. He also likes to say he’s wiping his vulva, which near as I can figure means his perineum, that is, the bottom of his scrotum and the space between it and his anus. He really doesn’t believe us that he doesn’t have a vulva, that neither does his father, and that only mothers and women and girls have vulvas. He doesn’t yet understand the categories “male” and “female” as far as we can tell, though he knows there are differences between his mother and his father (his father’s breasts don’t have milk, for one!).

Interestingly, the idea of me having a penis has not come up. To my child, the default is having a vulva; penises are interesting extras, of course, but everyone has a vulva.

And here is an opening for one of my favorite rants: I loathe, loathe, LOATHE the saying “boys have penises, girls have vaginas“. Vagina isn’t a dirty word: it’s a great one (if we ignore its ignoble origins as a word meaning “sheath”). And barring infection, the organ isn’t dirty either, just amazingly useful (I conceived and birthed my child through mine! how cool is that?). But the analogue to the penis it ain’t, except in reference to PIV (penis in vagina) intercourse, where only the man’s orgasm matters.

Anatomically, the closest female analogue to penis is the clitoris. Say it with me, because it is just that beautiful a word: clitoris. It is the primary female sexual organ, not the vagina. Our vaginas are fabulously interesting passages, to be sure, but I know of less than a handful of women who can (or care to) orgasm exclusively through vaginal stimulation.

But perhaps I’m focusing too much on sex, with my championship of the clitoris (I am an American, after all, if a female one — and you will also note that I am speaking exclusively of female-born females, and ignoring female persons born with male-appearing bodies, and vice versa, and other gender variations; I beg you will forgive me my simplicity at this time, with the excuse that my little one is less than two years old).

Let’s take another tack: the vagina is an organ notable for its internality, invisible in all but sexual or gynecological situations. Boys must take it for granted that their mothers’ and sisters’ vaginas exist at all, much less know what they look like. We might as well say girls have uteri, for they’re about as visible to the average boy, and even more essential to anatomical female-ness. To say that boys have penises and girls have vaginas is to ignore all the beautiful external genitalia girls do have. Perhaps not the nestled-away clitoris, but the vulva as a whole, the external labia and pubic mons, are visible in casual situations, such as when on the toilet. So an argument could be made for the use of vulva, as the female external genital analogue to the penis, and indeed, that is what we use with the Boychick.

So, boys have penises and girls have clitorises. Or, boys have penises and girls have vulvas. But please, although factually true that boys have penises and girls have vaginas, it makes about as much sense as saying girls have clitorises and boys have prostates. So stop. Vagina is a beautiful word, one that we must not be afraid to use, but so is clitoris. So is vulva. And in this context, they make more sense. The use of vagina as the penis’s “opposite” is inherently male-focused, and ignores the hub (or nub!) of what it is to be female.