Vajaysus! What do you call yours?
Tags: down there, front bottom, genitals, lady parts, Naomi Wolf, privates, rude bits, Sile na Gig, vagina
Gird your loins! Another new article from another new Gaelick writer, Grania:
Once upon a time, a friend of Naomi Wolf helped her celebrate a book deal by making pasta shapes, which he dubbed “cuntini”.
Unfortunately, Wolf took offense and decided to reclaim lady bits, leading to her new book: Vagina: A new biography. Naomi’s uses “vagina” to refer to the whole shebang, more correctly called the vulva, but hey, maybe I’m anal about vagina.
This may be the difference between us and our American diaspora, but I was unaware that vagina was linguistically off-limits. Do vaginas really need to be reclaimed? Are they not there for approximately 50% of the population, neatly joining our legs with added functional features? Hasn’t the naming of the vagina been snatched back from the eager beavers? Is Naomi just making a hoo-ha about nothing?
Image: amazon.co.uk
Surely the cuntini, which caused the problem in the first place, should be the word to be reclaimed?
“Cunt” seems to have made a definite march into polite society, dividing feminists into those who “use the c*** word”, and those who just say cunt. Old-school feminsts such as Germain Greer and Angela Carter reclaimed the word with onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outbound/www.youtube.com’);”>verve and onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outbound/www.youtube.com’);”>wit to allow no part of our bodies to be off-limits.
When Azaelia Banks has been the go-to tune for the last 18 months, onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/outbound/www.youtube.com’);”>merrily singing about licking that cunt, is Naomi, bless her, not being a little timid?
We don’t seem to have the same tortured attitudes to the naming of women’s parts in Ireland (“front bottom” and “down there” have served well). Is it a mixture of a paternalistic constitution and a laid back attitude to labeling?
Maybe it’s because we have a proud tradition of Síle Na Gigs, perched on church walls and predating constitutional attempts to codify a woman’s place in Ireland. They’re there, and they’re bare, if a little weather beaten.
Then there was the infamous case of US Senator Lisa Brown being asked to leave the floor of the Michigan Senate for saying “vagina”. This is truly worrying. Every book on human biology should include (with labels) an image of a vagina. How did it become a taboo to name a vaginal passage? Is it because female genitalia is an innie, rather than the outie of male genitalia, that coyness has crept in?
I don’t want to start talking cock, but something as egalitarian as genitalia is going to be hard to avoid naming, and those names are going to be lewd, rude and hopefully good.
Tasty! Image: incurable_hippie via flickr
And if I was serving a cuntini, it would definitely be a cocktail. Perhaps baileys and whiskey served with parallel stripes of Chantilly cream and a cherry on top.
So, what do you think? And what do you call yours?
Front page image: “Domestic Goddess Installation” by lightsight via flickr
Category thumbnail image: “Orchid – Storczyk” by Jarosław Pocztarski via flickr
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The raddest thing I learned in my degree was that the latin for cunt is ‘cunnus’. Azealia Banks probably has no idea just how long people have been talking about them in songs
I prefer the word ‘cunt’ to ‘pussy’ (can i say that? LOL) but i think ‘vajayjay’ is cute
I dunno, I really have a problem with wishy-washy words for female genitalia: vajayjay, honi, yoni, hoo-hoo – all that shite sends me into a silent, fuming rage. The reason being, it’s all very infantalising, dismissive and “let’s not really talk about what we’re talking about”.
And “pussy” pisses me off – it just makes me think of immature boys. And no self-respecting dyke wants that when you’re getting down to bidness.
And when I learned that “vagina” was Latin for “sheath” (as in a sword’s sheath), well for me vaginas went out the window.
: )
So, it’s cunt all the way for me. Maybe also gee, because I’m a Dub.
Can not abide the ‘C’ word or the ‘P’ word. They sound so vulgar,aggressive and immature it’s just a horrible word.
I mainly just say ‘vaj’ cause I’m hip like that. Or make up a delightful phrase like ‘lady pocket’, ‘mossy cleft’ (a phrase from a show called Dark Place) or ‘the baby maker’ as in ‘Ooof, kicked me right in the baby maker’.
Depends what kind of person you are.
Heh! Some of those are bonkers. (Or vajonkers, if you will.)
But I’ll stand up for the cunt! It’s like any word that can be used against us – hey, some people have been known to say “lesbian” like it’s a bad thing. Even “girl” and “woman” are tossed around as though they’re slurs. Pfff..
I’m all for reclaiming words where appropriate, and I reckon cunt is one of em. So there.
: )
J’know I struggled for ages trying to figure out what to call my precious bits, and I find that the older I get the more I’m embracing my cunt.
Not in public like
Undercarriage sound like it needs an NCT; mossy cleft????; lady pocket????
Lord!
I like your gee too Clickie
Ahem….maybe I should rephrase that….
I’ll keep my gee to myself, thank you very much.
I have a phobia of the word ‘gee’ (effort of even writing it!!) ah i forgot about the owl ‘VAJ’ yep this is my fav lol…yeah true…it is usually immature straight males who use the word ‘pussy’…i dont mind it if a woman uses it though…cue Samantha from Sex and the City “i just caught Richard eating another womans pussy” (the sushi moment) LOL…please GOOGLE
it shoud come up on you tube somewhere haha