In my day, it was a twat, snatch, coochie, muff, or beaver. Today, it’s more like pussy, cunt, vadge, hoo-ha, or vajayjay. Names for female genitals range from horrifically crude and approaching misogyny, to euphemisms so lovely, they are hardly recognizable. Whether you call yours a ‘fuck hole,’ the ‘quivering core of your femininity,’ or something in between, you’re talking about your vagina.

I’ve learned a lot about my vagina recently. It started a few years ago, when I discovered free digital romance novels. Boy did my cheeks blaze at first! (When I was first married about twenty years ago, I couldn’t even say the word ‘ass.’) Times had changed! Women referred to their pussies casually, talked about anal sex and BDSM as though they were perfectly normal. Gasp! After a few years, the shock factor wore off and I could read those words easily without batting an eyelash.

About a year ago, my marriage ended and very recently, I’ve been going online and chatting with people in instant messenger programs. I have the fake name; separate accounts for my real life friends and my cyber friends; the whole deal. I discovered something about myself. I like to dirty chat. And I’m good at it. (See, all of that reading was put to good use.) It’s fun to be a cyber tramp. I’m fun, absolutely filthy and have no shame.

(Funny aside: Although I can type words like cock, pussy, and fucking when I’m writing; I still can barely speak these words out loud. Sigh.)

So you know, if you do this, (the dirty cyber chatting) at some point a man will ask you to send naked pictures of your body or to see you masturbate on your webcam. Yeah… no. But I started to wonder what the fuss was all about. I took a picture of one boob and it looked kinda cute photographed from the right angle. Then I wondered what my, you know, um… quim looks like. I’ve never seen one. Never looked at mine, never looked at anyone else’s up close. Go figure. I’ve seen then in pictures, so I figured mine would look something like that.

It didn’t.

At all.

It’s not cute, small or pink. It doesn’t have lovely, compact dewy petals around it. And, I realized, it hadn’t been landscaped in a year, so it was quite overgrown. I was not impressed.

I’ve been assured by the “friends” who want the pictures that it doesn’t matter, that they are all different and they love to look at all of them. I know that some people prefer bare and some prefer bushy. There’s something for everyone, apparently. But, really, trust me, mine is not cute. Maybe those girls in the dirty pictures are 12? Have they all had labiaplasty? I just don’t know. Do some women genetically have more attractive vulvae? Okay, in all seriousness, and since I’m not an adult film star, it really doesn’t matter what it looks like, and it’s pretty telling that I had such a rigid expectation of what it should look like.

But, I digress.

The aesthetic qualities of my vulva notwithstanding, I’ve been thinking a lot about my vagina lately. I was sexually assaulted recently and the aftermath is that I feel pretty much as if I just gave birth. Again. It hurts like a sonofabitch, and it will take a few weeks to repair. So, as I write, leaning in my office chair to relieve the pain, I’m pondering the bearded clam.

Vaginas are amazing. They are the point of connection in sexual intercourse and the birth canal for brand new babies. They are indeed the core of a woman’s femininity. They give pleasure, they bring life, they stretch and accommodate, and they heal. For some, the labia, clitoris and vagina are dirty and embarrassing; and for others they are sources of boundless play and limitless pleasure.

You know what?

I don’t care what you call it. I don’t care what I call it anymore.

It’s what we individually and as a society think of them that matters. Pussies, cunts, pee pees and sissies. Vaginas make women both vulnerable and powerful, and that can be dangerous or enlightening.