You Can Say "Period."

Some days I feel like the world has made great leaps in breaking "female" taboos. BodyForm has released an ad with blood in it instead of the strange blue fluid we've all grown used to, women talk more openly about their periods, about reproductive issues, and the stigma behind getting a sexual health check seems to be reducing.

But today, I spoke to an eighteen year old girl who didn't know what a uterus was. I told her that she peed from a hole called her "urethra", not her anus as she believed. I explained what the morning-after pill was, because she had never heard of it. I told her about uterine lining, because she didn't know what a period was. I talked about barrier methods of contraception and how only condoms can prevent STIs. I assured her that masturbation didn't cause infertility, as others had told her it did. I challenged her deduction that it was more acceptable for men to cheat than women, because "it's just what they do." I reassured her that having sex won't "make her vagina huge."

We had a wonderful chat. I showed her pictures of normal anatomy, talked about body hair, booked a sexual health clinic appointment for later this week, chatted about the word "slut" and why I don't like to use it. We talked about birth, and looked at pictures from my Instagram feed of babies crowning — because if a vagina can expel a fetal skull and go back to its normal size, I said, men would be flattering themselves to think that their penis is going to have a great deal of impact...

I'm so glad we had the opportunity to discuss all this, but I'm absolutely furious about how the education system has failed this young woman, and no doubt so many women like her who have grown into adulthood without a basic understanding of their anatomy, or of how to avoid sexually transmitted infection and unwanted pregnancy. I'm also furious with the culture that taught her that cheating is just what men do, and that it's shameful for women to have high sex drives.

This morning I received training on FGM, as is mandatory for all healthcare professionals, and my heart broke for the hundredth time over it. I'm so angry that women's health is put second (or third or fourth or fifth) to men's pleasure. I'm angry that women feel the need to have labiaplasty and other vaginal "rejuvenation" because our screwed-up culture has told so many lies about female genitalia.

Ladies and fellow vagina-owners of all descriptions, I hope and pray that you love your vulva. I hope you know how incredibly wonderful your reproductive organs are, how unique they are in comparison to any other organ in the human body. I hope you know them and learn about them, I hope you fully appreciate how awesome your body is, and I beg you to share that knowledge. The taboo isn't broken yet, and as a result we're still so vulnerable to the lies about womanhood that we hear. Let's shout back louder with our message of self-awareness, self-acceptance and self-love.