The vagina is for the benefit of other people, ie men and babies. But the vulva belongs only to the woman providing as it does most of her sexual sensations. I have never been able to understand why vulva is a word so rarely used and I suspect it may not even be known to many people. Were it to be used, there would be no need for all the euphemisms mentioned in the article and for the confusion which I know arises when sexually abused girls are trying to describe what has been done to them.
Dr Ann Farebrother, Folkestone
Recently, prior to undertaking sex therapy for anorgasmia I started a "Dear Cunt, love letters" diary in which, among other issues, I grappled with reclaiming the C word from that sleaze-coated male preserve because I needed an all-inclusive, preferably non-medicalised word to refer to that most wonderful part of my body. Mimi Spencer points out that calling the entire area vagina is technically wrong. What does it say, beyond the confusion it generates, that we choose to misname our external genitals by the name of a hidden, unpronounceable organ, the functions of which are the most unfathomable to young children and the most uncomfortable for their parents to explain? It is equivalent to calling the face the oesophagus.
Western culture has fetishised all things phallic while just as vigorously avoiding acknowledgement of all things vulval. The terminology to express this idea doesn't even exist.
Name Withheld
I have two sons, and we decided that the correct word - penis - should be used from the start. If I had had daughters I would have done the same. It would have meant that in any situation from the age of three years old when the child was away from me (playgroup, school) the child would have the correct vocabulary to describe hurt or illness to a responsible adult without frustration or danger.
Name Withheld
This is a topic that has been discussed frequently by myself and friends but there never seems to be a comfortable conclusion. Why is it that my sons (no daughters) happily say penis and willy or vagina and ... and what? They're still not very comfortable saying fanny and they blanch and say "Mu-um!" if I use the extension of this which is "Craddock". It's not a term I would impose on a girl child right enough but one I find, as an adult, strangely useable.
Paola McClure
What's wrong with the word "quim"? It hasn't the harsh sound or the abusive connotations of cunt. Quim is probably a Celtic word - Joyce uses it in Ulysses, and the OED suggests a linguistic connection with the old Scots word "queme". As an adjective, queme had a range of meanings from "beautiful" through "pleasant" and "suitable" to "useful"; as a verb, it meant "to please" or "to gratify", and occasionally "to join or fit closely"
Griff Everett
I have agonised over the appropriate naming of female genitalia and always believed that having a clear name was important in ownership of a crucial part of our anatomy - physically, socially and culturally. The lack of a commonly agreed colloquial term for female genitalia led us to go for the anatomical "vulva", which my daughter and son use totally appropriately and without embarrassment. If we are unused to small children using certain anatomical vocabulary, however correct, then perhaps we ought to ask why WE have a problem with that, because in my experience, the children don't.
As often cited in discourse about children and their ability to absorb difficult vocabulary, topics on dinosaurs furnish them with many polysyllabic words which they use with alacrity. With regard to genitalia, I think we should definitely "name" in order not to "shame" our children, particularly our daughters. And if no suitable colloquial term emerges, which seems likely, then use the anatomical terms of which we have a shared understanding.
Karen Brooke
When I was a child, I insisted in coining a name for everything that my parents did not provide a name for. For example, I called my penis my tail. I did not know at that time that penis was the Latin for tail. I also remember coining "doll's botty" as the term for vulva, as my mother or sisters did not provide a word. As you might guess, my toddler's mind saw the typical plastic bottom of a doll as the nearest visual analogy to a vulva. In hindsight, it is obvious that there was a conspiracy of silence from parents and siblings regarding any reference to that unmentionable female part. Well done on opening a widely taboo topic.
Chris Brown
In the early 1960s I worked in the Special FX Lab at MGM Studios in north London. One day we received a cable from our head office in California regarding a scene in a film about to released called Of Human Bondage. It showed Kim Novak lying face down, naked on a bed. Our American colleagues were worried about her "prominent fanny". The technicians gathered round, men and women alike, and studied that scene frame by frame, looking for the offending vagina but none was to be found. We cabled our response back to America and they came back saying the fanny was staring us in the face. Then we realised that a US fanny is not the same as a UK fanny. Using an optical effect we threw a shadow over Kim Novak's backside and that was that. Fanny or not, the film turned out to be a bit of a flop.
Martyn Day
My two-year-old daughter said to me in bed this morning: "Mummy's fanny. Lovely fanny!" I took the compliment gracefully. You couldn't have that conversation about a front-bottom could you?
Gwinear Lloyd