Vaginas and Their Taboo by Sonia Savur

I was sick last year, and I didn’t know why. As I sat inside an urgent care facility for the first time, I nervously told my doctor of my painful symptoms and how miserable I had felt for the past few days, hoping he would help calm my anxiousness and fear. This was not the case.

I was told that my symptoms were not as painful as I thought, and that I would have never had this condition if I had “simply practiced better hygiene.” Both tears and anger welled up in me, as I didn’t know whether to agree with this professional or be infuriated at the implication that I was dirty and that my experiences were preventable and invalid. As damaging as this was, I eventually realized that this was the exact reason that I wanted to become a doctor: I want to be there for others at their most vulnerable, at their most helpless, at their most petrified, and treat them with not only antibiotics but with compassion, care, and humanity.

Looking back, all of this sounds introspective, interesting, inspiring; I should not be ashamed of any detail of this story. Yet as I am writing now, I am hesitant to disclose a crucial detail: the condition. This inhibition is not because these scars are still fresh. It is not because I am reluctant to denounce this particular doctor online.

It is because it is about my vagina. I had a yeast infection. 

A yeast infection is not a big deal—almost three out of every four people with a vagina will contract one sometime in their life—yet people with vaginas who have never contracted one likely know little about them because rarely anybody talks about vaginal infections, much less vaginas in general. Thus I could not bear the thought of writing about mine in any capacity, much less publish it for anyone to read, yet I knew that if I had had this same traumatic interaction because of an infection anywhere else on my body, I would write about this incidence in a heartbeat. Why? 

Why am I so afraid to talk about my own body? What causes people—with and without a vagina alike—to be afraid of talking about them? 

This reluctance is largely due to how we discuss, and avoid discussing, vaginas in general. From “Cherry” to “Flower” to “Down There,” the word “vagina” is substituted for more euphonic words that invoke a level of cuteness and naivete to prevent discomfiture and subjective obscenity, but these substitute words instead prolong a stigma against discussing vaginas by equating them to something as visually appealing as fruits and as delicate as flowers. Vaginal health is such a taboo topic because the word is censored and demonized, falsely masquerading behind a lovely cloak of innocence and fragility created by its euphemisms. How can one be comfortable talking about something concrete and important, such as a UTI, an STD, or even their sexual life, when they feel as if they have to resort to referring to their vagina childishly as a “Kitty” or “Lady Parts” in order to appear chaste and decent? 

These euphemisms may be just verbal, but the false perceptions that they cast can have tangible repercussions in terms of health. It took me a week of experiencing symptoms of a vaginal infection to see a professional, simply because I was too afraid to talk about it and admit that there was something wrong. The combined lack of talk around vaginal health, portrayal of womxn by news and entertainment media, and fabricated beauty and lifestyle standards together contribute to the subliminal desire for cisgender womxn and their vaginas to be delicate, petite, and unproblematic. When problems do arise, they should not be spoken in order to preserve this shallow and frankly misogynistic illusion, and are not spoken in fears of breaking it. In 2015, researchers at Harvard University and Bangladesh University of Health Sciences investigated the repercussion of language on health by examining the medical and social impacts of the widespread Bengali euphemism for “vagina.” Usage of this censor, which does not have an equal in terms of its penile counterpart, contributes to the ways cisgender womxn’s bodies and sexuality are viewed, and it was found that this perception is correlated to medical neglect. By villainizing the word “vagina” in any language and using subjectively more polite substitutes instead, those afraid of upsetting others and those that become upset inherently dissuade people with vaginas from getting examinations regularly or, as in my case, when there is clearly a problem. 

Not only can dulcet euphemisms be detrimental to one’s vaginal health, but it can also harm one’s sexual health. Due to vaginas being correlated with daintiness, they themselves are thus eluded to be too virgin to talk about or touch. Shame toward talking about vaginas can lead to negative attitudes around and poor experiences with sexual actions such as masturbation and intercourse. Someone who is innocent knows better than to touch their “Lady Parts.” Someone who is decent should not speak on how their vagina feels and what it wants, and should instead focus on pleasuring the man during heterosexual intercourse, as perpetrated by heterosexual pornography whose narrative climax is almost always the man’s.

But aren’t penises just as scrutinized and euphemized as vaginas? While euphemisms exist for both, the word “penis” and its substitute words do not carry the same weight and negative connotations as with vaginas. “Log,” “snake,” “shaft,” and “sword” for example imply strength and firmness compared to the daintiness words for “vagina” invoke. Most importantly, the most common euphemism, “dick,” has the same denotation as “penis,” whereas there are almost no words for “vagina” that purely mean vagina and do not bring along the destructive undertones of the actual meanings of those words. While penile health and vaginal health both deserve more nonjudgmental discussion, the word “vagina” holds more weight than the word “penis” due to its ubiquitous euphemisms that correlate to false ideas of fragility and its forbiddance in conversation. The word itself does not carry power, but is powerful due to power being thrust upon it through fear.

This censorship isn’t new. Statues of Greek gods were constructed with their unabashed penises rarely hidden, whereas those of Greek goddesses were sculpted so that either their legs were tightly pressed together, or their hair, flowers, or clothing covered their vulva. Vagina and sexual taboo have existed for centuries, but although today’s mainstream media and pop culture still subconsciously uphold them, a growing number of vibrant womxn-led mediums have been gaining traction and pushing back. It is in the present-day those with vaginas have had the biggest platform to speak and the biggest audience to hear. And as squeamishness around vaginas appears in both those with and without one, it is imperative that we all start listening. 

Truthfully, I wrestled with myself about writing this essay, reluctant to proclaim that I have a vagina and that it occasionally has problems. It feels liberating to have typed the word “vagina” more times in this document that I have said aloud this year. Refrain from discussing vaginal health is rooted in the word itself: “vagina” has been ostracized for generations, and the best way to end this stigma is by calling vaginas what they are instead of relying on subjectively more pleasant euphemisms. The fear and lack of talk about vaginas stems from the word itself and its false, detrimental connotations that the English language inexplicably appointed it, which can have serious consequences on physical and sexual health. Eradicating this shame does not need to start with all those with vaginas immediately achieving sexual liberation, although that would be nice. Perhaps it simply needs to start with a word.

Sonia Savur (she/her/hers) is a freshman at the University of Southern California majoring in Quantitative Biology from San Jose, California. She is planning on pursuing a career in the medical field and working at Planned Parenthood or a free clinic in the future in order to help expand healthcare access to those it unjustly discriminates against. Outside of school, she enjoys dancing, volunteering with USC’s Prison Education Project, and working as a Poetry and Prose Reader for CWC. She can be found here.