An outsider's insights about vaginas

This post is mostly about vaginas. (Actual vagina vaginas, not the common euphemism for women's genitals that vaginas are only a part of.) I obviously don't have a vagina, but I think it's ok because I'm going to speak, based on experience with partners who do have them, about public perceptions and (serious) misperceptions about them.

So one of the things that bugs me about the whole Purity Ball / Laura Sessions Stepp approach to chastity is the chirpy double standard wherein everybody fetishises women's chastity but -- unless maybe he picks up an incurable STD or prefers men -- nobody expects men to remain chaste till marriage.

One clue to this can be found in Stepp's easily mocked house analogy: "Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn't want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?"

She also has an analogy about the desirability of smorgasbords after everyone's picked through it. Harder core Purity types analogize about rosebuds with all the petals pulled off. Or gum after it's been chewed. (But, since they don't care about men, never anything about levers that have been pulled after the breaking of glass. But I digress...)

Anyway the one thing they all have in common is the idea that sex somehow physically ruins a woman. (It's got to be something physical, right? Because if it was psychological damage they'd worry about men too. But, again, no metaphors about how nobody wants to use a pump after the handle's been used. So it's definitely about some physical change.

Well. Some people evidently have a very poor grasp of women's anatomy (including a surprising number of women, I might add -- and not just the ones who refer to their genitals as "down there.") And since *some* people evidently still think there might be *teeth* "down there" let's see if we can't clear up a couple of misconceptions.

I've mentioned the two-sphere gender model (for woo-woo types there's the equally wrong yin-yang gender model.) You know, if men work outside women have to work inside. If men hunt women obviously ought to farm. If women are emotional and loving men are supposed to be pragmatic and watch a lot of sports. You know, that sort of thing?

Well, I think the feeling goes, if men's cocks are strong, stiff, and able to take a lot of pounding then women's corresponding part, her actual internal vagina, obviously has to be pliable and delicate and fragile as... well... rose petals or picture windows or smorgasbords or gum, I guess. The point being, though, that if you put so much as a fingertip, let alone a tampon, a vibrator, or *definitely* a cock... you're just going to ruin it.

Yeah, yeah, that's a out-of-control irrational idea -- see, for instance, baby's heads and blah blah blah -- but then so is the idea that there might be teeth down there and Google returns 104,000 entries on that!

So here's a clue. Vaginas spring back as good as new. Very quickly. Even after they've engulfed a cock. Even after they've embayed a very large cock. And no, not they're not springy because of some Teh Baby-Head magic either (like anyone's cock competes with baby head in the first place.) Instead it's that vaginas are part of the human body (a shock to some, I know) and human bodies are dynamic, resilient, and strong.

I mean, one probable point of confusion is that the vulva (pussy, cunt, "down there," vajayjay) just outside the vagina is athwart with nerve endings and so it's pretty easy to irritate or even cause pain through clumsiness or carelessness. (And of course while nobody ever does you could say the same thing about heads of cocks.) But sensitive to the touch and easily-and-irreparably damaged are two very separate things, and the Purity/Stepp concern seems to be that even (especially) if the vagina encounters something it's totally designed for it's suddenly as ruined as a picked-over smorgasbord, a smashed window, or a wilted rose.

Sorry. The same things that make vaginas (and the vulvas they're part of) that make them so warm, moist, and responsive -- millions of nerve endings, a rich blood supply, remarkably strong and sophisticated musculature, supple folds and furrows -- also makes it extraordinarily resilient.

As resilient as the physiologically not-dissimilar similar flesh covering of a man's cock.

And cocks, the Purity/Stepp mentality would have us believe, is practically invulnerable -- certainly by anything as mundane as a little -- or even quite a lot -- of vigorous intercourse.

And soooo... neither is the vagina!

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Notes:

Why vagina and not vulva: I've concentrated on the internal vagina instead of the rest of the genital area it's because all but the very loopiest chastity nuts believe women can, for instance, ride a bike without mashing their pee-pees into picked-over smorgasbords, wilted roses, or broken picture windows. Therefore if Teh Cock is going to ruin you for someone else I figure they think the damage must be internal. And that would be the vagina.

During and after arousal: Another possible source of misconception is the effect intercourse has on someone's vulva and vagina. If you weren't very experienced, or if you let your preconceptions trump evidence, or if you had a shocking lack of imagination, you might imagine that a vagina is just a hole "down there." And if you didn't know better you might have some idea that it gets slippery somehow, and there's that clitoris thing, and depending on which high-school health book you learned everything from you might even have some sort of notion about "tenting" and "cervical sipping." But what you *wouldn't* know is that the whole complex system of highly sophisticated internal and external organs undergoes incredible (but temporary) changes during arousal and, especially, arousal with intercourse so that it looks *very* *very* different immediately before, during, and immediately after sex. It swells and reddens as it grows engorged with blood. It blooms open as the clitoris and inner and outer labia grow turgid with arousal. It lengthens and enlarges as different core muscles shift and the pelvis subtly (or not so subtly) tilts. It seeps creamy, heady liqueurs from visible and invisible sources. The sophisticated system of voluntary and involuntary muscles make it pulse and open and squeeze. If you're imagining maidenly, passive, "sheaths" or "holes" you're in for a pleasant surprise. Or, if you're not comfortable with the idea of women as active and dynamic participants in sex and prefer to think of them as passive receptacles for men's cocky dynamism, you're in for a rude shock because the changes during high arousal are as striking, and almost as obvious, as men's arousal. But here's the deal: after women relax and recover from arousal their genitals return to their original, no-longer-engorged, tucked-out-of-the-way-until-next-time condition. Just like men do.

- Resilience: I'm not quite sure what it's about, but when men imagine other men their partners have slept with they evidently tend to imagine those men have larger penises than they do. (Odd, I know. Sort of the opposite of the 80% of people who say they're above-average drivers.) Not to worry. 'Member I said vaginas are active, dynamic, resilient parts of active dynamic people, and that they're rich with nerves and muscles, especially around and just inside the entrance? They're very stretchy, right? Well they're also just as squeeze-y. Since some people are able to go from stretching around their partner's whole hand to squeezing his cock hard enough to hurt moments later, it's not bloody likely that her next partner, days, weeks, months, or years later is going to notice any difference at all.

- Childbirth: Yeah, vaginal delivery can do a number on a woman's vagina. But guess what? A lot of those changes happen *before* delivery, during the quite striking changes bodies undergo during pregnancy to prepare for birth. And even after caesarian delivery the body still takes quite a while to unwind all those changes. (At least some OBs and midwives will tell you it takes roughly nine months to gear up and another nine to return pre-pregnancy conditions.) If it's a hard birth with tearing then yeah, then recovery can take a little longer. But it's a myth that OBs or midwives put in an extra "lover's knot" stitch to tighten women back up while making repairs. Unless there's really traumatic injury the vagina recovers very nicely on its own and/or with the help of kegels and/or (important!) a partner who's able and willing to share infant and child care with the mother so she has *time and energy and inclination* to recover. *BUT* here's the kicker. The save-yourself-till-marriage people aren't talking about pregnancy, labor, and delivery so *even if* having children make that much difference (and in my experience with partners with children it doesn't) it's still a moot point. They're saying just having Teh Sex ruins you. (I gather they don't think mothers have sex lives at all. *Their* moms certainly never did.)

- Maturing: I think this is the secret sleeper effect responsible for a lot of the misconceptions resulting in stupid smorgasbord and rose-petal analogies. Being parts of women's bodies and all, vaginas change over time as they gain or lose weight, exercise or don't exercise, and as hormone levels ebb and flow. But those changes are going to happen whether or not the woman has sex.

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Bottom line? Based on my experience with numerous partner's vaginas -- those who have never had sex at all and those who have partied with equivalent of the Prussian army and their horses -- Laura Sessions Stepp and the rest of the wait-till-marriage crowd are talking through their hats. *They* might have problems with sexually experienced women but those are strictly mental problems. And just to be clear I'm talking about *their* mental problems, not sexually experienced women's.