residence hall to answer anonymous questions out of a box, only to find that one student had put in the question, “How do I learn to squirt?” while 6another student had put in, “How do I stop squirting?”
Needless to say, our culture sends mixed messages to women about their genital fluids . . . or their lack thereof. On the one hand, ejaculation is viewed as a quintessentially masculine event and women’s genitals are, ya know, shameful, so for a woman’s body to do something so emphatic and wet is unacceptable. On the other hand, it’s a comparatively rare event, and the perpetual pursuit of novelty, coupled with basic supply-and-demand dynamics, means that the rare commodity of a woman who ejaculates is prized and put on display. So if they’re paying attention to cultural messages about ejaculation, women are understandably confused.
The biological message is simple: Female ejaculation is a byproduct, like male nipples and the hymen. No matter how big a deal culture makes of it, women vary. One woman I know never ejaculated in her life until shortly after menopause, when she got a new partner. All of a sudden she was ejaculating a quarter of a cup of fluid with every orgasm. Was it the change in partner? Was it the hormonal shift of menopause? None of the above? I have no idea.
But this brings me to an important point about genitals: They get wet sometimes, and they have a fragrance. A scent. A rich and earthy bouquet, redolent of grass and amber, with a hint of woody musk. Genitals are aromatic, sometimes, and sticky sometimes, too. Your genital secretions are probably different at different phases in your menstrual cycle, and they change as you age, and they change with your diet—women vary.
If you don’t find the smell or sensation of genital wetness to be completely beautiful and entrancing, that’s unsurprising given how we teach people to feel about their genitals. But how you feel about your genitals and their secretions is learned, and loving your body just as it is will give you more intense arousal and desire and bigger, better orgasms.
More on that in chapter 5. intersex parts 7 Intersex folks,whose genitals are not obviously male or female at birth, also have all the same parts; theirs happen to be organized somewhere between the standard female and standard male configurations. The size of the phallus, the location of the urethral opening, or the split of the labioscrotal tissue may be anywhere in between.
Homology goes a long way in explaining how intersex genitals come to be. People whose genitals are “somewhere in between” experienced some slight variation in the hugely complex cascade of biochemical events involved in the growth of a fetus, from egg fertilization through embryonic development and gestation. This small change results in slightly different genitals. There’s nothing wrong with their genitals, any more than there’s 8 anything wrong with a person whose labia are uniquely large or small.It’s still all the same parts, just organized in a different way. For example, the male urethral opening may be anywhere on the head of the penis; rarely, it is somewhere along the shaft of the penis, but that too is just fine, as long as it doesn’t impede urination or cause chronic infection (which it usually does not). As long as the genitals don’t cause pain and aren’t prone to infection or other medical issues, they’re healthy and don’t require any kind of medical intervention. We’re all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways.
This is why I don’t need to see your genitals to tell you that they’re normal and healthy. You’ve got all the same parts, just organized in your own unique way.
Like many sex educators, I include photographs of a variety of vulvas in my anatomy lecture slides.
Where do I find these photographs? On the Internet, of course.
My only difficulty is getting a diverse range—mostly I find images of the vulvas of young, thin, white, completely shaved women. I have to search carefully to find great sex-positive images of the vulvas of older women, women of size, women of color, and women who’ve got all their pubic hair.
One day I was sitting around a busy comics convention talking about this challenge with Camilla, who, like me, is a nerd and a former college peer sex educator. Unlike me, she has a degree in gender studies and studio art, is African American, and makes her living as an illustrator—all of which gave her insight into my little challenge.
She said, “Seriously, Emily? You’re googling, what, like, ‘black vulva’? At work?”
I shrugged apologetically. “Sausages, laws, and sex education lectures. You don’t want to know how any of them are made.”
And Camilla said, “Let me guess: All you find is porny images, nothing artistic or empowered or body positive?”