Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2013-07-23 10:58 am
azurelunatic) wrote2013-07-23 10:58 am
Further anxieties of the phallocentric childhood
I was a smart, educated child in an affluent household. I read a lot. My father had subscriptions to the National Geographic and Scientific American, and at one point a bunch of Discovery magazines came into the household. The National Geographic is very artistic and literary. The Scientific American is somewhat dry. Comparatively, Discovery is -- well, basically tabloid science.
Now, it is important to note at this juncture that my household was semi-nudist. My father eschewed pants in company of the family. Until we had indoor plumbing (and until we learned to swim and took up swimming on Saturday mornings), my sister and I showered weekly with our mother in the basement bathroom-with-shower in my father's university building. My sister and I had been given anatomically accurate (as far as it went) peeing baby dolls.
We were well-educated in the anatomical differences between cis male and cis female as far as we knew. Men had the dangly bits and could pee on trees and write in the snow. Women had a bunch of hair which covered a slit. Babies came out the birth canal and were grown inside the womb because the father deposited sperm inside with his penis, which was sort of like an ovipositor that wasps had (except ovipositors were for eggs and not sperm). Roosters had their testicles inside of them, and you could geld a rooster just like you could geld a stallion or a bull, and then the former rooster would be a capon and less stroppy and more delicious. (Churches used to geld human boys with great voices so they would be castrati and keep their high voice, but that was mean and churches didn't do that anymore.) Women and hens both had ovaries, but hens laid eggs and women had uteruses.
So with this great knowledge, I opened an issue of Discovery and learned that there existed people with intersex genitals. People thought they had the equipment for one sex, and then grew up and discovered that there was something very different going on! There were stories! Details! Sometimes they'd never fit in just right and IT WAS SECRETLY BECAUSE INTERSEX! Sometimes doctors had done what they thought was a kindness by getting surgery over with while a baby was too young to remember the surgical trauma, but LATER GENDER IDENTITY AND BODY MISMATCH TRAUMA.
This gave me extreme pause. Wait. There were in-between genitals?
I contemplated my unexceptional outer labia, my unexceptional vagina, and the random other toys inside my vulva. I had not particularly considered them before, just knew their shape and sensations, but now considered their resemblance to an undeveloped version of the penis and scrotum. What if all girls didn't have these things? What if I was secretly a boy, or secretly intersex?
And this, gentlefolks, is how I was terrified by my entirely typical clitoris and inner labia, because my childhood anatomical education had not mentioned them in the slightest.
Now, it is important to note at this juncture that my household was semi-nudist. My father eschewed pants in company of the family. Until we had indoor plumbing (and until we learned to swim and took up swimming on Saturday mornings), my sister and I showered weekly with our mother in the basement bathroom-with-shower in my father's university building. My sister and I had been given anatomically accurate (as far as it went) peeing baby dolls.
We were well-educated in the anatomical differences between cis male and cis female as far as we knew. Men had the dangly bits and could pee on trees and write in the snow. Women had a bunch of hair which covered a slit. Babies came out the birth canal and were grown inside the womb because the father deposited sperm inside with his penis, which was sort of like an ovipositor that wasps had (except ovipositors were for eggs and not sperm). Roosters had their testicles inside of them, and you could geld a rooster just like you could geld a stallion or a bull, and then the former rooster would be a capon and less stroppy and more delicious. (Churches used to geld human boys with great voices so they would be castrati and keep their high voice, but that was mean and churches didn't do that anymore.) Women and hens both had ovaries, but hens laid eggs and women had uteruses.
So with this great knowledge, I opened an issue of Discovery and learned that there existed people with intersex genitals. People thought they had the equipment for one sex, and then grew up and discovered that there was something very different going on! There were stories! Details! Sometimes they'd never fit in just right and IT WAS SECRETLY BECAUSE INTERSEX! Sometimes doctors had done what they thought was a kindness by getting surgery over with while a baby was too young to remember the surgical trauma, but LATER GENDER IDENTITY AND BODY MISMATCH TRAUMA.
This gave me extreme pause. Wait. There were in-between genitals?
I contemplated my unexceptional outer labia, my unexceptional vagina, and the random other toys inside my vulva. I had not particularly considered them before, just knew their shape and sensations, but now considered their resemblance to an undeveloped version of the penis and scrotum. What if all girls didn't have these things? What if I was secretly a boy, or secretly intersex?
And this, gentlefolks, is how I was terrified by my entirely typical clitoris and inner labia, because my childhood anatomical education had not mentioned them in the slightest.
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Come to think of it, I don't think I ever saw a vulva back then either. I had several sex ed picture books (Where Do I Come From, What's Happening To Me, and that pretty purple one with photos of construction paper art) all to the effect that sex is what happens when a man and a woman love each other very much, and the result is a baby. Far as I recall, they didn't show any genitalia not directly related to making babies.
(I remember exactly when I learned what homosexuality was. I was... oh, seven? and in the car on the way home with my mother, and she was explaining that the friend who'd recommended our house cleaner to her had told her (I think in a braggy I'm-so-liberal way?) that he was homosexual, and my mother thought that was information the cleaner should have been allowed to disclose for himself if he wanted to. "What's homosexual?" I asked. "It means that you like the same sex better than the opposite sex." "Oh. Then I'm homosexual." My mother laughed. "We'll see." But I was right.)
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Though "porn-damaged" sounds like a catchphrase coined by the sort of agenda that would like to remove sex education as well as make sure that young people are prevented from being exposed to/accessing porn, rather than making sure that young people are educated about actual human anatomy and sexuality for their first impressions of sex, rather than having the unrealistic portrayal of sex in porn be their strongest impression.
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...Vaccination. Young people should be vaccinated against bad porn with good sex education.
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But the problem isn't that it's porn, and 'damaged' is not a good term for it, so I'll think of something else.
Better education is a must, definitely.
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We concluded from the amount of fussing some of our hens did before laying, that they likely had egg cramps. We did not envy them.