SEX AND CHILDHOOD: BOYS AND GIRLS
Monday, September 27th, 2010Quite early on, children work out that people come in two different varieties: boys and girls.
Ask a small child what makes boys different from girls, and most of them will tell you, ‘Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.’ Not a bad start. The problem is that the anatomy lesson usually stops there. ‘Penis’ becomes a useful expression to mean ‘the thing that makes a bump in a boy’s swimsuit’ … no mention of scrotum, testes or epididymis.
‘Vagina’ ends up meaning anything covered by a girl’s underpants, or just ‘not a penis’. How many parents, at any time, have sat down and told their daughters exactly what a vagina or a vulva is; that they also have a clitoris, labia, a uterus and so on? This explains why so many boys and girls grow up without even having words to describe their body parts, because no one has ever talked about them. If that is the case, they certainly have not been encouraged to investigate for themselves either. It is not uncommon for a girl in her teens to find out for the first time that the vagina actually goes somewhere, when she tries to work out what to do with a tampon.
There was a great uproar after I presented a segment on television showing on a live model (in close up) exactly where the clitoris is, and explaining how it works. A few days later I was interviewed by a popular talk-show host in front of a live audience of predominantly middle-aged women. He questioned the need for the live model. I explained that for many people, diagrams were like reading a road map. It doesn’t give you a great idea of the landscape. I spent years learning anatomy from atlases in books and from cadaver specimens. It wasn’t until I got into an operating theatre and saw the real thing that it all made sense. Traditional sex education has relied too heavily on the imagination of its target audience. Too much gets lost in the translation. The host also questioned whether the segment we had shown was valid at all, saying that at least half of the viewing audience out there would know all about the clitoris anyway. He was genuinely astonished by the reaction from the studio audience. That reaction was spontaneous and almost unanimous. A murmur of ‘No we don’t!’ rippled through the group.
This whole incident just goes to show how easy it is to assume that, where sex is concerned, just because someone doesn’t ask doesn’t mean they aren’t interested.