Life

These Men Know Nothing About Vaginas

by Amy McCarthy

To hear most (straight) dudes tell it, they are masters of the vagina. Any woman who is lucky enough to be in the presence of their penis will allegedly be showered with rainbows and orgasms. Unfortunately, it looks as if men don’t know nearly enough about a woman’s anatomy to even come close to understanding how our vaginas work — when it comes to sex or anything else.

Buzzfeed, in a video titled “Men Explaining Vaginas,” asked a few random dudes to use a medical anatomical model of a vagina and answer a few basic questions like “Where is the cervix?” and “Where does pee come from.” Sort of surprisingly, these dudes are a lot worse off than I thought when it comes to knowing the parts of the vagina and how they function. After watching this video, I’m really astonished that most men even know where to put their penises during sex.

Now, the video doesn’t say that they’re only asking straight men these questions. It’s entirely possible that at least some of these guys have never even seen a vagina up close and personal because that just isn’t their thing. But everyone had to take health class, even me, who went to a totally backwater school in Northeast Texas. I don’t have a penis of my own, but I have a general idea of how the damn thing works, even if it is somewhat less complicated than my own anatomy.

Maybe if these (at the time) boys were paying more attention to the teacher during anatomy lessons, there wouldn’t be so many sexually unsatisfied women. A study conducted by The Kinsey Institute earlier this year found that at least a third of women rarely (or never) had orgasms during sex. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that apparently a lot of men, as evidenced in this video, really have trouble identifying where the clitoris is or what to do with it.

It’s easy to giggle at funny videos like these, but cisgender men (and women) whose knowledge of female anatomy is very similar to these guys sit on the Supreme Court and in legislatures across the country and make extremely harmful decisions about women’s reproductive health based on bad information or just outright ignorance. Remember the “legitimate rape” guy? Or the Texas State Representative who thought that rape kits just “cleaned everything out down there?” This ignorance is funny when it comes to viral videos, but has devastating consequences in the real world.

Image: Buzzfeed Yellow