How Not To Say Vagina

I looked on, she instructed the little boy on what to do as she led him to pee.

‘Bring out your ‘pee pee’, hold it’ she said referring to his Penis.

He obliged and went on to pee.

When he was done she brought out a wipe and told him ‘always wipe your pee pee and remember if anybody touches it what do you do’?

‘Shout’ he responded.

She hi-fived him and led him back to the place where we stood waiting for a cab.

I smiled at the obvious closeness between the mother and her son and admired that she thought him to wipe his Penis or haven’t you seen guys who pee, shake their Penis and put it back in their briefs/boxers like that?

I liked also that she took precaution against abuse but as I looked on, I thought to myself ‘why don’t we call the Penis and Vagina by their names’?

We coin any name that helps us not to mention the real names. It is what we do with things considered sacred, unpleasant or embarrassing, we try not to say them and so we use euphemisms.

Euphemisms, those mild or indirect words or expressions substituted for ones considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

For example,

When a typical Nigerian wants to ask you for money, he tells you he is very rich at the moment but needs help.

Some people say I’m strong when they really are trying to say they feel sick.

When your friend asks you if she is fat, you tell her she has gotten a little bigger when in your head you are thinking ‘you are fat babe’.

When people die we say they passed away, we call blind people visually impaired, when a person is looking for work (unemployed) they say they are between jobs and when discussing sex we say things like ‘get down’ or ‘get laid’ or ‘do the deed/thing’.

We try to find ways to not say what we want to say but still want to say what we want to say.

Especially with sex.

We are trained and in turn train our children to see their sexual organs as sacred, parts of their bodies to not be given thought or talked about and so instead of calling the parts as they are we use euphemisms.

For this reason it is hard to give sex education to our children who are left to explore on their own or worse still are taught by strangers and make mistakes that are avoidable and may be irreparable.

You have probably told a child not to let anyone touch his ‘pee pee’ or her ‘wee wee’ or have tried to shut them up when they asked questions about sex even when they are not so little anymore.

I am not saying we should throw words about or expose our children to sex, I just think we should remove the air of sacrosanctity and sacredness with which we have surrounded private parts and just treat them as body parts that should not be abused.

Sex should be called what as it is and children particularly teenagers should be made to know that it is not to be abused.

We could do with a little openness with issues of sex and the sexual organs so as to discourage hypocrisy and encourage honesty.

We should try to get our children or wards to talk more about their privates and what happens to them instead of teaching them how not to say Vagina…or Penis.