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SEXUAL ANATOMY

Karen is a twenty-year-old college junior who generally avoided dating because she felt her breasts were too small. She wrote: "I hate looking in a mirror or wearing a bathing suit because I see how flat I am. I would be mortified to let a guy touch or see my breasts."

Brad is an athletic seventeen-year-old who quit his school's basketball team because his breasts were large. He told us that his teammates kidded him mercilessly in the locker room and showers about when he was going to get a bra. He was afraid he might "turn into a woman."

A married couple in their mid-twenties who were sex therapy patients said they frequently used stimulation of the clitoris as part of making love. When asked to identify the clitoris during a physical exam, the husband pointed to a large freckle on the lower part of his wife's labia majora.

A class of eighty college sophomores was given a brief test on sexual anatomy the first day of their course on sexuality. The average student had more mistakes than right answers.

As these examples show, many of us have inaccurate k. information or negative feelings about our sexual anatomy. This should not be surprising for a variety of reasons: we are taught to keep our sex organs covered by clothing; we are scolded or punished for touching our "private parts"; we are not likely to be told the correct terminology to describe our sexual anatomy; we are discouraged from conversations or questions about sex; and the sexual images we are exposed to in movies and magazines are likely to present almost unattainable standards to measure ourselves against. It is no wonder that our sexual anatomy can be a source of anxiety, shame, guilt, mystery, and curiosity, as well as a source of pleasure.

The mixed feelings we have about our sexual body parts are mirrored in the words we use to talk about them: some words are "clean" and "proper," while others are "dirty" or "impolite." These differences are a result of how we interpret words, not an innate property of the words themselves. Consider, for example:

In Nigeria, the moral taboos of sex were taught by missionaries and administrators who used only clean words. These were the words that became taboo. The dirty words used as part of the vernacular of sailors, traders, and the like, became part of Nigerian vernacular English, with no taboo attached. In consequence, today it is as forbidden to say sexual intercourse, penis and vagina on Nigerian television as it is to say fuck, cock, and cunt on the national networks in the United States. In Nigeria, the latter terms are considered normal and respectable.

In this article we will not use slang terms about sex because they convey a negative message to some people.

People of all ages have common concern about sexual anatomy. What is the normal size of the penis? Is something wrong if one breast is smaller than the other? Does circumcision lessen sexual pleasure? Do large breasts indicate a passionate woman? Is it abnormal if one testicle hangs lower than the other? Where and what is the clitoris? The answers to such questions begin with learning about sexual anatomy.

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