Janelle Monáe, PYNK (2018).
In recent years, the female body has come under more scrutiny than ever. The #MeToo movement revealed the ways in which women’s bodies are abused, the rise of trans-exclusionary voices has demonstrated the hateful fear of trans women’s bodies, and Ireland’s landmark Repeal the 8th movement proved how conservative societies have historically policed women’s bodies (but how grassroots campaigns can change that). These were just some of the ideas on Irish writer and editor Lynn Enright’s mind when she set about writing her debut book, Vagina: A Re-education, just published by Allen & Unwin, which examines topics including female genital mutilation, fertility, period poverty, endometriosis and the female orgasm.
“I felt like if we were to discuss and interrogate those issues fully, we would also need to discuss and interrogate the information given to women about their own bodies,” Enright tells SLEEK on her motivation to write this book. “I feel like women have been under-educated, they haven’t been educated enough about their own bodies. There is a lack of information out there for women and I felt that had really serious ramifications in terms of bigger issues around consent and reproductive rights. So, to talk about the basics was connected to much bigger issues.”
Vagina: A Re-education takes this approach, exploring how failures and fissures in sex education have had major implications for how the female body is understood and perceived. It is all the more relevant that the London-based writer’s book, which is interwoven with quotes from prominent figures and personal stories, comes out at a time when sex education is undergoing reform in England next year. In particular, Enright is concerned with the taboo of naming the female genitalia — the definition of the vulva and the vagina — and the subsequent impact this has had.
“When I started to write the book I called it the ‘vagina’. I had always called it that. I thought that it was quite pedantic to want to call it the ‘vulva’ because it’s language: we call it the vagina but we mean the vulva.” As Enright started to research she was struck by what feminist psychologist Harriet Lerner has said that it’s “like a psychic genital mutilation” when we fail to use the term ‘vulva’ to describe women’s genitalia. “What isn’t named can’t exist and I do think that’s a really good point. If you call it a ‘vagina’ you’re not recognising the fact of the clitoris which is how women orgasm and you’re not recognising the labia either. I think by calling it a vagina we are forgetting or further stigmatising the other parts of the female genitalia.” For Enright, this problem of naming speaks to the fact that we haven’t discussed women’s bodies enough.
The stigmatisation of female genital organs is central to Enright’s discussion. She moves from a deft exploration of how society is misinformed about the hymen (including a distressing personal account of sexual assault) to a comprehensive survey of the clitoris. Here, Enright ponders how the organ has been historically omitted from conversations around sex and pleasure, writing, “Over the millennia, the clitoris has been unmentioned, ignored, overlooked, deleted. Significant discoveries have been made, and then seemingly undone.”
Enright emphasises the deep-rooted cultural “suspicion” surrounding the clitoris and how this has far-reaching consequences in terms of understanding how women experience pleasure during sex. Even more worryingly, Enright explains how the cultural erasure of the clitoris has led to its violent physical removal through the widespread act of female genital mutilation — according to Enright’s research 200 million girls and women worldwide have been subjected to this harrowing ordeal. “That this happens to women in our midst is awful and we need to address that in the UK, Germany, everywhere. It’s horrific,” says Enright.
One of the most enlightening aspects of Vagina: A re-education is the section on female pain and how female conditions — from periods to endometriosis and vaginismus — have been overlooked. Referencing feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez’s idea that “to be male is the default…to be a person is to be a man,” Enright says that this is “very true of medicine” where there has been “a fundamental lack of information and understanding of women’s bodies and women’s pain and so problems or conditions that only affect women have been neglected.”
But while Enright’s discussion is hinged on the intricacies of the female sex organs that’s not to say that her understanding of femaleness encompasses a cis gender perspective exclusively — the final chapter, “Does my vagina define me,” addresses the topic from a trans and non binary perspective. “It felt to me like it would have been an extreme disservice to this book if it hadn’t acknowledged the fact that we are living through a time when we are not inclined to see sexuality and gender as fixed,” she explains.
That women’s experience isn’t homogeneous is at the forefront of Enright’s thoughts. By writing this book, she seeks to start “a conversation” and acknowledge the multiplicity of women’s lives and bodies. “I hope this book is a starting point for all these kinds of conversations,” she explains. “Genuinely, my hope is that people can learn something and even though it’s a corny word but to be empowered. I think that knowledge is very empowering.”
Vagina: A re-education published Allen & Unwin is out now.