Out From Under

“Beauty is only skin deep.”

You ever hear that as a child, or as a mirror-obsessed teen?
“You’re beautiful, just the way you are.”
“It’s what’s inside that counts.”

All the things a supportive parent says to the kid whose world has fallen apart because of a zit. They also happen to be true, of course. I don’t think when she said “what’s inside”, however, mom meant your vagina.

But then, mom has probably never heard of “cosmetogynecology”.

“Cosmetogynecology”, or “cosmogynecology”. The art (science? craft? scam?) of “fixing” a woman’s genitalia.

There are going to be times when this is tragically necessary. A baby girl is born with genitals improperly formed. A young woman has come from a country that practices female genital mutilation and is suffering recurrent infections, or needs to be altered to allow for childbirth. A woman is terribly burned in a car accident. All good reasons for some sort of genital refinement.

But those women aren’t the primary target audience. Those women know they need something done. Those women’s quality of life are severely compromised by their situations.  No, the industry is after women who don’t know they need something done, the ones who are wandering about in blissful ignorance of their flawed condition. They need to know! So they can get it fixed! So they can be PERFECT.

That’s why Dr. Lauri Romanzi’s new “Pelvic Health Spa”, phit, bothers me. Drawing women in under the guise of evaluating their “pelvic fitness” via an assessment exam, the options for improving their “fitness” do not stop at the sensible and ever-worthy Kegels, or the toning potential of a Ben Wa ball, or the use of an electrostimulation machine (now doesn’t that give a woman ideas??) If that’s all Dr. Romanzi’s “spa” did, the term “pelvic fitness” would be perfectly appropriate.

There are proven benefits to having tones PC (pubo-coccygeal) muscles: quicker recovery from childbirth, no stress incontinence (peeing when you cough, sneeze, laugh, run); and, though some argue it, trim PC muscles also probably contribute to stronger orgasms — or to orgasms at all, for women who weren’t having them before. That’s all good stuff. At the very least, it’s a “can’t hurt, might help” situation. At best, there are clear and documented benefits to specific women. It would be completely unobjectionable if she stopped there.

But she doesn’t stop there. In addition to muscle-toning activities, she will also offer cosmetic laser treatments. Because, as you get older, the skin gets looser on the vulva, just as it does everywhere else. And god only knows, it wouldn’t do to permit wrinkles! Not even on your girlybits.

I suppose it’s hardly surprising. With women convinced that they must buff, polish, scrub, smooth, trim, tuck and shave every other body part, why wouldn’t they go there, too? We’ve already made it almost standard to torture ourselves in the pursuit of pre-adolescent pubes, so the thought that there’s somehow something wrong with the normal appearance of your vulva is probably only the next logical step.

But who on earth chooses the “perfect” vulva? Who determines that mine is “too wrinkly” and yours is “too thin” and hers over there are “too dangly”?

AND WHY WOULD WE LET THEM?

You know? If I let someone get up close and personal with my genitalia, close enough that they could see wrinkles? I expect them to be so overcome with love/lust (and maybe even gratitude, dammit) that they sure as hell wouldn’t be wasting any time evaluating the skin tone down there. And if they do? They can just go fuck themselves.

(Because they won’t be fucking me…)

Tone your muscles if you will. But for heaven’s sake, let’s let our vulva be.

Are you female? If so, your orgasm is not essential, you know.

Are those fighting words?

If I were hearing those words from my sex partner, they sure as hell would be.

But if they’re coming from a scientist, a female scientist, and she’s talking in evolutionary terms, not relational, not personal? (This post is inspired by her book, The Case of the Female Orgasm, and her name is Elisabeth A. Lloyd. Fascinating stuff.)

Me, I’d shrug and say, “Meh. This is news? And so what?”

Because who with a brain in their head has not noticed that women do not need to have an orgasm in order to become pregnant? And THAT, my friends, is ALL that evolution is after: babies, more babies, healthy babies, babies who live to become adults who will make babies. Propagation of the species is IT.

So. Speaking evolutionarily, my orgasm is not essential.

Like I care.

But you know what? Some women do! They really, really care. And they are seriously PISSED OFF. Even more oddly, some female scientists care. They read studies and interpretation of data which suggest that the female orgasm may not be an evolutionary essential, that, in fact, it’s likely more of an evolutionary hiccup (and a very happy one, thanksomuch). They read that, and they take it PERSONALLY.

Hello?

This is not some grand conspiracy against women (unless you happen to believe, with all good fundamentalists, in a sexist, misogynist god). This is not personal. It simply is what it is.

Yes, the male orgasm is pretty much essential, evolutionarily. Because orgasm is part of ejaculation, and without ejaculation, no babies. (Yes, I know there are men who can climax without ejaculating, but I’d be betting they’re so rare as to not count as far as evoluation is concerned.)

So the male’s orgasm is biologically essential. And again, who cares? Does that make his better? Why would you assume that? Male and female descriptions of their experience of orgasm are essentially identical. And then there’s that whole female multiple orgasm thing. That may not be essential, either, but what woman isn’t proud of that? Nyah, nyah. (No nyahs to you non-ejaculating climaxers; I know you guys can multiple, too.)

Let’s separate the personal from the global/species/march-of-time-down-eons, shall we? The individual human is not considering his/her actions from an evolutionary standpoint when they size up the hottie across the room, or start peeling off their partner’s clothes. The point of an orgasm, for the individual human, is pleasure.

Full stop.

I suppose it could be argued it’s also relational — you’re with someone who takes no heed of yours, who takes no steps to ensure you/allow you to have yours and takes no pleasure in your pleasure? Well, you’re with an ass, and you need to ditch ‘em and move on. (That is also personal, not evolutionary … except insofar as, if you have any sense at all, you won’t be making babies with this dork. However, since it’s only in the tiniest slivers of the sadly misogynist history of the human race where the woman’s feelings have had a whole helluva lot to do with whether she has sex, you certainly can’t count that in evolutionary terms.)

So. It seems probable that while the male orgasm is pretty much evolutionarily essential, the female orgasm is a fringe benefit. Why does that matter in the slightest?

Bring it on!

“Gravity control is a matter of time.” That’s what their tag-line says, repeated with great confidence at the bottom of each page on the site. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t evaluate its content. As a writer I can say it reads like a grade-B informercial or high-end spam. I’m dubious.

But the idea of gravity control?

Speaking as a woman who is daily discovering the effects of gravity on her person?

BRING IT ON!

Imagine having your own little gravity-controlled field. Just a teeny one, personal to you. Just let the full implications of low personal gravity sink in for a second. I’m not thinking of leaping tall buildings or bounding up flights of stairs with effortless grace, though that would be all right, too. It’s even more personal than that!

Think skin. Think butts. Think breasts.

You could buy the pretty-and-cheap-but-flimsy bras instead of finding yourself faced with the sad choice of beautiful bosom stability or mundane financial stability. You can keep the girls in line for less, of course, but you pay in aesthetics. Those sturdy items are hoooomely. You want gorgeous support, support that pays due homage to the beauty of their contents? You pay. Through the nose. Or the nipple. Or something.

But with a gravity-control device, the girls would float all by their luscious selves. Just like they did when you were sixteen!

Wrinkes, flaccid arms, sagging butt — all things of the past without that damned gravity dragging you down. And if you are sixteen, and all those things are in your future yet? Don’t kid yourself, sweetie. Those things are in your future. All the good habits in the world can’t stop gravity. It’s a bitch. So maybe you might want to investigate the burgeoning field of gravity control — the next Big Step in the cosmetic industry!

I type as I sit with my feet in a basin of warm water. After I’m done here, I’ll be giving myself a pedicure. This is all part of a decision to pamper myself at the end of a harried week. The next six weeks will be a long stretch of still more harried. So, let’s have a respite in the midst, shall we?

I’ll give myself a pedicure, I’ll do my nails, I’ll shave and oil and lotion and perfume. Maybe I’ll even hot-oil my hair. How it can be dry and at the same time a mass of frizz because of the out of this world humidity, I simply do not know, but that is the sad truth. My face is framed by — no, buried under! — an enormous mass of dark auburn waves-turned-fuzz.

Once I viewed all this as decadence. Tim-wasting. Frivolous. Unnecessary. Of course, I was also then in my dewy youth, with naturally smooth, taut skin and naturally wavy-cum-curly and yet somehow shiny hair.

I think I’m past my dewy youth now. Yesterday, at the library, a book caught my eye. “How not to look old.” I walked past, strong and firm. I don’t read that stuff. I wandered back, walked away. I don’t want that stuff. I wandered back and shoved it in my bag. Truth of the matter is, I don’t want to admit to being one of those women who reads that stuff. But I am.

I snuck that book home from the library like I used to sneak home Cosmo when I was fourteen. Cosmo, my grandfather called “every woman’s guide on how to be a whore”. Lest you be picturing the prudish, conservative patriarch, let me remind you of which grandfather I mean. Grandad was not offended by the sexiness of the magazine, nor by the thought that women could be autonomously sexual. What offended him was the magazine’s incessant, unrelenting focus on sex, as if that’s all a woman had to offer the world.

“There’s a whole lot more to you than ‘ten ways to give him a rise’, young lady.”

True enough.

Now I know ten way and then some, and have learned to ensure my own rises, too. I’ve found a career or two, I’m reasonably established in life. I may even be on my way to making my mark on the world. Though the final arbiters decide that after you’re dead and buried, I’m somewhat hopeful.

When skin is fresh, and hair is sleek, and boundless energy is a given, pampering is a decadence. When times moves on and gravity turns out to be a bitch, and 10:00 seems a perfectly reasonable bedtime, thankyouverymuch, such pampering is no longer decadent. It’s largely a necessity.

Hell, some days it’s a positive virtue.

Today, I am … ahhhh… being virtuous.

I once wrote a post elsewhere in which, among many underwear options, I mentioned the thong. In this case, it was a man-thong (posing pouch, banana hammock, call it what you will) and I poked a teeny bit of tongue-in-cheek fun at it.

Holy crap, some people are seriously passionate about undergarments.

Thongs (for male or female) I was informed, are AMAZING! Totally SEXY! I should not be such a PRUDE! Any woman who doesn’t wear them is PATHETIC! Thongs are DISGUSTING! Anyone who wears one is PERVERTED! Thongs are UNNECESSARY! Just go commando, you buncha WIMPS! Thongs are PASSÉ, and how could I be so provincial? Thongs are UNHYGENIC! Anyone who wears one is going to DIE OF A DISGUSTING, FECES-BORNE, WASTING DISEASE. (AND IT WOULD SERVE THEM RIGHT, TOO!)

Good heavens. Don’t get yer knickers in knots, people. It’s underwear.

But! Today’s post is not really about all that. That was tangentially-related self-indulgence. THIS post is a warning about the True and Real Danger of thongs.

Really.

Just ask Macrida Patterson, a 52-year-old Los Angeles traffic officer. Not that long ago, Ms. Patterson had just pulled her brand-new blue Victoria’s Secret thong out of the bag, and set about sliding it on. Now, we’re not quite sure what went wrong at this point. Details are fuzzy. Was she too enthusiastic? Did she tug with a tad too much gusto?

We may never know, but what is a Real and True fact is that Ms. Patterson hurt her eyeball with her panties.

See, this particular bit of lingerie was adored with at least one blue heart-shaped rhinestone. (So tasteful, no?) And it seems the rhinestone wasn’t properly attached to its metal clip, because somehow, in the flurry of activity involved in donning the thong, the piece of metal FLEW UP and nailed Ms. Patterson RIGHT IN THE EYE.

“…the metal popped in my eye. It happened really quickly. I was in excruciating pain. I screamed. That’s what happened.”

The damage was so severe, she lost an eye required surgery is now blind in one eye had to apply a topical steroid.

So, all you thong-wearers out there, let this be a lesson to you: be careful with your lingerie, or you, too, could end up in excruciating pain, traumatized, and get an appearance on The Today Show.

That, or you could just skip the rhinestones.

via: Oddly Enough

All you need is love!
Love is a many-splendored thing.
Love makes the world go round.

How many more of those could we come up with? Love, love, love. We talk about it a lot, we sing about it constantly. We read about it, write about it, seek it in our daily lives. Some people seek it more diligently than others, of course.

Years ago, tidying a pile of my then-husband’s paper detritus, I came across an article on “polyamory”. I snorted. Yeah, right. What he was after was a rationalization of the affair I wasn’t supposed to know he was having. He was hoping to give his run-of-the-mill messing around a sophisticated, cutting-edge label. He was looking for reassurance that it was all right to love more than one person at a time.

Which it is, of course. I didn’t snort at the idea of polyamory, I snorted at his hypocrisy. He might have been allowed an extra love (and we will not wander into a dreary tangent by speculating on the quality of his ‘love’ for me at that point), but I sure as hell wasn’t. My having a coffee with my daughter’s karate teacher caused major domestic conniptions.

Besides, he didn’t believe in polyamory. Like many serial wanderers, he was constantly on the look-out for his “one true love”. Polyamorists don’t believe in a “one” love. That’s contrary to the whole idea, isn’t it? Poly = many.

At that point, I wouldn’t have been looking for an additional, enriching-my-life love, either. I’d have been looking for a replacement for the old, malfunctioning one… Not what polyamory’s about.

I like the idea, mind you. I think people should be allowed it if they choose. I love the idea of a household (or simply a series of interconnected relationships) where the love is free-flowing and all-inclusive. I also think the numbers of people who have the right mix of confidence, tolerance, and communication skills to maintain a multiple-partner relationship must be necessarily small.

And I think I’m not one of them. It’s not that I suffer from jealousy. I don’t. It’s not that I’m not a good communicator. I am. I thrive on it.

But I know how much maintenance a two-party relationship takes. I suspect that though I seem to be missing the jealous marker on my DNA, there are people, even in polyamorous relationships, who would feel it, and then every party in the relationship would have to deal with it. And that would mean talking, talking, talking. About something I don’t get, something I rarely, if ever, feel. It would be irksome. Talk, talk, talk. Work, work, work…

I’m also a fairly private person. (Who writes about getting a brazilian on the internet, I know, I know.) Some days it’s a bit of a stretch to deal with the one lovely man in my life. (And my kids. And his kids. And co-workers. And clients. And neighbours. And the family pets…) Would I really want more?

No. No, I don’t think so. When my life gets too frenetic, I fantasize about running away to Tahiti. And when I get there? I’m always alone.

I like the idea of polyamory. For other people. I suspect I’d find the practice claustrophobic.

Guaranteed sex. Required. Promised, even. Every day. Every single day, come hell, high water, or headaches.

Good idea? Bad idea?

Two couples, each experiencing a bit of a marital lull, each came up with the same solution: daily sex for a pre-determined period of time. 101 days for one couple (the Browns, Annie and Douglas), and a solid fucking year for the Mullers (Charla and Brad).

They enjoyed it, mostly. Charla hit the wall in month ten, but rebounded. Annie saw to it that her husband put out even when suffering a bout of vertigo. No quitters, these people.

Required daily sex, though. Required. What would be the long-term response to that?

Would you sort of get into it, look forward to it? Maybe it would put a dash of impishness in your smile, a sparkle in your eye, knowing that you had sex last night and the night before and the night before that. And that you will have it tonight, and tomorrow, and the day after that. Oh, you rampant, raging sex machine! You sex goddess! You epitome of youthful virility!

You could look out over all your twice-a-week comrades and co-workers with pity, secure in your sexual superiority.

Or, after two or three weeks, it could be a complete drudge, a pall of obligation over your life. The burden you bear. Yes, a worthwhile, worthy endeavour, but, like working out, or eschewing junk food, or reading only Improving Literature, not always terribly joyful. Would the play factor be leached out through constant repetition? What about boredom?

What about boredom? I’m not saying sex has to be spontaneous. Any couple who deals with external obligations knows that you will have to schedule sex in. We all do that, at least once in a while. “It’s been too long, honey. How about tonight we…?” But every night? For weeks and months on end?

Sex is wonderful, sex is invigorating, sex is hott … but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Too much chocolate makes you fat. Too much reading gives you a headache. Too much running gives you shin splints. Too much laughter makes you pee yourself.

And too much sex … makes you bored. I mean, really. Wouldn’t you get bored? Sex would become one more item to scratch off the daily list, right up there with scrubbing the tub and tackling the grunge on the stovetop, about as arousing as brushing your teeth. Wouldn’t you think?

One couple dealt with boredom by frequent short trips. Making out in a yurt adds a certain je ne sais quoi, I’m sure. But does it really make the act itself more exciting?

Would quality crumble in the face of such relentless quantity? One couple noted that when you’re having daily sex, quickies are a staple. As of course they’d have to be. Who has time for a three-hour sensual extravaganza every single day? Nothing wrong with quickies, of course. But there’s a difference between having a quickie because you have to get the sex done for today, and having a quickie because you’re panting with passion and need your partner, NOW!

When the Browns were done their 101 nights, they didn’t have sex for a solid month. That would be relief. Sheerest relief. Pressure’s off, and now what? Back to normal? Not quite. Both are more active than they were before — but that isn’t saying a whole lot, really, as the Mullers had been months without; the Browns averaged about three times a month. Now they’re both within American averages (twice a week or so).

However, all my personal dubiosity aside, both couples say it did their marriage good, brought them closer on every level, not just the physical. Not that they’re suggesting it for the rest of us. Not at all. Oh, and they’ve each written a book. The Brown’s Just Do It is out now, published by Random House, and the Muller’s 365 Nights, will come out in July.

Where did they find the time?

The Middle Ages. Time of feudalism, of the rich and the poor, and nothing in between. Time of strong church presence in society. If you’ve ever watched Monty Python’s Holy Grail — happy peasants frolicking in sun-drenched fields with inept but well-intentioned knights trotting about on horses?

It was nothing like that.

The Middle Ages: no plumbing, no heating, pretty much universal illiteracy, lice, bedbugs, fleas, death by pneumonia, death by war, death by childbirth, death by infection, death by the Black Plague, death by famine, death by misadventure … without something to lighten their lives, it was a pretty bleak time. “Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short” about sums it up.

Proving that the puritanism in the US has a long and tradition-drenched history, the clergy of the Middle Ages expended a lot of energy trying to control sex. More time than they ought, really. Given that sex wasn’t supposed to be part of their lives at all, they sure spent a lot of time thinking about it.

Thinking about it a lot because they had to know that (despite their frothings at the mouth) most of their congregations were gleefully enjoying every little bit of marital congress they could manage. And probably the usual amount of etra-marital congress, too. (While they, the clergy, had NONE. Officially, at any rate. Boooo.)

All this thinking led to lists. Lots of lists. Things you were allowed to do (very, very short list); things you were not to do (long, long, long list); consequences for doing the things you weren’t supposed to do (long, long, longest list). Here’s a sampling (taken from The Smart Set):

Dorsal sex (woman on top): three years
Lateral, seated, standing: 40 days
Coitus retro — rear entry: 40 days
Mutual masturbation: 30 days
Inter-femural sex — ejaculation between the legs: 40 days
Coitus in terga — anal sex: three years (with an adult); two years (with a boy); seven years (habitual); 10 years (with a cleric).

(Yes, anal sex with a boy was less of a sin than with an adult. Sexual morés, attitudes, and taboos are not as consistent or obvious as we tend to believe.)

There were penalties for oral sex, for sex during menstruation, sex in church (not as wild as you might think: people spent a lot of time in churches in those days), and sex with foreplay. One really does begin to think that perhaps maybe the more vociferous of the clergy might just have indulged in a wee bit of … field work … as part of the research for all these lists.

And here we come to the entirely predictable aspects of this thing. For all that sex was universally bad, it was badder for women than men. St. Jerome found marital sex ‘filthy’ and warned that “nothing is nastier than to love your own wife as if she were your mistress.” With fervour, enthusiasm, and passion, one assumes… Sex preceded by kissing and fondling (which sounds a whole lot like foreplay, no?) was bad, and, while male masturbators only suffered a 10-day prohibition from sex, women got a solid year.

There’s an up-side to this andro-centric thinking: While fellatio (semen in mouth) was prohibited, there was no balancing prohibition on cunnilingus. Probably because, for all their hours spent thinking on the subject, the possibility of pleasing a woman for no purpose but to please the woman … well… the possibility didn’t seem to have crossed the Holy Fathers’ minds.

For the sake of the poor down-trodden female of the Middle Ages, let’s hope it crossed at least some less-than-holy folks’ minds.

via: Andrew Sullivan

I knew it would hurt. I’m not an idiot. I picture the procedure (as described in fairly graphic detail by a helpful girlfriend). It’s obvious you can’t have that happen without pain.

However — and here I haul out that tried-and-true test of female fortitude — I have had three babies. More to the point, three labours, and even more to the point, all of them without drugs. The ultimate in feminine macho-dom.

Sure, labour hurt, but I was up for it. I could deal. I am focussed, I am stoic, I am capable. I don’t like pain, but I can manage.

So yeah, this was going to hurt, too, but I knew I could cope.

So I lie down on the table, wearing nothing south of the navel but a pair of disposable panties. (Indeed. Who knew those existed?) And the sweet young twenty-year-old sets in to deforestration.

It’s not so bad. The wax goes on, warm and almost soothing. The wide strip of cloth is applied. I press where instructed, to hold the skin taut, and — FZZT! — the cloth is ripped off, taking a decent amount of foliage with it. And sure, it stings like a bugger. My skin is burning. It ain’t pleasant. Not having masochistic tendencies, I’m not having fun, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with.

And that’s as bad as it would have ever been, had I just been getting a “bikini wax”. But, brave, gallant fool that I am, I was not stopping there. For I was getting a brazilian.

Why? I had my reasons. They seemed compelling at the time. (And, lest anyone blame the man in my life, he hadn’t a clue. No requests, no suggestions, not even the faintest hint of expectation or pressure. Nothing. Total surprise to him when he discovered it some hours later.)

The sweet young twenty-year-old bends to her task. “Press here.” “Just once more, then I’ll move over there.” “Push down here, please.” “Just once more for this spot.” “Gee, those ones are stubborn, aren’t they?”

Gradually, she moves in from the outer edges. Gradually encroaching on ever-more-sensitive tissues.

And when she gets to the crux of the matter? When she’s into true brazilian territory?

“I’m going to use this kind of wax now,” she chirps, indicating a different pot on the table beside us, “because it’s gentler.”

She daubs it on, taps it to test for consistency, gets a good grip, then …

I passed out.

KIDDING!!

I only WISH I had.

There is nothing, people, nothing more painful than what happened next. There is no pain on earth to match it.

Okay, I exaggerate. We all know that. If you’ve had an arm gnawed off by rats, if you’ve had toenails removed without anaesthesia, if you’ve had smallish portions of your body seared with hot irons, you’ve experienced worse. But in the ordinary run of things painful?

Nothing can match having goodly sized chunks of hair ripped from the inner lips of your labia. (Too graphic for you? Too bad. I lived through it. That’s far, far worse.)

I hauled out the pain-management techniques. I stared at my focal point. I did the labour breathing — the third stage, high-level, I’m-going-to-die-if-this-doesn’t-ease-up-in-12-seconds breathing.

It helped. I know it did, because I stayed there on the table. I did not, as flashed through my mind at intervals, beat the sweet young thing unconscious with the magnifying mirror and make a break for it.

I did not even scream, though at times my head jerked back and my chin jutted to the ceiling as my eyes rolled up and gasps, ohmyGODithurts gasps squeezed past clenched jaws.

My labour analogy?

A brazilian at its epicentre is worse than all but the very worst moments of labour. In fact, if a brazilian lasted as long as the average labour, women would go insane. Totally mad with pain. And possibly never recover.

If labour hurt as much as a brazilian throughout its entire duration, women would certainly never have a second child. Not without heavy, heavy drugs.

I am not having a second brazilian without heavy, heavy drugs…

On the way home, shaky with a combination of pain, adrenaline and sheerest relief, I phone my girlfriend, she of the graphic description. Who has, I now note, never had a brazilian, but only the far gentler bikini wax. Because when women experience something we need to TALK ABOUT IT. At length.

I inform her that when the esthetician left the room and I had a look … there were a fair number of stray hairs. 45 minutes of unpleasantness which included, oh, 30 of sheerest agony, and there is STILL HAIR DOWN THERE!

“So did you call her back to finish it off properly?” A reasonable question. I paid a solid amount of money for the procedure; the damned thing should be done right. I had certain expectations of the result; they were not unreasonable expectations, and they weren’t met. The girl did not do the job she was paid to do. Call her back in? I would damned well be within my rights.

Did I call her back in?

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND???”

Call her back in… Good lord.

My husband is delighted. And beside himself with appreciation for my agonies. I have earned many, many, many Wife Points. Which, you can be sure, I will be milking for all they’re worth.

So there’s that.

And I will never, ever do that to myself again.

The End.

In 1492 (if memory serves me) Columbus discovered America.

What a time of discovery, the Renaissance! A resurgence of art, music, architecture and literature, the like of which hadn’t been seen in western Europe for several hundred years. Sculpture, painting, gracious buildings, symphonies, poetry, essays. Political and philosophical thought moved in bold new directions. Science blossomed.

And in 1559, Columbus — Renaldus, not Christopher, no relation — discovered something he called the amor Veneris, vul dulcedo, (“the love or the sweetness of Venus”).

Three guesses what that might be.

Officially, this would have been the result of dissecting cadavers, a chancy business in the days when this was illegal, and the odds of being caught for the sin of post-mortem could have resulted in a fresh cadaver for your fellow anatomists. (As in, you’d be hung. Capital crime, messing with the body which houses the soul.)

He had, he announced, discovered “the seat of a woman’s delight” — which kind of warms you to him, doesn’t it? Nice to hear about the fellows who concern themselves with such things…

Moreover, he had discovered that this particular item would “throb with brief contractions” during sex, causing a woman’s “semen” to flow “swifter than air.” Seems our man Renaldus had a little on-the-ground experience. (And that female ejaculation was a given.)

But amor Veneris, vul dulcedo is a bit of a mouthful. By the time this tidbit of information made its way north to England some 55 years later, the English term was clitoris. Not as lyrical, not as pretty, but shorter. (It’s probably from the Greek ‘kleitor’, meaning “little hill”.)

One wonders: armed with this brave new information, did the intrepid scientists go home and do a little field work of their own?