IN conversation with my grand aunt last week, I was pleasantly surprised when she said we should teach our young boys that a woman’s vagina is not her private part, but her holy part; that to enter the vagina is to enter the womb of the Virgin Mary. Coming from a woman with more than 80 years of experience, I decided my own views on the matter could not be that far out.
Aunt Ruth, whose Christian references reveal her spiritual background, has come to see through her study of life that the way we give meaning to things influences our experience with God’s creations. When we visited the beach, for example, she looked out to the horizon and conceived of the ocean as a “big basket of abundance”, and wondered how the world might be different if we taught our children to see it as that.
One of the key things I have observed through her example is the way in which she reveres creation; the way in which she sees the sacredness of life in all things. To me, it is an expansive way of seeing God through a Christian lens, for many Christians (from my personal observation) reserve their reverence only for Jesus, God and the holy spirit, all entities which they see as being external to themselves and heaven-bound.
Like my Aunt Ruth, I see sacredness in all things of creation, including the vagina, the doorway to a woman’s sacred centre, the womb.
Sacred in this instance means to regard something with reverence or a feeling of deep respect. Not the kind of conditional respect we usually say is something one must earn, but an innate respect that is owing by virtue of our association with creation, something so infinite and boundless that it is awe-inspiring. We are all a part of this existence. Imagine if we all carried reverence, not only for a mythical Jesus, but for ourselves, our own bodies, neighbours and strangers.
Imagine if women and men saw the vagina as a sacred passage, as something to revere, not for casual, lustful or sacrilegious pursuits.
When we teach that a woman’s vagina is a private part, it only conveys that there is something secret about it, or that it needs to be hidden because of some undesirable quality. But a woman’s vagina is not secret. There is no man or woman alive who has not passed through its passage, whether at conception or birth. The vagina is the symbol of the highest form of creation.
At a superficial level, we know that all children are contrarians. And that we tell them the vagina is secret only makes them want to go looking. But we do not give them a compound understanding of the vagina, and they therefore cannot show it the respect it deserves. And for our girls, in particular, they only come to understand their sexuality in an objectified and sexually explicit manner. They do not come to know “the magic (that their) sacred sexual parts hold”, and they often move between extreme positions, being ashamed of their sexuality or prostituting it.
“The clitoris contains at least 8,000 sensory nerve endings. To put that into perspective, the penis has about 4,000. That makes this tiny area the most sensitive part of a woman’s erogenous zone.” The vagina is a symbol of erotic joy. This is nothing to be ashamed of or taken lightly. Women must come to understand, nurture and hold sacred this power.
So why do women abuse their vaginas so badly, and why do men show such disrespect to the vagina. Perhaps it is because we are learning about the vagina all wrong.
The ancient Sanskrit word for vagina is Yoni. Yoni translates in many ways: “Divine passage, womb or sacred temple. The word covers a range of meanings, including: place of birth, source, origin, spring, fountain, place of rest, repository, receptacle, seat, abode, home, lair, nest, stable.” Many cultures have deep understandings of the vagina, but we have lost most of this ancestral knowledge.
Let us not dumb down our children and dumb down ourselves. We must restore our ancestral knowledge of the vagina and give birth once again to its reverent celebration.
(Image Caption: “The Holey Vagina Mary” by Heather Buchanan on Etsy is selling for $2200. I found this relevant image under the caption “Offensive Hipster Wall Art”. It was too risque for the newspaper, of course, but here you have it.)
• Noelle Khalila Nicolls is the Tribune’s Features Editor. Follow her on Twitter @noelle_elleon. For questions or comments, email khalilanicolls@gmail.com.
As published in The Tribune on August 27, 2013.