Questioning Sex #2: Is a “Pussy” By Any Other Name the Same?

If language reflects our beliefs, why does our sexual language express so much shame?

7 min readApr 25, 2023

by I. J. Weinstock

(Author’s Note: Beyond procreation and pleasure, sex is also the “source code” for society. How we conceive of, feel about, and engage in sex shapes relations between men and women, dictates the dynamics of family, and ultimately influences the values and structures of society. Since the “story” we tell ourselves about sex determines the kind of civilization in which we live, it’s essential that we ask questions about sex and society.)

This article is adapted from his new book, *OUR SECRET SEX LIFE: The Key to Humanity’s Destiny*.

Supposedly, we live in a sexually liberated culture. Some would say “sex-drenched and sex-obsessed.” After all, there are millions of porn sites where you can find whatever kink or fetish you’re into. How much more liberated can we get, right?

Yes, we’re much freer today to express ourselves sexually. But does that mean we’re sexually free?

If we’re so free, why do all those words get bleeped on TV?

“The Explusion from Paradise” by Lucas van Leyden, engraving, 1529

For most people today, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is a kind of fairy tale. But as Western Civilization’s creation myth, it casts a long shadow over history.

Thousands of years after the First Couple was banished from paradise for eating the “forbidden fruit” (code for sex), the rejection of sex becomes explicit and fundamental to Christianity’s origin story of an “Immaculate Conception” and “Virgin Birth” untainted by that “Original Sin” in the Garden of Eden.

A few hundred years after Jesus died on the cross to redeem humanity for that Original Sin, Augustine shaped most of Christianity’s and Western Civilization’s view of sex. Haunted by the Original Sin in the Garden of Eden, Augustine believed that his spontaneous erection was his body’s betrayal of the spirit. For Augustine, sex was not only the Original Sin but the Work of the Devil. So he repudiated sex and idealized celibacy as the most spiritual way of life.

Fast-forward another thousand years, and the seed of Original Sin produced the bitter fruit of medieval Christian monks resisting the temptation of sex by actually castrating themselves.

Those castrated monks may seem like mad aberrations, but we’ve inherited the same self-destructive, Original Sin-sourced shame.

You’re probably saying to yourself, “That was then, but we’re sexually liberated now.”

Are we?

It’s been said that language is a diagnostic tool that reflects our beliefs. So what does referring to some words as “dirty” and even bleeping them on TV say about our beliefs?

Dirty Words

Our sexual shame is embedded in our language. For example, the word “pudenda” was commonly used up until recently to refer to the external genitalia, particularly the female’s. The word derives from the Latin meaning “that whereof one ought to feel shame” or simply “it shames.”

A more contemporary example is the word “masturbation,” which originally meant “to defile oneself.”

Not so long ago, our genitals couldn’t be spoken of in “polite society” because they were “unmentionables.” Eventually, our genitals became our “private parts” and, more recently, our “naughty bits.” Not so long ago, even thinking about sex was associated with garbage and discouraged — “Get your head out of the gutter!”

Today, engaging in sex — the act of potentially creating new life — is often described in degrading and demeaning variations of “bumping uglies” or “doing the nasty.”

Even Shakespeare described the sexual act as “making the beast with two backs.” Why not “the angel with two wings?”

Why are so many things related to sex considered “dirty”? Calling them “dirty jokes” and referring to them as “dirty words” expresses how we’ve been conditioned to feel about our sexuality. We’re ashamed!

One could write a book about all the ways our language reveals our profound sexual shame. For example, take a compliment like “sexy as Hell.” Can you imagine hearing someone say, “sexy as Heaven”? Inconceivable in our Original Sin-sourced culture.

And then there are those words that get bleeped on TV.

George Carlin’s infamous comedy routine, “The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” riffs on the absurdity of this kind of censorship.

“There are some that would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them that you can’t say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. They’d have to be outrageous to be separated from a group that large… That’s what they told us they were, remember? ‘That’s a bad word!’ No bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions, and words!
“You know the 7, don’t you, that you can’t say on television? ‘Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.’ Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war. ‘Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits,’ wow!”

The seven words in Carlin’s routine were expressed in the media as s**t, p**s, f**k, c**t, c********r, m**********r, and t**s. Yet, the media had no issue with the word “rape.” After the FCC declared a broadcast of Carlin’s routine “indecent,” the ensuing legal case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Is a “Pussy” By Any Other Name the Same?

There’s a saying among computer programmers: Garbage In, Garbage Out!

Much the same can be said of human beings — how we name something gives it value and meaning.

Clinically, we call a woman’s genitals a “vagina.” But many other more commonly used terms for that part of the female anatomy express varying degrees of contempt and disgust. To a lesser degree, the same can be said about men’s genitals.

The Hindu Vedas, India’s millennia-old holy texts, express the ancient understanding of the fundamental importance of the male and female genitals as symbols of divine principles to be revered as sacred instruments.

In Sanskrit, the language of the Vedas, the female genital is called a “yoni,” which means “sacred space.” The erect male genital is a “lingam,” which means “wand of light.”

A society unashamed of sex would view the female genitals as the “sacred space” in which the act of creation takes place, or the Heavenly Gate through which we all pass when we enter this life on Earth.

A sexually enlightened society would teach every young man that when his “wand of light” enters (by invitation, not penetration) a woman’s “sacred space,” he enters the realm of the Divine where the magic of creation can happen.

What’s in a name?

Everything!

An Existential Question

Why can murder and mayhem and all the instruments of destruction be seen everywhere in the media, but the sight of our genitals, the instruments of creation, are prohibited?

Sasha Baron Cohen, the comic actor, has observed that social media companies “don’t allow nipples, but they allow Nazis.” Who would have thought that nipples are more dangerous to society than Nazis?

Our “sexual liberation” is a lie. We’re not liberated; we’re just freer to express our Original sin-sourced sexual shame and dysfunction.

India’s ancient Vedas warn that a society that doesn’t revere the genitals as sacred instruments of creation is doomed. The urgent question we must ask ourselves is — Can a species that’s ashamed of how it creates new life survive?

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I. J. Weinstock is the author of THE SECRET SEX LIFE OF ANGELS series — an epic quest exploring the mystery we call “sex.” This essay was adapted from his recent book, OUR SECRET SEX LIFE: The Key to Humanity’s Destiny.