Anatomy Lessons

A conversation I overheard this morning coming from the bathroom while I was still lounging in bed:

Elsie: Daddy, What's that on your body?

Hub: That's my penis.

Elsie: Elsie doesn't have a penis.

Hub: No, Elsie doesn't have a penis because she is a girl and only boys have penises.  Elsie has a vagina instead.

Elsie: Elsie's a girl, and mommy's a girl, and Jory's a girl, and Katie's a girl, and Shay's a girl -- 


Hub: I think Shay is a boy.

Elsie: Shay have a penis?

Hub: Yes.


I think that Hub did a great job with this one!  Simple, straightforward, and unashamed.  Very nice!  I am the parent who over-thinks these things and fumbles them up despite good intentions.

Lately Elsie has been rather obsessed with figuring out who is a girl and who is a boy.  Categorization is normal.  I just hope that she doesn't end up thinking that girls are defined as those who wear pink tutus, or something equally silly.  As soon as we start talking boys and girls, I start thinking, "Oh no! The princess stage is coming!  What am I going to do?!  I do not want commercial propaganda to define my daughter's self-image!  Ahhhhh!"

The genital distinction seems like a pretty safe one at this age... but then there's always our energetic little tomboy neighbor who goes to transgendered sleep-away camp during the summer because it's the one place she feels safe and secure to be herself.  I think that Elsie will be introduced to the distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender younger than most. But it seems more than a bit strained to sit her down and talk about it now.  Better to let it unfold naturally.

I even trip up over the anatomical distinction.  It's not the problem that most people have -- I am in no way ashamed of female anatomy, and I am very comfortable discussing it.  Mine is a problem of semantics and specificity.  Do I just call it a vagina?  That's the commonly used term, and if it's good enough for The Vagina Monologues, perhaps it's good enough for us.  BUT, insists my inner scientist, the vagina's on the inside!  It's derived from the latin word for sheath (where you put your sword, ha ha.)  You can't even see your vagina! 

At least I can tell her, without any doubt, that babies come out of vaginas -- an idea that already seems to fill her with horror.   

"No!" She insists, "Baby comes out of the belly.  Here!" (pointing to my navel and flipping to the c-section page in A Child is Born to drive the point home).  

"Only in emergencies," I tell her.  "Hopefully this baby comes out of mommy's vagina." Flipping to the vaginal birth pages with goopy heads hanging out between the mothers' thighs.  "Like this."

"No, out of the tummy." 

"Down and out of the tummy through the vagina.  Don't worry, Elsie, I know a lot of grown women who feel the same fear about birth.  It's hard to believe that it's easier and more natural.  You've got a long time before you have to worry about it!" 

On the potty, we wipe front and back.  In the shower, I often say that we have to wash her bum-bum and her labia.  Sometimes vulva.  In being the most specific and correct parent in the world, perhaps I'm also being the most inconsistent and confusing.  After all, I don't say we have to wash her anus and her pilonidal region.  I say bum-bum.  All her friends are just going to say vagina or have some cutesy stand-in. 

Long story short, after all my experience as a sex-educator and scientist, I think I should take my lessons from Hub on this one.  He seems to be handling it best.