Ever since I took "Women's Health and Reproduction" in college I have had a little bit of a pet peeve about the misuse of the word "vagina." People use it to mean the whole shebang, when really the vagina is just the canal on the inside. All the outside business falls under the umbrella term "vulva." It is an incredibly hard speech pattern to break, actually: even though I know better I still use vagina as a catch-all term, mostly because it is sorta embarrassing to get all technical in everyday conversation.
So, you know, the vagina is sorta just hanging out there, not taking up much space unless it is, um...in use. My friend A and I refer to the actual vagina as "a potential space."(Insert (heh heh) very offensive joke about what it is a potential space for here.)
D$ has heard this conversation/monologue several times, and yesterday as we half-napped on the couch we had the following conversation.
MWK: Bla, bla bla vagina week, bla bla bla "potential space."
D$: So, you're saying the vagina is, like, a construct?
MWK: No! It's an actual thing, duh.
D$: But you just said it was a "potential space." Doesn't that imply that it isn't there until something is inside of it?*
MWK: What? No! The vaginal walls are there! And maybe a little bit of space.
D$: But those are vaginal walls, not the vagina.
MWK: It's the same thing. It's like your throat. Does your throat not exist unless there is something inside of it?
D$: There is my esophagus! The vagina is totally a construct.
MWL: Shut up.
long pause
D$: If a tree falls in a vagina, does anyone hear it?
Epilogue (Several hours later):
MWK: If you aren't nice to me I'm totally going to quote your tree question on the blog.
D$: What? What is wrong with asking rhetorical questions about the vagina?
*D$ doesn't really have such offensive thoughts about the vagina. He was just trying goad me.
