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organ that has no biological function, and yet Western culture made up a powerful story about the hymen a long time ago. This story has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with controlling women. Culture saw a “barrier” at the mouth of the vagina and decided it was a marker of “virginity” (itself a biologically meaningless idea). Such a weird idea could have been invented only in a societywhere women were literally property, their vaginas their most valuable real estate—a gated community.
    Even though the hymen performs no physical or biological function, many cultures have created myths around the hymen so profound that there are actually surgeries available to “reconstruct” the hymen, as if it were a medical necessity. (Where is the surgery to perfect men’s nipples?)
    In a sense, the hymen can be relevant to women’s health: Some women are beaten or even killed for not having a hymen. Some women are told they “couldn’t have been raped” because their hymen is intact. For them, the hymen has real impact on their physical wellbeing, not because of their anatomy but because of what their culture believes about that anatomy.
    a word on words
    One more thing about women’s external genitals: The name for the whole package of female external genitalia is “vulva.” “Vagina” refers to the internal reproductive canal that leads up to the uterus. People often use “vagina” to refer to the vulva, but now you know better. And if you are standing up naked in front of a mirror and you see the classic triangle? That’s your mons (“mound”), or mons pubis.
    Got that?
Vagina = reproductive canal
Vulva = external genitalia
Mons = area over the pubic bone where hair grows
    I’m not suggesting that you go around correcting people who use the wrong words, or picket The Vagina Monologues with signs saying, “Actually, they’re The Vulva Monologues ,” but now you know what words you should use. You wouldn’t call your face or your forehead your throat, right? So let’s not call the vulva or mons the vagina. Let’s make the world a better place for women’s genitals.
    the sticky bits
    Woman have a set of glands at either side of the mouth of the vagina, called Bartholin’s glands, which release fluid during sexual arousal—maybe to reduce the friction of vaginal penetration, maybe to create a scent that communicates health and fertility status. When women “get wet,” this is what’s happening. And it turns out, both women and men “get wet.” The male homologue, the Cowper’s gland, just below the prostate, produces preejaculate.
    Why do we talk about men “getting hard” and women “getting wet,” when from a biological perspective both male and female genitals get both hard and wet? It’s a cultural thing again. Male “hardness” (erection) is a necessary prerequisite for intercourse, and “wetness” is taken to be an indication that a woman is “ready” for intercourse (though in chapter 6, we’ll see how wrong this can be). Since intercourse is assumed to be the center of the sexual universe, we’ve metaphorized male hardness and female wetness as the Ultimate Indicators of Arousal. But like our anatomies, our physiologies are all made of the same components—changes in blood flow, production of genital secretions, etc.—organized in different ways. We put a spotlight on male hardness and a spotlight on female wetness, but male wetness is happening too, and so is female hardness.
    Women also have a set of glands at the mouth of the urethra, the orifice we pee out of, called Skene’s glands. These are the homologue of the male prostate. The prostate has two jobs: It swells around the urethra so that it’s impossible for a man to urinate while he’s highly sexually aroused, and it produces about half of the seminal fluid in which sperm travels. In other words, it makes ejaculate. In women, the Skene’s glands also swell around the urethra, making it difficult to