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By David Futrelle
One incel Redditor thirsts for knowledge about something he clearly has no first-hand experience with:
This little query has unfortunately been deleted from the AskWomen subreddit, so unfortunately it remains unanswered. (I found it reposted in the Bad Women’s Anatomy subreddit, and alas, the regulars there have not themselves provided any serious answers on this most pressing of issues.)
The guy who originally posted it seems like a nice enough fellow, by which I mean Jesus Christ dude what the hell is wrong with you?
@JessicaRed:
So, it’s an urban legend? Actually, the idea doesn’t bother me all that much. I live in a very buggy place, at least in the spring and summer.
I’m not terribly concerned. Anything that would find a vagina a pleasant environment to live in isn’t going to be equipped to handle the dry land that it would have to cross to get into my bed.
Having a bug
@Alan
I note that the article doesn’t list any instances of spiders in people. That sounds about right- spiders don’t tend to like damp places (a few species of fishing spider and whatnot excepted), and they’re primarily interested in live prey, which isn’t going to be found in a person.
Unless, I guess, you’ve got a cockroach in your nose already. Then maybe be worried about that.
Whoops, I deleted part of my comment.
* having a bug near/on my crotch would be pretty unpleasant, though, and that’s not impossible. Urg.
@Genjones
@Catalpa
The bug that crawled in my ear was a spider. That was actually better for me, since I like spiders. Had it been something with lots of legs like a centipede I would probably still be sleeping with earplugs.
Edit: ok, gif doesn’t want to work. Here’s a link:
https://tenor.com/view/enough-too-much-sthaph-im-done-throws-laptop-gif-5553678
@Genjones
Scorpions are single handedly (single-clawedly?) responsible for me switching from boxers.
It were an uncomfortable couple of days.
Dormousing_it:
I’ve had that nightmare! There were these ants and I couldn’t get away because gravity had been accidentally set on extra high so I couldn’t move and I was trying to reach the gravity setting knob but it was just out of my reach AND THERE WERE ANTS AND…
I have weirdly detailed nightmares is what I’m saying. Still, a more believable horror story than white genocide.
I have long been afraid that water creatures will get up there if I swim in rivers or whatever. I put that down to being a trans bloke and therefore not entirely happy about the orifice in question. Never dared ask how if any women who had one felt the same way.
@JessicaRed, Dormousing_it:
The best response to the urban legend has been the “Spiders Georg” meme:
Jeesus. I’ve heard it referred to as a potential space. It’s not like vagina havers walk around with a gaping hole in us. And there’s usually stuff in the way, even if we don’t count legs, right? But then with all the talk about stretched out roast beef and shit, i guess that fact hasn’t reached the incels yet.
But i have a funny story that feels related. When i was a deeply religious twenty year old virgin i saw a picture in a book called anatomy for artists. I didn’t know what a flaccid penis with foreskin looked like and i freaked out really bad, because how the hell do penis have walk around with giant, gaping urethras?? I was so concerned and unsettled.
I googled – it happens. It’s usually maggots.
Well, no, because it would be very difficult. For starters, it would have find my way through My bed covers, then my PJs, then my wear underwear and then there is the fact that my vagina is protected by my labia. I’m far more worried about getting bitten by a poisonous spider in my sleep, which actually happens. Just last week I found a dead spider on my sheets. It crawled into my bed during the night. Thankfully it was a harmless jumping spider.
Rattus-EEK!!!!!!!!!!
I once had an earthworm slither partway up the inner leg of my gym shorts while I was sitting on the sidelines at a soccer game. That was pretty unpleasant.
Heh, I have a bug-in-ear story too! One flew in my ear when I was running the mile in junior high, and when I went to ask the PE teacher if I could go to the nurse to get it out (it wasn’t amenable to leaving) I was told to quit being a pansy and finish the run. So I ran most of a mile with some bug in my ear before I could go get some rubbing alcohol poured in my ear to flush the bug out.
I can’t say I ended up with an issue with flying bugs, but I definitely have some issues surrounding that PE teacher; the year after the bug thing, she made me sit in my own blood for hours and then run a mile in my bloody underwear when I forgot a pad during my first period. Never did figure out if she disliked me in particular or was just horrible to everyone.
I mean, sometimes I DO worry about bugs crawling into any and all orifices I have, so…
I once had a cockroach crawl up my pant leg in a Toronto restaurant, but that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to being worried about that, in all my 50+ years of vagina-having. And to be honest, I was more annoyed than worried.
And now, for something that’s truly been eating at my mind: Do incels fear the candiru?
I mean, in Russia, they have something to fear as well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTlqhxEaCs
Or would incels welcome that kind of action?
Content note: body-horror nightmares
A few months ago I had an extremely vivid nightmare that a large, squishy millipede-like thing was crawling into my rectum. I woke up thrashing and shrieking, grabbing at my ass with both hands. I couldn’t go back to sleep until I’d checked my sheets for butt-bugs. If I have another visit from that particular nightmare creature because I read that stupid question, I’ll point it in the questioner’s direction.
RE: ear bugs
I regularly wake up with blood caked in one or both ears. My eardrums are intact and my hearing is fine, so I dunno where it comes from. I have a theory involving carnivorous earwigs and an even-more-carnivorous brain.
Ah well, such are the hazards of the sorcerer’s life.
“Do you worry about bugs going into your urethra or your anus while you’re asleep? No? Then there’s your answer, Steven,” I would answer hypothetically.
dustydeste-
She was just a horrible person, full stop. I’m sorry she put you through that.
Nah, I don’t worry at all about a bug going up my vagina. Maybe you should get a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves from the library. Warning: It’s very respectful toward women, all women.
I’ve never worried about it as far as I can remember. (Sand, on the other hand…) Mosquitoes in the sinuses are a more pressing reality. Here in Japan, they swarm over roadside drains in the evening right when I’m biking home from work. Or they do in warmer months. December is finally cold enough to keep the fuckers away.
Speaking of dreams and invasive insects, though, one of my most memorable nightmares was of getting a tooth-worm. In the dream, these were caterpillar-like parasitic insects that lived in people’s mouths. They had tough but stretchy bodies with a strip of hard chitinous plates down their backs. The started microscopic and would etch a groove into a tooth as they grew to protect the soft parts of their bodies. When the host was awake, they’d rest in the groove with their hard backs turned out, but when the host went to sleep, they’d come out and feed on any food that was left on the teeth.
The dream was about how I’d somehow gotten a massive tooth-worm in a top incisor. It was almost as long as the tooth itself. (They were dark brown, so I don’t know how I’d let it get to that size.) A dentist pulled it out (it stretched to like three times its resting length as it resisted this), but that left me with a giant groove in my tooth.
The second I woke up, I spent half an hour thoroughly googling to make sure tooth-worms do not exist in the real world. But that dream was so realistic, it was hard to reassure myself with negative search results.
@dust bunny
December 6, 2018 at 5:23 pm
Nah. There are lots of (unsourced) repetitions of that rumor, but there’s no basis to it. Same for the idea that it contains insecticidal or bacteriocidal chemicals. Its just gloopy, so things might get stuck to it and be prevented from crawling further in, but even that’s a bit of a guess.
They’re not sealed shut, but that’s hardly the same as ‘not exactly closed’. They’re closed, and there are muscles keeping them closed, and if anything did manage to get in it’d find it was in a fairly hostile environment. The digestive tract is much easier to get into and comes with more kinds of food source and convenient ways of distributing your offspring.
There’s only one kind of parasite that likes vaginas, and they’re often featured in posts on this blog.
Candiru! And the rumors are all rubbish. There’s only ever been one “documented” case of a candiru entering a human urethra, and the details of the account are clearly bullshit. Makes for a good grisly story, but there’s no substance to it.
Clotrimazole is one of the biggest-selling over-the-counter medicines in the west., y’know.
As an Australian who lives on a continent with lethal spiders, mozzies galore, and enough damn blowflies to drive you bats, as well as sleeping above the covers through most of summer due to nights getting as high as 30C here…
…nope, this hasn’t really been a worry of mine.
I’m more worried I’ll knock my glasses on the floor reaching for the water bottle beside the bed (which has actually happened a few times), or possibly put my hand on a White Cedar Moth caterpillar by accident (which has also happened). I have also inhaled an insect (through my nose, damn it) a couple of times in my lifetime. But nope, nothing has crawled up my nether regions – the nearest I’ve got is feckin’ mozzie bites on my shins.
After our neighbour in the abandoned factory where we were illegally staying when I was a child told us about how rats lived in the sewers and could come up through the loo, I was terrified of rats coming up and biting me in the arse whenever I went to the toilet. Especially at night. I also had recurring nightmares about rats for years and years and years.
Does that count?