By David Futrelle
Today’s nuggets of vagina wisdom come courtesy of some dude who just tried to post this thing below on my blog. Apparently the vagina (and the female reproductive system in general) is some sort of sperm-powered locomotive.
I must have missed this day in Sex Ed.
And all the girlfriends I’ve had must have been malfunctioning too, as they generally seemed to prefer it when no sperm reached their reproductive organs at all, due to their desire not to be pregnant all the time or even ever.
I’m trying to imagine HareyS here on a date. When exactly does he bring all this stuff up? Does he launch into a speech about sperm the minute he and his date sit down for a few cocktails? Or does he try to subtly work it into converstation?
Her: Sorry I’m late! My car wouldn’t start so I had to take the bus.
Him: Interesting. You know what else can’t really function [leans in] … without sperm?
Actually, I’m guessing this guy doesn’t go on many dates.
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technically, neither sex have a fully functional sexual organ, since you need one of each for babies. Women are closer to be fully functional tho, since mutations that allow females to reproduce without male exist, but not the converse.
Such a mutation on a women would be particulary annoying, since it mean she would get pregnant randomly without input. Being on the pill or having abortions every years don’t look *too* fun to me.
Does someone know if there are conditions that prevent menstruations and how problematic they are ?
The closer actual body mechanism to his idea seem to be barfing. Preventing barfing is a generally very bad idea, and while the digestive track isn’t optimized for barfing, it’s still largely something it’s evolved to do somewhat safely (operative word somewhat, since it’s still reasonably destructive).
Menstruations is probably less important for species like mices and even cats that A – aren’t permanently in heat and B – can fully raises to adulthood their children before the next heat season. But since humans raises their kids for 10 to 15 years while they could have children every years, they really, deeply need a mechanism to make sure nothing go awry if they aren’t pregnant for a long time.
@Seth S
That’ll be a hard one, they get a bit upset if you tell them to take down that flag.
@Ohlmann
There are intersex conditions that result in lack of uterus (like MRKH syndrome) or non-functioning uterus, which means no menstruation. And one possible symptom of PCOS is irregular periods or lack of menstruation for an extended time. IIRC endometriosis can also cause some differences in cycle, I don’t know much about it so I can say much more about it.
There are also conditions that cause the vagina to be sealed, which cause major problems when menarche occurs because menstrual matter can’t exit.
Edit: I forgot to mention earlier that malnutrition and starvation can also cause lack of menstruation.
Who was that guy who claimed that menstruation was a result of meat-eating and going vegetarian would “cure it”?
@Lukas Xavier
That one turned out to be a satire. This guy here probably isn’t.
Hey, maybe this guy once heard something about the alchemical creation of a homunculus and thought it was … y’know, a recipe that worked.
Oops, “recipe” sounds like something only filthy feeeeeeemales do, right? I need to come up with a more science-y word. Or I could just rewatch some Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood.
Please tell me we’re not going to get into the “are people from the United States of America allowed to call themselves Americans” debate again. Because of course they are.
A Distracted Medievalist:
I think he’s thinking in terms of just barely understanding that menstruation is what happens when the body “misses” its opportunity for establishing a pregnancy.
He also has the common misconception that human bodies are literally meant to fulfill some purpose, such as reproduction. This leads him to feel that a non-fertile menstrual cycle is somehow profoundly inferior, no matter how unavoidable*. Maybe he also feels that menstrual bleeding is so gross it can’t be any kind of intended purpose for the female reproductive system (It isn’t, because there’s no purpose).
Then he concludes that since conception and pregnancy is a part of the human reproductive process that occurs inside the female body, presence of sperm is necessary for the “full” functioning of the female body. This somehow (conveniently) makes women dependent on men on more than just reproduction itself. Meanwhile, men only need to eject sperm, because that’s all they can do in terms of reproductive body function.
*AFAIK in pre-modern times women might have commonly spent most of their fertile years not menstruating due to several pregnancies and extensive lactation (arguably also a part of the female reproductive process), but there’s no reason we should emulate this. There’s also no reason why non-pregnant women should routinely suffer menstrual cycles, if those can be safely suppressed with medication.
I’m not a linguist, but here’s my understanding.
Within the US, Yankee is fine for naming objects and general use, but is usually not used to describe specific people, and when it’s used to describe specific people it is generally used as a threat or insult. Of course, generally speaking, context, world of possibilities, blah blah blah.
“Yankee” started out in the Northern American colonies to mean “those dumb English assholes over there”, and then the English started using it to make fun of any colonists rebelling against them, and then the Northern colonists started using it to describe themselves in the US’s original “I’ll show you by self-owning” move. I imagine that the English were the ones who exported the nickname for the American colonies throughout the world long before it took on it’s more angrier/threatening connotations from the civil war.
And yes “yank” is the same thing as “yankee”, and I have heard “yank” used for “yankee” in the US. I imagine that it isn’t used as an insult very much because yank runs the risk of sounding goofy due to it’s more common use as a verb. Or “yankee” is being used as an adjective and using any word that’s normally a verb would probably be disastrous. Imagine if the American candle brand “Yankee Candle” was named “Yank Candle”, I would honestly first read that as [imperative verb to yank] Candle, and I would be so confused as to why I’m being ordered to yank candles. It’s just easier to say “yankee”. ;p
Moogue – Thanks for clarification.
Steve Bannon indicted for fraud.
‘Victims’ are people who provided funds to build border wall.
Who do you root for in this one!
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/leaders-we-build-wall-online-fundraising-campaign-charged-defrauding-hundreds-thousands
@Alan Robertshaw
For both to be publicly humiliated.
But mostly for Steve Bannon to go down. He as an individual is worse than the people who chimed in for the wall.
@Alan
Not even ironically, the lawyers.
@ POM
I had to read that very carefully for comma placement! 🙂
@Alan
Wait, a Yankee gets to eat pie for breakfast? Sign me up! I can Yank with the best of them!
Wait, ignore that….
@Alan
I’m cheering on the US Postal Inspectors who worked on the investigation. As I saw elsewhere on Twitter:
Client: I think I’m being investigated by the feds.
Attorney: Ok, well which feds? DEA, FBI?
Client: Postal inspectors I think?
Attorney: …
Client: What?
Attorney: All right, let’s just figure exactly out how f**ked you are.
@Kat,aotfgie:
If this guy is really that confused about the concept of the human body shedding through its orifices organic matter that no longer serves a useful purpose within the body, I advise him not to think too hard about the process of urination or defecation.
I mean, if he’s really committed to the idea that expelling unused biomatter from the body is “abnormal”, that’s going to get pretty uncomfortable for him pretty fast.
@Alan
To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.
To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.
To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.
I have never heard this before but I love it! Even if I contend the second to the last line. I’m happy to don the term Yankee as a native non-VT New Englander.
Rather be a Billy Yank than a Johnny Reb.
@Kimstu
How much worse can it get? He’s already full of shit.
It’s annoying, but not a malfunction. Also, how can any human be “fully functional” when we don’t have wings or decent night vision? There’s a lot of things we don’t have. 😛
@Schnookums Von Fancypants, @Alan – A few days ago I wrote about my great-grandfather who reportedly ate a whole pie for breakfast. But he lived in Maine, as far as I know. (That’s where my dad comes from – I was born in Montreal.)
This kind of reminds me about when I had to explain to my husband that an unaroused vagina is only like 3 or 4 inches deep and that arousal is what makes it open along with lubrications for PIV sex. It amazed me that I had to explain to a 20 year old man the actually physicals changes arousal does to a vagina, not just “getting wet”
(had this conversation with him to help him understand a bit better about my sexual assault, cause he had PIV intercourse with a young lady when he was a teenager when they were both virgins and she didn’t bleed after it, he took foreplay pretty seriously so as not to hurt her. and when I told him about the amount of blood i was dealing with after my assaults, he thought it was because i was a virgin and that confused him. Had to explain that it was from actually lacerations of my vagina. not the supossive ” hymen” breaking.)
You *could* make a point that the human body could have designed a more comfortable way to deal with menstruations. That wouldn’t make it a malfunction as much as a suboptimal design, similar to how some nerves make strange path through the body.
Humans are pretty unusual in animal kingdom that we silently ovulate every month, hence the monthly menustration. I guess going into heat and not ovulating until sex makes the baby making process too obvious or something.
@Alan Robertshaw
Can I root for the Post Office in this case? 😀
PARTY!PARTY!PARTY! etc.