Pussy euphemisms. Now there's a nice collision of contradictory phraseology. I think about pussy euphemisms a whole lot. Like when we were in the States and the hotel room had free "nap sacks" for the disposal of "sanitary napkins," which is sort of the godfather of all pussy euphemisms, even though it in fact describes items only pussy-related rather than pussy themselves. Or yesterday Helen was telling me how girls' bathing suits get sold with "hygenic stickers" over the inside of the crotch. You couldn't just go call that a vag-guard, couldja? Nossir. Must underscore the inherent dirtiness of the vulval secretions by throwing the word "hygiene" everywhere you see anything vag-related. And then of course there's my absolute, all-purpose favourite among the pussy euphemisms: the sheer number of women who can only, if ever, choke out that brilliant non-descriptive if forced to refer to their girly-parts at all: "DOWN THERE."

DOWN THERE. What the fuck is down there? Miners are down there. Australia is down there. Mola Fucking Ram is down there. Not exactly a connection to the goddess, is it?

When I was a kid, my parents were strict by-the-bookers: the items in question were called the vagina and the penis. No more, no less. Obviously everyone knows that this is the way you're supposed to go when raising kids, but even the other day at my office, a group of women (most of them mothers) were talking about how they just can't bring themselves to go "vagina" on their daughters, coming up with yet more pussy euphemisms like "flower" and "marigold" and "hot snatchy love box." (I think the latter momma was kidding.) Yeah, I realize that in technical medical terms it isn't even a vagina at all and we're all supposed to say vulva instead but I'm just gonna stick with what I know. I was raised with "vagina," and when I hit 20 I started seeing the sheer adorability of "pussy," and there's no denying that reading Cunt flipped my entire worldview in ways not entirely related to linguistics, but at least starting there. And that's the end of it. When I say "cunt" I know what I'm talking about. Can't know nothin' don't have a name.