"Just how little men know about women's bodies is shocking," general practitioner, medical researcher, and founder of PrimeHealth Clinical Research, Iris Gorfinkel, M.D., told Bored Panda. "A YouGov study in the UK conducted in 2019 asked British men to label a diagram of female genitalia. The results were actually abysmal. Well over half of the men surveyed could not label the vagina or labia, and the majority could not point out where it is that urine comes out."
"There may be a perception from some men that they can get away with not being able to name visible parts of a woman's body, and still understand enough to know what has to go where. But that sets the goalposts pretty low," Gorfinkel said. "Things were made a whole lot better with just a bit more know-how whatever the starting point may be, there's always more that can be learned."
To make that a top priority, Gorfinkel gives the following reasons: "First on the list is, of course, sex because sexual characteristics define what genders are, and knowing more about a woman's body is the bedrock to great sex. [For example,] the vulva is on the outside and that's the part that touches clothing. The vulva actually has four parts. The mons (that's where the triangle of hair grows), the hairy outer labia and the hairless inner labia, and finally the clitoris. The vagina is simply a tube. It's a tube that connects the vulva to the opening of the uterus, the cervix, and the cervix can be felt actually when fingers are deep inside the vagina. And what is the clitoris? Its sole function is sexual pleasure. There is actually no such thing as a G spot and vaginal orgasms for the most part do not exist. The clitoris has twice the number of nerve endings that a penis does, and it is critical to the way most women will experience an orgasm."
Gorfinkel also pointed out that another reason to know a woman's body is for a man to better understand his own risks of sexually transmitted infections. To understand this, the doctor offered to look at the most common STI, the human papillomavirus or HPV. "Most sexually active women will actually contract this at some point in their lifetime, and nearly all of them are not going to have symptoms from it. But men can get this HPV and it can cause men to develop cancer, including cancers of the penis, cancers of the anus and rectum, mouth, tongue, lips, esophageal and laryngeal cancer. Basically anywhere where there's a mucosa, a wet surface, it can result in HPV."
"There are other STDs, such as chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes simplex, HIV, syphilis, hepatitis, and it's important for a person to see a doctor for regular checkups because so many of the diseases have no symptoms, at least half the time."
And the third reason why men should know more about a woman's body is reproduction.
Truth be told, the same study we mentioned at the beginning of this text found that some women have problems navigating their body too. For example, 43% of them could not label the labia.
The only part of the female genitalia which the majority of both genders got right was the clitoris, identified correctly by two-thirds of men and women (71% of women, 69% of men).
"As well as asking Britons to identify body parts, we also surveyed women about their understanding of their own bodies," the researchers wrote. "We discovered a worrying lack of knowledge among women about how their genitalia works."
For instance, the vagina contains a large amount of bacteria, but the good kind which keeps the area healthy. Washing inside the vagina - even just with water - damages the natural balance of bacteria and is highly likely to lead to infections.
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However, nearly half of the women (46%) they surveyed did not know that you shouldn't wash the inside of your vagina. A third (33%) thought it should be washed on a daily basis, and one in six (14%) said with water and soap, and one in five (19%) with water only. One in fifty (2%) think it should be washed with water after sex, rising to 7% of those aged from 18 to 24.
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