vicki hayes wrote:
> vicki hayes RN IBCLC MOM in chipiona spain, with sons who say "breasts,"
> "vagina," "penis," and "nipple" as easily as "eyes" and "ears" because they
> have been taught the correct anatomical names for body parts and the
> important function each serves! (but I did have to trick them that "scrotum"
> is "Socrates" and "testicles" are "tenticles" when they got fascinated with
> YELLING those two words out the open car windows!!! hee, hee, now they yell
> "Socrates!" and "tenticles!" even knowing the real word)
>   
Mine does too - know the correct names.

But it doesn't half freak the natives. :-)

To keep it on topic, such is the cultural taboo on female body parts, 
that most mothers I know end up in having to decide what the party line 
is, on what female organs are referred to.  The vagina isn't seen from 
outside, and so some people decide to refer to the area as the vulva, 
whilst others refer to it as the vagina.  We took the vulva route with 
our son.  (Clearly in discussing why Mummy doesn't have a penis, not in 
describing his own body!).  Just last week, the 4 year old daughter of a 
friend, returned home to share that the word vagina was a naughty word, 
that she should never use, as it was a 'dirty' word.  Distraught mother 
trying to work out which adult caregiver had over heard her daughter use 
the term, and then proceeded to inform her of how it was dirty. But it's 
a sign of how we treat the female body, that parents have to sit down 
and _decide_ what to name parts.  It's so taboo you need to think about it.

And this is on topic, honest, as 'nipples' is an interesting one.  I'd 
say 'nipple' is even more taboo than breast in the general population.  
Mine not only identifies nipples as something that everyone has, he know 
that a mother's nipple have far more erectile tissue that his own, or 
Daddy's.  For breastfeeding, naturally.  Daddy's don't, but Mummy's do, 
so Mummy's gets bigger to go into the baby's mouth.  But he uses 'naw 
naw' as nipple, for he identifies the breastfeeding process, as the 
nipple.  So I don't think I've ever heard him say 'breast'.  So it's an 
interesting perspective - that it's the nipple, not the breast, that my 
four year old nursling identifies with.  He also knows he needs to open 
wide to keep a good latch.  The joys of the older nursling.

But, conversely, for all that breast is taboo and nipple even more taboo 
in general terms... it can sometimes be easier to discuss 'nipple' in 
terms of latch etc, as opposed to breast, with other mothers.  It's 
almost as if breast is always sexual, but nipple can be functional when 
it's one to one discussion.

Yet mentioning nipple at all, outside breastfeeding, is more taboo.

Humans, what do we do to ourselves?  :-)

Morgan Gallagher

ps  I do have to share that the common pretend name in the culture I was 
raised in, for the penis, was 'wee man'.  'Wee' as in small.  So the 
thought of raising another male in the joys of identifying his entire 
male identity as his penis... was quite enough to overcome the shock 
horror and disbelief of various health visitors etc, that I called my 
son's penis... a penis!  There was, of course, no common term at all, 
for the female parts.  Simply never mentioned or referred to.  Absent, 
entirely.  In fact, the first time I ever heard it referred to as a 
'front bottom', was in England, and as an adult, and I was shocked it 
had a euphemism at all.  And what an association - just another anus.  
:-(  Truly 'dirty'.

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