"I speak, Hall, of the sacred mystery...of sex."
There's a new Snopes.com thing on a rumor that Lady Gaga is intersexed. I find this interesting because apparently what started the rumor is a screenshot of her leaning against a motorcycle where, in the words of Snopes, "her underthings can...be mistaken for a vestigal penis." (The article with the picture is here.)
From what I can tell from looking at this picture, it's not "her underthings" that have the shape mistaken for a vestigal penis, it's her vulva inside her underthings. First of all, what's with the reticence from Snopes? They've got other rumor articles about Lil Bow Wow (back when he was Lil) being raped by his bodyguard and the cops discovering Mick Jagger eating a Mars bar out of Marianne Faithfull's vagina during a 1960s drug raid. Surely they can talk about this without claiming it's "her underthings."
Second - and I apologize, because talking about someone's genitalia is not something I ususally do or would do - from what I can tell, it looks like she has a perfectly normal vulva. I know I never would have looked at it and thought it looked out of the ordinary. I think this rumor started because the only naked vulvas the public ever sees are surgery-reduced porn star ones, so now anything that doesn't appear to be in that shape must be a genetic anamoly.
Third, Lady Gaga's response was, "I'm not offended, my vagina is offended." Hon, no one was saying anything about your vagina, they were talking about your vulva. It's not the same thing. Why do women not know what parts of their bodies are called? We're talking about body parts they see whenever they go to the bathroom, not the bone above the second joint of your toe or some other obscure, internal body part.
My mom had this book from the library written by this psychologist or psychiatrist about humans and shame. The author, who's had scores of female clients who talked to her about sexual issues and kept calling their vulvas their vaginas, has reached the conclusion that there's so much psychological shame about their vulvas for a lot of women that they don't even want to call them by their right name. A lot of her clients were embarrassed to have sex or be naked in locker rooms because they thought their labia minoras hung down too far. When it comes to the terminology mistakes, I blame that danged Eve Ensler. She writes a whole play that continuously calls a vulva a vagina (as well as calling an actual vagina a vagina) and then women see it and think it's all enlightening when in fact it doesn't even know the exact definition of a vagina. Like the part about the woman whose husband wanted her to "shave her vagina." YOU CAN'T SHAVE VAGINAS. YOU WOULD CUT YOURSELF GRUESOMELY, AND IT WOULD BE POINTLESS BECAUSE VAGINAS DO NOT HAVE HAIR.
On a slightly different note, I haven't listened to the radio in years - is Lady Gaga any good? Ususally I'm up on most things gay-related, but the last time I realized I knew nothing about a gay icon I ended up in San Francisco reading the weird captions on the back of Harvey Milk's personal photographs from the Navy.
From what I can tell from looking at this picture, it's not "her underthings" that have the shape mistaken for a vestigal penis, it's her vulva inside her underthings. First of all, what's with the reticence from Snopes? They've got other rumor articles about Lil Bow Wow (back when he was Lil) being raped by his bodyguard and the cops discovering Mick Jagger eating a Mars bar out of Marianne Faithfull's vagina during a 1960s drug raid. Surely they can talk about this without claiming it's "her underthings."
Second - and I apologize, because talking about someone's genitalia is not something I ususally do or would do - from what I can tell, it looks like she has a perfectly normal vulva. I know I never would have looked at it and thought it looked out of the ordinary. I think this rumor started because the only naked vulvas the public ever sees are surgery-reduced porn star ones, so now anything that doesn't appear to be in that shape must be a genetic anamoly.
Third, Lady Gaga's response was, "I'm not offended, my vagina is offended." Hon, no one was saying anything about your vagina, they were talking about your vulva. It's not the same thing. Why do women not know what parts of their bodies are called? We're talking about body parts they see whenever they go to the bathroom, not the bone above the second joint of your toe or some other obscure, internal body part.
My mom had this book from the library written by this psychologist or psychiatrist about humans and shame. The author, who's had scores of female clients who talked to her about sexual issues and kept calling their vulvas their vaginas, has reached the conclusion that there's so much psychological shame about their vulvas for a lot of women that they don't even want to call them by their right name. A lot of her clients were embarrassed to have sex or be naked in locker rooms because they thought their labia minoras hung down too far. When it comes to the terminology mistakes, I blame that danged Eve Ensler. She writes a whole play that continuously calls a vulva a vagina (as well as calling an actual vagina a vagina) and then women see it and think it's all enlightening when in fact it doesn't even know the exact definition of a vagina. Like the part about the woman whose husband wanted her to "shave her vagina." YOU CAN'T SHAVE VAGINAS. YOU WOULD CUT YOURSELF GRUESOMELY, AND IT WOULD BE POINTLESS BECAUSE VAGINAS DO NOT HAVE HAIR.
On a slightly different note, I haven't listened to the radio in years - is Lady Gaga any good? Ususally I'm up on most things gay-related, but the last time I realized I knew nothing about a gay icon I ended up in San Francisco reading the weird captions on the back of Harvey Milk's personal photographs from the Navy.