By 
What really is the vagina, why do females have vaginas and why are people so obsessed with this organ? I will never find an answer for the latter part of the question; I am sure of this! And if you are female and live in Guyana, the odds are that the same thoughts have crossed your mind.
Why is there such an obsession and hatred of the vagina?
Is it a mutation or abnormality in the human body? Given the hatred and preoccupation, it appears that many persons in Guyana view it this way. And I say ‘Guyana’ because I am not sure if in other countries people are just as obsessed. I’ve travelled to other places (European countries mostly) and observed things I’ve never seen here so it could be that many persons there view the vagina as just another body part and not something that is weaponised to oppress and demonise girls and women.
For instance, the first European country I visited was Germany; I spent just one week in Munich in the summertime. During the one week I took a tour bus and while sitting on the upper deck I saw a young man and an elderly woman sitting on a balcony overlooking the street; they were facing each other and chatting. The image has stayed with me because the man was fully dressed in a suit and woman was completely topless and smoking a cigarette. I don’t know if she naked from the waist down too but everyone passing could have seen her breasts. Yet, nobody stared (except me) or made any comments in the bus. It was as if this was completely normal. Then I came off at the park, a very beautiful park with a man-made waterfall called the English Garden, and in front of me was a young, blonde woman walking completely naked. I felt overdressed. On googling this place later, I saw that people are allowed to walk naked in the park!
I saw so many things in Europe during my trips for a month or less. I’ve never lived there but some of the things there you’d never see here. For instance, I went to various places in France and at one stop there was a carousel for children. It was beautiful and vintage, but what was different was the covering. The covering was pictures of naked and topless women in the form of ‘Renaissance Art’. And there are so many naked statues and paintings of women everywhere. And the people themselves…an even longer post.
One place who can actually go about in without needing to wear a bra under your top/dress. People are not going to stare at the outline of your nipples. Unfortunately, after seeing the women without bras I tried to do the same and ended up on a one-day tour with some prudish American and Canadian elderly people in an A/C train. They kept asking me if I was feeling cold after noticing my perky nipples (under my top) lol. However, my take is that the female form is largely seen as normal and natural in many European countries. Furthermore, I didn’t need to leave Guyana to change my way of thinking; I’ve always held the same views and beliefs. Visiting other places just reinforced that I am not weird for how I think and that in other places people have similar views and see the female form as natural.
So, I am relating a few of my travel stories not because I want people in Guyana to think and behave the same but because it’s high time that people start viewing the vagina as a normal thing for starters. It’s been around for thousands of years, and some countries are far in front of us in how accepting they are of the female form.
To begin with, I’ve noticed that the posts of people with large followings would pop up on my feed a lot although we are not ‘Facebook friends’. And what they say is reflective of the way many Guyanese think; they are not unique in this area.
Usually, when Guyanese have arguments on Facebook, other social media platforms and in person it descends into vulgarity and becomes very crude. They start cursing each other about the vagina and penis, but mostly about the vagina! And I have experienced the same many times (in person mostly) when I have disagreements with people.
The preoccupation with vaginas is beyond reason and I will never understand it. If an adult female uses her vagina a thousand times or once for sexual purposes why should others be bothered by that? You should only be concerned if you have an intimate relationship with the woman or are responsible for an underage child. Does anyone care about how many times per day women do number 2, do people curse each other about their anuses or what they do with their mouths or hands? So why the obsession with the vagina? And they humiliate and degrade girls and women about their vaginas, to be more precise about their perceptions about it and what they believe these females are doing with it. Like what is the purpose of the vagina in the first place? And the vast majority of women do not go about making porn videos and publishing them so how would people know how many persons one has had sex with and why is that even their business?
People have different lifestyles and beliefs. If (adult) women want to have consensual sex with others, it’s their right. The sex life of someone should only matter to them and the person (s) they are intimate with. Anyway, many Guyanese have a very nasty mentality when it comes to sexuality and the right of women to use their own vaginas however they please. They will call them whores, sluts, village bicycles etc. And it’s their perceptions and low way of thinking. Sex is a biological need for both men and women. However, Science is yet to make a landing in the brains of many Guyanese. I will never get it…
My experience
Throughout my life, the vagina has been used as a weapon by others to define, limit and vilify me.
Is the vagina a pollutant?
I basically spent most of my childhood in my room with myself. When I wasn’t at school, I was in my room. As a brown female, I was not allowed to indulge in any sort of extra-curricular activities. I didn’t learn any sport, to play a musical instrument or to engage in ‘healthy’ socialisation with children my own age. But I can’t say my childhood was unique, from my own observation many brown women had similar childhoods. One is seen as property, an accessory for others and raised for life in the home not outside of it. As a female child I was treated differently and I felt unwelcomed at people’s homes. It was as if the vagina between my legs was going to pollute their environment. It was as if I were a dirty thing. The obsession with and hatred of the vagina in Guyanese society defy reasoning.
Is the vagina a decoration?
Is it a decorative organ? Something that one just washes, pat dry and then repeat the same thing during the next bath? Many Guyanese believe it is. Why else would they curse and vilify women for using it for sex?
The first thing a Guyanese would curse me about is the vagina and I am not the only one, it’s a society-wide problem. It’s like I was born tarnished for simply having a vagina between my legs. If one actually took 10 minutes to google what is the vagina and its functions, would people be cursing women about it? In the society, asexuality is what is pushed yet the same people would congratulate women for getting married to MEN and having babies! Like what do they believe the men and women are doing when they get married and how is the baby created. The same ‘dirty’ vagina is responsible for the creation of the baby and sex is the process! There is no logic in this society. And things like attraction and menstruation are all biological to the human species. In fact, humans are in a select group of mammals that engage in sex for both pleasure and reproduction. It’s in our DNA. The vast majority of animals simply engage in sex for reproductive purposes only.
Is the vagina a symbol of inferiority?
Many Guyanese use the vagina as the excuse to oppress and abuse girls and women. Because one has a vagina one cannot do this or that and the opportunities are less than what males are given.
Many females including me were conditioned to believe that because we have vaginas, we must spend our days hiding in the house. And that our worth and value as human beings are directly tied to perceptions regarding the vagina. While men are allowed to own their penises, females are not allowed this ‘privilege’. The first thing they will curse a woman about is the vagina. And for them, probably 99% of females are whores, sluts and ‘village bicycles’. It’s like every time a penis enters a vagina they get a notification! And men are not sullied, only females. The vagina is seen as everyone’s property except the person whose legs it is between. And the hatred of this organ and females in general passes down from generation to generation. I am not kidding, just look at what 11-13 year old students wrote about me in the school’s textbooks:https://lifeingy.com/defacing-of-textbooks-by-students-at-annandale-secondary-school/.
Educating myself, travelling and working have all been acts of rebellion for me. As a brown female, when I came into the world I was expected and raised to be nothing more than property; a beaten, broken and househound brown female.
Social media and the degrading of women and girls
Apparently, there was some sort of Facebook ‘argument’ between a few ‘influencers’. A woman had a disagreement with a man and instead of focusing on him alone, she moved to his wife. It’s so nasty and you would find women degrading other women here. Also, men do the same and the people commenting join also. And they are all adults so what can you expect from the children? By the way, I am not singling out these particular persons. I am just using this as an example.There are many such posts and comments from different people when you go on ‘Guyanese’ social media platforms.
And you have the typical adult drama where they curse each other about their private parts.
Even the children are not spared from being bullied by adults and their nasty comments. Often when there are social media posts about missing teenagers, people would make all sorts of nasty comments. Dysfunctional homes, domestic violence and other forms of abuse are prevalent, many missing children probably ran away because of these but instead of saying something helpful they would make crude comments about the children going to have sex, their sexual orientation etc.
Missing child perceived as being gay.
