The buzz phrase for better sex is ‘sexual communication’ or, as I like to call it, sensiculation. It doesn’t always have to be verbal, but in the long run, there is just so far your grunts, grabs or horrified spasms can get you; at some point you need to latch onto a few words and say what’s on your mind or between your thighs.
Carl Sandburg said “slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work”. And slang has definitely stepped into the gorge that was created by the dearth of user-friendly sexual language.
The Little Snippa Book
Doing It
Probably the most popular euphemism for sex is the term ‘doing it’. It’s a sad indictment of our level of comfort with sex, when we need to find a euphemism for it, but for a whole lot of people talking about sexuality inspires the awkwardness of discussing ‘kicking the bucket’ or ‘getting the big C’.
And when you ‘do it’, exactly which ‘it’ are you doing? Would that be intercourse? Oral sex? Masturbation? Cybersex? Or the dishes? Talking about ‘it’ in such vague terms can create a feeling of distance and impede whatever dialogue is trying to happen.
Part of the problem lies in the conservative nature of our language. A conventional dictionary or thesaurus is likely to provide only prissy entries like ‘intercourse’ or ‘sexual union’, suggesting that the whole, wide subject of sex doesn’t properly belong in our lingua franca. Could it be possible that the act that makes the world go round has virtually no formal vocabulary with which to be described?
The synonyms we will find, if we try really hard, may be easier to find in an animal science textbook than in an English dictionary - words such as coitus, copulation or fornication. Since they come with associations of finger wagging priests and lectures on the abomination of pre-marital sex, they may need to be sidelined in our healthy sex dictionary.
Without an adequate vocab, we either learn to shut up about sex, or we turn to the available slang. Words such as fucking, bonking or shagging tend to remain a bit brazen for anyone who isn’t naturally bold about their sexuality. But since the linguistic powers-that-be cannot see fit to acknowledge the slang related to sex, or to offer alternatives, the cycle continues to reinforce itself.
Genitalia
Genitalia is the word that supposedly covers the anatomical angle with a good, sterile Old Latin twang. Apart from the fact that the word provokes associations of nasty health conditions, even the fellows who edit the dictionary can’t seem to agree on the real meaning of the word – whether it includes external sex organs only (vulva, penis, scrotum) or internal one too (ovaries, tubes, testes).
Presumably, for most peoples’ sensiculation purposes, there is no need for organs that are out of sight and reach. So we can just as well ditch this vague term and focus on hitting the mark(s).
Vagina
Let’s now take the word vagina. The word comes from the Latin word for sheath, as if this part of us is just a fold of skin created to harbour a penis. With all due respect to Eve Ensler, who gave our nether areas a lot of respect with her Vagina Monologues, more women and men than we care to acknowledge don’t even really know what they are talking about when they use the word.
A woman’s external sex organs are called the vulva. The vagina is just one part of that all-important complex. While it might be the meaning-of-life for adolescent boys, we’d all like to transcend that unfortunately narrow comprehension of sex.
Maybe because the name itself is quite hideous or because the vagina is the unfathomable final frontier, the thing that Freud considered a merciless castrator, it has motivated a prolific list of offensive and grungy names. The common names tend to ooze such negativity, that unless women choose personal nicknames, they are apt to develop a loveless feeling towards their V-zone.
Snippa and Snopp
If we are going to get on with productive sex education of children, adolescents and our partners, we are going to have to find likeable words to refer to the vagina, clitoris, labia, penis and scrotum, for starters. For youngsters and adults alike, the names of intimate body parts do not have to be anatomically explicit for us to use them effectively.
A bit of a revolution is taking place in Sweden, where sex educators like Anna Kosztovics of the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education are campaigning to introduce a new name for the vulva. They call it the snippa. The beauty of the name is that it has no bad past undertones and is a female-friendly answer to the Swedish word for penis, which is snopp. Since snopp carries no negative connotations and is comfortably used, snippa emerges from an untarnished place.
Even though English speakers use hundreds of colloquial names for the vulva and/or vagina, many people still struggle to pick one that sounds inviting, instead of causing their hairs to stand on end, which is what some women feel when they hear pussy, cunt, or other names borrowed from various small animals and fruit.
Since English has never had any scruples about absorbing words from other languages, why shouldn’t we defer to the Swedes on this one? We should grab onto the words snippa and snopp until they stick. Not only are they lyrical, but unlike so many of the existing names, they are also devoid of misogynist associations, and they even suggest some of the egalitarianism and progressiveness that we associate with Swedish society.
For the pilot study, sexually-positive English-users should go forth and give this duo a test run. One can start by introducing their snippa to their partner and asking if they would like to sensiculate about the snippa, or better yet, to her. Just remember that snippas can’t hear too well, so you may need to get extremely close.
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