Last night my husband was looking over my shoulder as I saw the title of this thread. I started laughing, and he sheepishly said, “I always thought they did.” I was flabbergasted and laughed some more. This guy has an advanced degree in biology, is almost 60 years old, and is a fantastic lover. So I went to Google and showed him a drawing, and he said he knew that! Apparently the word “vagina” is a generic term meaning anything between a woman’s legs.
I thought that women peed from their vaginas, and after reading this thread, I’m still not sure what the answer is! I was also surprised that they don’t have to take out tampons when they use the toilet.
I also have no idea what vulvas and labias and clitorises and so on are – everything down there is just a “vagina” to me. Male genitalia is much more straighforward!
(Yeah, I know I could easily find out the facts. I just don’t have any need or desire to.)
From the last two paragraphs, I hope you’re a gay man or otherwise not sexually involved with women. 
And to summarize, women (with normal anatomy) don’t pee out of the “birth canal” part of their anatomy (aka vagina). They pee out of a little, more-or-less tucked-away hole located just a bit “up” or “north” from the upper rim of the opening to the vagina. Tampons get stuffed inside the “birth canal” and the only thing interfering with peeing would be if the string got peed on, which would be yucky.
The clitoris is a teeny nub of flesh that is the anatomical equivalent to the penis - it starts out as the same thing during fetal development but as male vs female babies start developing differently, a boy gets his urethra located within the length of the penis, while a girl has the urethra get located so it exits right above the vaginal opening, and the clitoris stays small. It has (last I read up on it) the same amount of nerve endings as the penis, but they’re all tucked into that tiny spot. It also gets erect during arousal due to the blood rushing in, but typically it’s tough to tell the difference unless you’re looking right at it or touching it, as it’s usually still very small. It’s located “up” or “north” from the urethral opening.
The outer labia or “lips” (same Latin word as is used for your mouth’s lips as well) keep a woman’s “bits” covered and protected. The inner labia are closer to (but not exactly like) small folds of mucous membrane like the inside of your mouth, in that they’re softer than regular skin, and usually moist-ish.
“Vulva” is a good word for the overall external genitalia of women; it refers to the labia, clitoris, and vaginal opening. I wish that had been popularized instead of calling everything the “vagina” in popular culture.
To comment on the hypospadius and so forth mentioned above there was a “do women pee on their tampons” thread about a month ago, and many of the same issues were discussed. I am too tired/lazy to search for it, but you can find the link to the thread easily enough, either search my posts or the thread itself.
And I told a story of a woman with hypospadius (I am a nurse and I never heard the term applied to anyone except men before these recent threads) and how I became known as the Marco Polo of Bessie’s hoo-haw. But she had several abnormalities of the pelvic region, plus she was a little person, (I think, although no one ever called her that, but before she lost the use of her legs she would still only have been around 4 feet tall.)
IN GENERAL, however, women urinate through their urethra which is not the menstrual/sexual/childbirth passage. It is generally in front of that, behind the clitoris and not really easy to see to the untrained eye. Or the trained one, as outliern points out.
Real men think women pee out their vagina.
I can’t understand why a female wouldn’t know where urine came from. I mean, wasn’t there a time that, sometime during your girldhood, you asked yourself…“I know it comes out, but from where?”… and looked?
Really, how could you not know?
Thank god there are others who shared my ignorance. :o
The first time I realized this was when my wife was pregnant, and I was reading some books and saw the diagrams.
The first time I realized how pee comes out was when we were toilet training my daughter. I had no idea that it comes out at a forward angle.
The problem with this is that most women are reluctant to host a treasure hunt in a well lit room, even without the riverdance.
Truth is, it’s really not that pressing a bit of information for most men to have, personally, I think there’s some manufactured outrage in play.
Actually, it’s not all that small; it’s just that most of it is inside the body and therefore invisible. The visible nub is the “clitoral glans”, but there’s a lot more where you can’t see it. Wiki page; NSFW if you scroll down, in a clinical sort of way. The anatomical diagram also includes the relative location of the urethra and vagina as well.
I saw an anatomy picture when i was a little kid. From then on I knew how women pee.
A while ago I saw a thread on Reddit which was about things people are ashamed of not knowing until they were far into their adulthood. This pee from vagina thing came up a lot.
On the subject, why is their peehole so close to their vagina anyway? Doesn’t seem very practical regarding the possibility of vaginal infections and stuff.
That’s just the way it happened to evolve. At least we didn’t evolve to pee out of our tongue or something like that; it could be worse.
Growing up back when parents told their kids to go just go outside and play, I played doctor a lot, and was made aware of this.
Saint Augustine had made the observation “inter urinas et faeces nascimur: we are born between urine and feces,” as a philosophical point.
In healthy people of both sexes, urine is an almost sterile solution, so it is not typically the source of vaginal infections.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the relatively short length of a woman’s urethra, and the position of its opening somewhat close to the vagina and the anus might lead to bladder infection more frequently than occur in men.
Why would I have been poking around in my privates as a little girl? As far as I was concerned, human waste was disgusting, therefore the parts that human waste came out of were disgusting. As far as I was concerned, I had a hole for pee and a hole for poo, and I can’t think of any reason I would have had to examine them closely.
After puberty it does become relevant, of course. Then there’s a very good reason to know which hole does what. But during girlhood I think there’s ample reason not to know.
Guess women should avoid chicken farmers… hens only have one exit door for everything (pee, poop, eggs)… Of course chickens don’t actually pee, so that could be one confused dude.
For those still confused let’s have an ASCII anatomy lesson?
//;\
\o//
So men generally call the whole thing vagina but it’s really just “o” where the dick goes in. “.” is the clitoris which is a little button of pleasure and “,” is the urethra hole where pee comes out. “//\” are the labia (inner and outer folds).
My ex-wife knew far too much about her bits. She had studied medical-school anatomy, up to and including dissecting human cadavers, and she could talk about female bits as casually as you or I might discuss the weather. Let’s just say that sometimes, her candor and frankness put a damper on things. (“Honey, right now, I really didn’t need to know that.”)
Reported NSFW image.
I think I’ve found my new avatar.