See, here’s what you get when you use the incorrect term. Plenty of evidence in this thread: Grown adults, fairly well educated, on The Smartest Message Board In The World, who didn’t know the correct terminology.
Now they do.
Kids are going to screw it up even if you do it right. I though my boy cousins had peanuts. I could see the symbology there. I also thought a comic strip had been written about the same subject. When another one of my cousins told me she got a Peanuts doll for Christmas–these were the cousins who always got all the cool, hip toys–I was a bit apprehensive. It turned out to be Lucy.
Somebody needs to give little girls properly labelled diagrams and hand mirrors from an early age.
I have patients who can’t tell haematuria from vaginal bleeding from rectal bleeding…and some who don’t appreciate why it might be an important difference.
I have people who didn’t really understand what was cut during their episiotomy.
I have seen a patient with normal fertile cervical mucous convinced she had an STD and in tears because she’d been on the pill since she was 13 and didn’t know that it was supposed to be like that once her normal cycles returned.
I have patients who can’t tell me where, exactly they have pain, or swelling, or an abscess. There are only so many times you can have an “On the inside or the outside? On the part with hair or the part without? At the top or near the back passage? On the right or on the left?” conversation before you wish for someone to come in and tell you, just once, that they have a boil on their left labia minora.
Nobody says you have to use the medical terms all the time, but it really, really helps if you know them when you speak to a doctor. If you blush, wave vaguely at your crotch and say you have a problem “down there” I know I’m in for a long consultation. Most of which will be spent trying to work out exactly what you think the problem is, and then whether it is, in fact, a problem, or, as is often the case, just a variant of normality you were never told about.
Sure, you’ve heard of Virginia peanuts, right? That’s 'cause the peanuts goes up the Virginia.
After I told my first grade teacher that my cunt hurt, my mom taught me all the right words. :smack:
This thread reminds me of a day in HS English class, Junior year. I was usually in honors classes, but that year, I was put in a regular English class because of a schedule conflict or something. The teacher didn’t have a lesson plan one day, so we spent the whole class just shooting the shit. I taught the rest of the boys “cunnilingus” and “fellatio.” The teacher overheard and lightly admonished me, but I retorted that this was English class and I was teaching vocabulary.