My Neck, My Gash: Men Don't Know What to Call Your Vagina. Let's Help.
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There comes a time between a person and another person with a vagina when that vagina is going to need to be addressed. Out loud. Not in the clinical sense, but in the romantic or sexual sense. It seems some guys aren’t sure how to proceed, at least according to one of their spokesmagazines. So let’s help them out.
Over at Maxim, in a piece called “What to Call Her Lady Parts,” we are given the premise, ostensibly a relatable one for many men, from author Cara Hessel, who writes:
Nothing ruins a romantic moment quite like the word “vagina.” Fortunately, there are many, many alternative terms out there that can be deployed to better – in most cases – effect. You’ve got to know your audience to know which phrase to use, but there are a few hard and fast rules. For instance, never ask to “pet her kitty” if she does not, in fact, own a cat.
In an attempt to help you become a more cunning linguist (sorry), we’ve curated a list of euphemisms you can choose from. A word of warning: She’ll probably hate whichever one you choose.
What follows is a list of alternatives:
- Cooter
- Clam
- Beaver
- Cooze
- Vajayjay
- Muff
- C.U. Next Tuesday
- Trim
- Pussy
- Snatch
- Fanny
- Box
A word of advice: She will hate whichever one you choose if you pick ANYTHING from this list except for “pussy.” For advanced lovers, “cunt” is an option, but comes with caveats. More on that in a minute.
Seriously: Why are there no good other words for vagina when it comes to sex times? There are a couple other options for penis: Dick. Cock. Both work just fine, and if cock is too much—as it surely is for certain men, according to an informal poll I conducted—it’s not because anyone is going to think the woman is creepy.
Here’s a theory: Too many vagina descriptors are in fact, creepy- or gross-sounding. Consider all the aforementioned, plus the ones we don’t like to mention—the ones that involve food, gashes and slits. Hatchet wound, anyone? Gash? No? Didn’t think so.
Meanwhile, the various words a woman could utter in place of “penis,” if she felt like becoming an amateur erotica writer in the bedroom, are decidedly not creepy. Silly maybe, but not disgusting. They tend to celebrate the penis’s girth, hardness and length. There’s “hardness,” “manhood,” and even “member” and “staff”—both overused by romance novel standards, according to this roundup of sex euphemisms from SmutWriters. And it’s not that there aren’t dumb names for dicks: rod, for instance, is a real riot, as far as I’m concerned. Fifty Shades of Grey‘s Anastasia is fond of “his length,” which is too vague to be satisfying. But these at least sound functional and not nasty, like “clam” or “beaver.”
But box, snatch, gash, clam, cooze, and for the love of all that’s pH balanced, beaver—well, why not call it a stinky cylinder and call it a day?
Maybe it’s that all this feels too co-opted by gross dudes, or co-opted in ways that sound too porny (though it’s impossible to avoid pornified anything at this point, on some level, including pussy). Which is why the answer to this question—what to call your lady’s vagina in a sexual or sexty scenario—is actually pretty simple.