It's a 'hole' new world

And apparently accuracy and sanity have no place in it.

When my youngest was around ten years old, we were having a lively St. Paddy’s Day debate about which was more painful: big pinches or little pinches. At one point, I *may* have challenged her to a pinching contest to see if we could settle it ourselves. “Someday when I’m in therapy,” she announced thoughtfully, “I can talk about the day my mom said, ‘let’s play a game where we see who can hurt each other the most!’”

For some reason, that little anecdote sprung to mind when I saw this actual, not-satirical headline today:

Someday when the entire planet is in therapy, we can talk about the day we were forced to apologize for using proper, centuries-old medical terminology so as not to offend some delusional dudes in dresses who believe they were born with one too many Y chromosomes.

Did I read that headline correctly? Surely I didn’t. There’s simply no way we are being asked to incorporate the phrase ‘front hole’ into our vocabularies. I cannot. I will not. I’m sorry, but I am saying absofuckinglutely no to ‘front hole.’

(Apologies to my readers with delicate sensibilities, but if ever there were just cause for profanity, I’m positive it’s this.)

Today, for example.

First of all, if we’re being technical here, ‘front hole’ is factually inaccurate for these purposes. If a body part were going to be dubbed *and I cannot believe I am even typing these words yet again* a ‘front hole’, it would be the vagina. You know, because it’s right there in the front. (Relevant aside: An entirely different cancer trust suggested not long ago that we rename those bonus holes, which sounds more like something you’d score at Krispy Kreme than a would-be lady part. “Hey Ralph, look here! I ordered a dozen crullers and they gave me a bunch of bonus holes!”) The buried-way-up-in-there cervix—the gateway to the uterus baby cave, for those not familiar with female anatomy—would be more of a ‘middle hole’ or an ‘interior hole,” if you were going to be pathological and give it a directional label. Can any sane person imagine, even for a drunken nanosecond, insisting the world start referring to the urethra, for example, as a rod pocket or an appendage hose? And how would either of those aliases make the thing any less… male?

No, Cleveland Clinic, the uterus is an organ in a woman’s pelvis.

Secondly, how is the word cervix (a Latin derivative meaning neck, which is basically what the thing looks like in the ram’s head diagram above) objectionable… but front hole isn’t? Isn’t it the having-of-one in the first place that’s inconsiderate, and not the string of otherwise meaningless letters you assign to it? Are trans-activists not forced to study Shakespeare in school, where the rest of us learned that even if you renamed a rose a stinkydungflower, it would still smell exactly the same?

Lastly, do people not realize that if we continue a) apologizing for using accurate technical terms, and b) replacing them with ridiculous nicknames, it will never, ever end? We’ve already got birthing persons and chest feeders and menstruators and maintenance holes (which would actually be a reasonable pet name for a vagina but in this case it’s the new, gender-neutral sub for manhole). How far are we going to go to placate a mentally unwell, hypersensitive minority? When are we allowed to say, “I’m offended by your far more offensive replacement for my not even remotely offensive word?” Asking for a friend.

I remember reading parenting books when my girls were little that encouraged using only the proper anatomical terms for private parts with your kids from day one. Doing so would make them empowered and confident, reduce the shame associated with genitalia, and open the door to important conversations about body safety and boundaries. None of this ding-dong and hoo-ha or willie and jay-jay business; it was penis and vagina. Kids could handle it.

What the &!%#!$ happened?

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