SEXIS WRONG

John Thomas, Lady Jane,
and Little Elvis
Genital Pet Names
Martha Cornog
I am sitting in a room with about thirty women. The conference
is billed as “A View Through the Speculum,” 1 and we
are all attending a workshop on vaginal consciousness-raising.
The group leader, a beautiful and vibrant woman of perhaps
fifty, asks us each to say the word we use for our genitals.
Going around the room, we speak in turn.
“Vagina.”
“Pussy.”
“Pussy. Vagina.”
“Cunt.”
“Mama’s box.”
“Henrietta.”
Henrietta? Really?! Hmmm. In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Mellors
the gamekeeper referred to his own erotic equipment as
John Thomas and to Mrs. Chatterley’s as Lady Jane. 2 Seems
like D.H. Lawrence wasn’t making this up.
Or was life imitating art?
A fair number of actual humans do
give pet names to sexual parts of
the body.
Just about every language has dozens, even hundreds, of colorful
slang expressions for the penis and vulva/vagina. Old
friends in English include cock, dick, hog, one-eyed wonder
worm, and trouser snake; bearded clam, box, cunt, panty
hamster, and pussy. 3 But John Thomas, Lady Jane, Mama’s
Box, and Henrietta are clearly different in that they are used
to refer to the genitals of one person only. Thus, they are not
terms or expressions—they are proper names.
Indeed, our trusty Webster’s confirms that a proper noun or
proper name is a noun that designates a particular being or
thing. We name people and pets, of course, real and fictional.
As for things—well, we name places, movies, works of literature
and art, songs, vehicles, and buildings. Sometimes
we name weapons, like Aragorn’s sword Anduril or the atomic
bombs Fat Man and Little Boy. Oddball objects may get
names, too, like a dancer’s tap shoes or a favorite chair. Yet
we don’t name our ears, elbows, or legs. 4 (“Doctor, I just fell
down the stairs, and I think Fred is broken.”)
Naturally, I got curious. Did Henrietta and Mama’s Box have
much in the way of onomastic company in real life? Or did
two very unusual women just happen to show up for that
workshop? Eventually, I found out that that, yes, a fair number
of actual humans do give pet names to sexual parts of
the body: mainly the penis and vulva/vagina, and occasionally
the clitoris, breasts, testicles, buttocks, and anus. I ended up
collecting over 150 such names from adults in the US and
Canada. 5 It was cheaper than collecting teapots, and, boy, did
it make for interesting conversations at parties!
But it’s not like kids get a piece of paper from
parents or teachers that says, “You can name
your genitals if you want.” You sure don’t see
chirpy little booklets in supermarkets next to
those name-the-baby guides, say, something like 1001 Nifty
Names for Naughty Bits. Genital pet names are private names
in more ways than one. Indeed, most people I talked to didn’t
know of anybody else who ever did this, and only a few had
read Lady Chatterley’s Lover. What kinds of names did they
pick? How did it happen? And why? What did they think they
were doing, anyway?
274 EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT SEX IS WRONG