vulvas vs. violence – episode two

This post is the conclusion of a story that began here.

The vulva war began with him taking down my vulva poster without asking me first. It would escalate with days and days of me bringing up how persistent violence on television had to be far worse for our children than one collage of a few vulvas on the side of our fridge. It would end with me putting my vulva poster back up exactly where it once had been but in between there were a lot of conversations about vulvas and violence.

When you are raising children together you spend a lot of time making compromises. Raising children is one of the hardest most joyful things two people can do together but it requires total collaboration and communication because even if you share similar beliefs and usually agree there will be times when you oppose one another. In my household we pretty much are always in agreement on everything. My spouse might be my opposite in many ways but when it comes to the important things we always agree – or so I thought until the topics of sexuality and violence as they pertained to our children started coming up.

My spouse, like me, was raised in a household where violence on television wasn’t a big deal. We were both allowed to watch violent television shows and movies. Sex scenes or even implied sex scenes were a no-no in our households.  His mother had him leave the room when the scenes were about to come on and my parents allowed my brother that was six years my junior to watch but not me. Our parents completely avoided talking about sexuality – in any form whatsoever. It was as if violence was okay and natural but sexuality was dirty, unnatural and not to be spoken in our households. Yet, we both knew our parents were sexual beings, we learned to masturbate on our own (feeling guilt and shame for it), and we both eventually started having sex before we became adults. The only influence our parents had over our sexuality was negative and censored but when it came to violence our parents were open and approving.

vulvas vs. violence – episode one

In November I went to Joani Blank’s Femalia book signing and picked up the poster you see below. Joani in passing suggested that it should be placed somewhere public. I can’t remember for certain if she said something about wishing people would have them on their fridges but that’s where I put mine when I got home; the side of my fridge.

There’s nothing gross or graphic about this poster; it is a beautiful collage of vulvas. My oldest son, he was eleven at the time, commented on it being a cool looking kaleidoscope as his dad cringed knowing what made up the beautiful collage. As time passed and my oldest kept examining the poster he said that parts of it looked like organs to him. He specifically asked me, “Mom are those people’s insides in the poster?”

I was honest and told him that the poster was a collage made from photographs of different women’s vulvas. I asked him if he remembered what part of a woman’s anatomy that was; his answer sort of. That was a perfect opportunity for us to have another conversation about sex, sexuality and anatomy. I popped open some of the sexuality resources that I have that were age appropriate and we had a great talk. My son asked questions again, shared his concerns about his developing body and told me that he wasn’t too sure if he was going to like going through puberty.