Part of the reason that the femtech industry exists and is so exciting is that most of us know very little about our own bodies! We have been told not to explore, not to ask questions and not to understand what is ‘normal’ and therefore what is abnormal.

Most of us have been taught to run from a feeling of pleasure as if it were the devil. Actually, many of us were told that only the Devil will seduce you into wanting pleasure. We've been thwarted in our relationship to our bodies and the sensations we can experience within it - both positive and negative. 

So many of us have our connection broken by abuse, violence or self-doubt or aging or humiliation or shame. Most of us have been socialised to ignore our bodies, listen to others and forget our own needs, wants and desires by the time we are teenagers, if not before.

Whatever the reason we stopped looking for the deep self-connection before, doesn't have to be our reason any longer. So many of us are completely disconnected from our selves, our pleasure, our body, and especially our womb, and huha, wee wee, lady part, pussy... what do we call that thing between our legs?

How can we be connected to something we have no comfortable language for?

Some say yoni, some say pussy, some say vagina, vulva, thingy, lady part...and 1000 other names under the sun that we've been taught to say because using a correct anatomical term for our genitalia is rude, wrong or embarrassing or so we've been told.

Imagine doing this for your arm? Being too shy to call it an arm. Spending your whole life coming up with ways of avoiding saying the word arm and confusing every conversation in the process. What an exhausting way of living? And yet we do.

It is so important to reclaim our language around our bodies. When we are disconnected from our yonis / vaginas / vulvas we are also disconnected from our power. All women have a guru between their legs! And the sooner we discover it, the better. Better for our health, for our pleasure and for our power.

Let’s start with language. If we can’t name it - we cannot claim the power of it.

So the correct English word for the entire female reproductive system is cunt - and don't you think that is the exact reason that the word cunt is considered a blasphemous and highly offensive word? It gives indication of how powerful it is that women use language to own power that even in the year 2024 this propaganda continues. 

So - Let’s talk about the history of the word cunt. Let's open this up, get uncomfortable and really reclaim the power in this word. 

At a very basic level, cunt is the only word in the English language that we can use for the whole of the female genitalia. It is the literal English term whose definition includes the vulva, the vagina, the womb and the entire female reproductive system/organs including the ovaries, fallopian tubes - well, everything. This word is the best anatomically complete word for the physical organs of a person presenting with XX chromosomes.  

‘Vagina’ only refers to the muscular tube leading from the external female genitals to the cervix of the uterus. It is physiologically incomplete, akin to calling a penis a scrotum. 

The etymology of vagina is fascinating. The word means ‘sheath’ as in the external casing for a sword. The word vagina is deeply misogynist in its etymology, nature, definition and context. It was not used as a ‘medical’ term for the female sexual passage until 1680, before that it was purely referred to within military parlance. 

Let's just stop and think about that for a second. For centuries, dignified gentlemen and military men have been using the term vagina to discuss the contraption they put their sword into. It is inconceivable that the transition of this word into its use for female anatomy is anything but misogynistic in origin. For 350 years, we've collectively agreed to reduce the most powerful creative organ down to the equivalent tube for a sword.

So this tube and its name vagina, is linguistically reinforcing at each utterance the service of this tube to a man’s sword, as a place to slide into. It is narrowing the entirety of the female’s sexual and reproduction organs, to say nothing of their pleasure, to a singular tube for a man’s ‘sword.’ It is misogyny in action at the deepest level. Using this term reduces women to a man's tube for his sword.

Anyone else feel gross?

Well what about the vulva? Well, the vulva refers to the exterior genitalia. It is the exact correct anatomical word when referring to the outer and inner lips, clitoris and introitus. However, it doesn’t include the womb or cervix or reproductive system. So, it is still incomplete in an anatomical sense.

So, back to cunt. Cunt is a powerful, powerful word. In history, it has evoked reverence, worship and sacredness. It has its roots in very ancient times. Cunt isn’t slang, or profane at all, but a word of immense ancient power. 

Both the word and its physical commenced as sacred.

The word cunt originates from the Proto German word Kunto, which is to have been derived from the Indo-European word Kunti. This is a revered name for the much respected Cunti Devi Hindu Goddess and the ruler of Kunta, or kundalini, and she is known as the Primordial Yoni of the Universe (reminder that yoni means sacred temple of the source).  Kundalini is the Sanskrit word for the primal energy or potent female life force Shakti energy coiled at the base of the spine. It is often represented by a serpent. It is a distinct feeling of electrically charged energy running up the spine. The Sanskit “kunda” meaning bowl, water pot can be thought of as the elixir of life, the proverbial fountain of youth. The Sanskrit “alini” meaning life, means kundalini translates to Cuntpower, cunt life force. 

Bit different from "tube for a sword," amirite?

But let me take you throught the literally global origins of cunt and why this word has become so dangerous and should not be spoken. Once you understand this, and the misogynistic history around stripping it of its origins, you will think twice about it all. 

‘Kunta’ means woman in several African languages. It has been found in ancient writings that there was a North African Goddess called ‘Kunda Saharan’ and her tribe are still around today. They are called ‘The Kundas’. It is said that they can trace their roots right back to “the cleft of the Goddess.” It is also recorded that ‘Kunda Saharan’ was worshipped in the Saharan region before the area was a desert. This time period is between 6,000 and 8,000 BC. The Kunda people are in Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

In Sumeria, ’Kunta’ literally means ‘one who has female genitalia’ but is culturally translated into the names of those in practice of priestesses and queens of Sumeria. This is linked with the word ‘Cuneiform’ which literally means ‘the sign of the cunta’ or ‘queen who invented writing.’ Cuneiform is one of the earliest known forms of writing in Sumeria dating at c.3100 BC. The Temple of Inanna, who was the Goddess of Love, war, fertility and lust and associated with Venus, and was known in Sumeria as the Queen of Heaven. Innana was so powerful with her ‘lap of honey’ that worshippers compared her vulva to a ‘boat of heaven’ as they celebrated the bounty that ‘pours forth from her womb.’ There are hymns from Sumerian sacred texts which glorify Inanna’s sexuality and where the people sang praises to her beautiful and soft Cunt. 

The Priestesses of the Temple of Inanna were named the Qadeshtu. They were educated priestesses in worship of the goddess, the accountants and transcribers who were writing with the Cuneiform on clay tablets to record the temple’s financial accounts thus making it ‘the Sign of the Cunta’. ‘Qu’ can also mean love, sensuality, sexuality and divinity present in all females.

The work of reclaiming words goes hand in hand with reclaiming our bodies and our sexuality as our own. Even in the 21st century, there is taboo around talking openly of sexual and sensual body urges in public outside of porn, or medical requirements. And indeed, that is why the culture of porn, of fetish clubs and sex clubs and the like exist in larger and larger numbers around the world. The submitted woman is actually the submitted man. 

 In carvings across the earliest historic settlements we see vaginas, deities and goddesses representing the divine feminine and fertility. From 25,000 to 15,000 BCE statues made of ivory and stone made conceptualisations of women with pronounced and exaggerated pudenda. Across every early historical recording of early cultures that has been studied, there is a version of a sex goddess, worshipped due to her connection of her sexuality to the Earth’s fertility. 

A woman who experiences sexual and sensual power in her own life, seeks out that personal power in all aspects of her life. Women who feel shame or disgust in any aspect of themselves will affect how they show up in other areas.

Another interesting word is the Greek hustera, meaning womb, which is the root of hysteria/hystierical and hysterectomy (the removal of the womb to heal hysteria). Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women experiencing anxiety, sexual desire, sexually forward behaviour, and a ‘tendency to cause trouble for others.’ It was considered to be common and chronic among women in the 18th and 19th centuries. In extreme cases, the woman may have been forced to enter an insane asylum or to have undergone surgical hysterectomy. The modern categorisation of hysteria's symptoms were synonymous with normal functioning female sexuality. 

It is so important for us to educate ourselves and be conscious in terms of how we use language and meaning. Patriarchal religious and cultural systems all are built upon dread of the cunt, that is, of explicit femaleness and female potency, which are associated variously with witchcraft, abomination, idolatry, obscenity, uncleanness, and madness. This dirty and disgraced cunt is defined in antithesis not so much to the penis, but to the phallus. Let us therefore explore the word cunt and why its power has been thwarted and reduced, and indeed how that has thwarted the sexual freedom of all people and especially women.

It is in and through the yoni that we encounter our connection to deeper knowledge, our blood wisdom. The term blood wisdom conveys a sense of the profound experience of knowing already and of recognising and remembering that this deep wisdom is already present in our lifeblood. The understanding that this wisdom is in every cell of our being, in our wombs. This knowing has never been absent and all that has been denied is the access to the living consciousness of the true wealth that this wisdom brings. What this wisdom brings is freedom. 

Menstrual fluid, as detailed in the Nila Tantra very clearly states that a woman who is undertaking her menstrual period should be ‘regarded as pure.’ There are multiple cultures in Asia Major and Oceania that promote the ingestion of menstrual fluids because of their inherent biochemical and electromagnetic properties. 

For every woman, this power and freedom lies in the womb, the holiest temple in your body, the most energy filled space place in your body, the place from where your inner voice, deepest guidance and clarity, stillness, creative expression and power arise. It is your primordial voice and connector to the web of life.