Open any medical textbook not written in the last five years or so and you will likely see that the vulva, if it is mentioned at all, is referred to by the Latin word pudendum. If your textbook happens to be in German, you will probably see that the labia is labeled as Schamlippen. Do you know why? Do you know why the vulva is labeled “the part you should be ashamed of” and the labia is labeled “the shame lips?” It’s because the original medical texts were all written by dudes, dudes with varying levels of male bias. Even Hippocrates himself, that paragon of medical practice, based his knowledge of women’s anatomy mainly on descriptions from women who had performed self-examinations. Is this all a bit unsettling?

“The history of medicine was filled with “fathers”—the father of the C-section, the father of endocrinology, the father of ovariotomy—but, ironically, there were no mothers.”

Now I am not going to sit here at my keyboard and pretend to be this well-informed, feminist ally who knew all this pertinent information already. To be honest, before I read Rachel Gross and Natalie Angier (Woman: An Intimate Geography) I didn’t know my pudendum from my Schamlippen. For example, I had no idea that the average woman has as much (or more!) erectile tissue as the average man. (Seriously, the clitoris is like an iceberg!) The only drawback to reading this incredible book, from a strictly heterosexual male perspective, is that I am now incentivized to have sexual congress with the lights on (lab work reinforces coursework) and that, with my current physique, might be a dealbreaker for my lab partner.