10 Things You Didn't Know About Vaginas

Image via Complex Original

There are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris, so don't forget the vagina's little BFF. That's double the amount of nerve endings in your penis, so it's a wonder that her clit bit doesn't cause an explosion when it's correctly stimulated. Also, FYI, it really fucking hurts to get kicked in the vagina, a pain that is often thought of as exclusive to getting kicked in the dick, which is obviously a fallacy (phallacy, LOL). Hurrah for equality!

Kegels are designed to strengthen the pelvic floor, which includes your uterus, bladder, small intestine, rectum, and for women, the vaginal walls. There's a lot of controversy on how this affects sex, with some doctors (including Dr. Kegel himself) saying it intensifies orgasms, while others are not so convinced. One thing's for sure—a diligent practice of Kegels can cure incontinence. Frequent yoga and pilates practice can also help to strengthen the pelvic floor, although much less discreet and more time consuming.

The labia is there to protect the vagina. It is to the vagina as Prince Oberyn is to Tyrion Lannister—a swarthy hero just trying to protect the little pink dude. The Labia Majora encloses the entire area, think of it as the Crows and the North Wall, protecting Westeros from Wildlings and White Walkers, while the Labia Minora are nestled within the wall, surrounding the vaginal opening, like the King's Guard protecting King's Landing. And there you have it—I just gave you a Game of Thrones-themed vagina tutorial.

Like soap, the vagina is self cleaning. That doesn't mean it doesn't need to be washed, though. Natural vaginal discharge acts to clean the vagina, even though sometimes it has a funny smell. Discharge is the vagina's best friend and worst enemy. (It's also got something called "squalene" in it, which can be found in shark livers. You definitely didn't know that until just now.)

Discharge has been covered, but sometimes other weird things fall out of the vagina. During menstruation, for instance, what seems like huge globs of bloody snot can fall right out. At other times, for instance after a procedure on the cervix (common for women with HPV), stuff that looks like bloody coffee grounds falls out. That's OK too, as it's part of the cervix's healing process. While it might seem like there's a bunch of random crap that just falls out of a woman's vagina, it's nothing you need to worry about. It's also important to note that the vagina is designed so that nothing but sperm can get past the cervix, so don't worry about finding any old tampons up her uterus.

Vaginas are like snowflakes, every one is different. Some of them have crazy long labia and some are all tucked neat inside. This also means that reaching orgasm is a unique process for every vagina. There's no "text book" way to stimulate one.

The vagina doesn't get "bigger" the more sex it has—none of this "throwing a hotdog down a hallway" nonsense. It's elastic, so it stretches to accommodate, but then snaps back into shape. No amount of sex will permanently "loosen" a vagina. The only things that will permanently change the tightness of a vagina are childbirth (which is also pursuant to age and the number of children a woman gives birth to) and age.

A woman needs to be aroused for her vagina to become "wet," but who knows what that entails. Getting horny is often a mental rather than a physical thing, so factors such as stress and hormonal changes can affect the way the vagina prepares itself to be entered, regardless of what the woman attached to that vagina actually wants.

Female circumcision is nothing like male circumcision. Female circumcision, more commonly known as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), is illegal almost globally, but is a common practice in sub-Saharan and North East Africa, Yemen and Iraqi Kurdistan. It's not a common practice in the USA, but there are as many as 168,000 women living in the States that are at risk of FGM. FGM involves removing all of a woman's outer sexual organs—both labia, clitoral hood and clitoris—and sometimes even the closure of the vaginal opening, which means that upon losing her virginity, a woman's vagina must be ripped open. This is often done without anesthesia, any time between a woman's birth and puberty, and can lead to infections including HIV, infertility, and in many cases, death. FGM is estimated to have been practiced on 125 million women in countries where the procedure is common.

This might come as a shock, but women have three holes—one for babies and dicks, one for poops, and one for piss. The urethral hole is located between the clitoris and the vaginal opening, but this is really just a vague estimation. There's really no way to tell exactly where her piss comes from, which explains why lots of women end of peeing on their hands when they're supposed to be peeing in a cup when they're at the doctor.