Vagina & Vulva: A Short & Sweet Guide (you're likely using the wrong word)

Vagina is a sex organ, its passage leads to your womb space.Vulva is the temple that surrounds your sex, protecting it, keeping its secrets.Vagina is Latin for sheath.Vulva is Latin for vulva, also called yoni, pussy, or cunt.Vagina excretes/secretes menstrual blood, ejaculate, & milky discharge.Vulva secretes sweat, sebum, & slippery lubricant.Vagina houses everything within your intricate interior:

urethra & urethral sponge; pubococcygeal muscles; hymen; the entrance to the cervix, uterus, & fallopian tubes; the Skene's gland (where female ejaculate likely comes from) & the infamous G-spot.

Vulva, on the other hand, is home to the glorious outer regions of your sex:

mons pubis (Latin translation: "pubic mound"); clitoris & clitoral hood; outer & inner labia; the opening to your urethra, anus, & vagina.

Vagina is an internal elastic, tubular muscle; a canal of sorts.Vulva is external, what you see with the naked eye.Each vagina looks relatively similar on the inside.The vulva, however, comes in an array of shapes, sizes, & colors.Vagina is commonly & incorrectly used when one is actually referring to vulva.For instance:

• The Great Wall of Vagina should be The Great Wall of Vulva.
• The site* Show Your Vagina should be called Show Your Vulva.
• The Vagina Monologues could also be called The Vulva Monologues.

To refer to the vulva as vagina is like calling the penis a prostate.

Our bodies—our gorgeous bodies—are not exactly colloquial.Everything has a place, a moniker, a specific function.Let's stop spreading ignorance. Call vulva by its proper name as a way of honoring it.And if you're ever in doubt about which one is which, remember:

vagina is internal; vulva is external.

 It's as simple as that.*NSFW