Anatomy is fascinating.
Discussing it can be awkward, though.
It can be especially strange to discuss when people are being educated on certain facts.
But knowledge is power.
Right?
Case in point…
Redditor RedValuable wanted to discuss his experience and get some feedback. So naturally, he came to visit the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit.
He asked:
“AITA for ‘mansplaining’ vaginas to a woman?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“This happened a few months ago, but my brain won’t let this one go.”
“So I was hanging out with some friends.”
“Two guys, one woman.”
“We’re all in our early 20s and have had our fair share of romance in life.”
“The topic of sex popped up and we start talking about some of our past experiences.”
“One guy joked about how having sex only made his d**k bigger and bigger.”
“We all laughed and he said that he wished that’s how it works.”
“My female friend (let’s call her Sarah) piped up and said ‘Yeah, for women, it’s the complete opposite. The more sex you have, the bigger your labia gets and the looser you become.'”
“There were some chuckles, but then I asked her if she was serious.”
“She said she was.”
“Now, this is a big myth.”
“I was surprised a woman who has had some experience actually believes that.”
“I basically told her this, and then she started getting annoyed, asking ‘How me and my d**k knows about that.'”
“I said the same way I know anything about female anatomy- I’ve read up on it.”
“The whole ‘women get looser’ thing is something sexist dudes made up to shame women.”
“My other friends were silent on this.”
“She then just said: ‘Whatever, I’m not in the mood for your mansplaining.'”
“So I’m at a loss here.”
“AITA for explaining something that I feel like people should just know about?”
Redditors shared their thoughts on this matter and weighed some options to the question AITA:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Many Redditors declared OP was NOT the A**hole.
“NTA. As a woman, I’m asking you to please keep telling it to the girls who don’t know.”
“Women need to understand their anatomy!!”
“Sorry, a pet peeve of mine.” ~ AreYouALavaBeaver
“The whole myth is based around the idea that ‘sleeping around’ makes a vagina loose which is… ridiculous.”
“Vaginas don’t care whose penis it is.”
“So if vagina did ‘stretch’ and get ‘loose’ (they do not) then people in monogamous relationships would be loosest of all.”
“On average you get much more sex if you date the same dude for 5 years than if you are single and sleep with 50 guys in that time.” ~ darthvadercake
“As a woman that wished my vagina would just ‘get used to’ the size of my ex.”
“It was a major reason for the break up actually: we both had high sex drives, but it was too painful to have sex more than a couple of times a week and he resented me for it.”
“I wish the myth was true, but it’s so laughable how wrong it is.”
“I spent hundreds at the gyno on tests for her to just tell me I’m probably just too tight for his size, which I already suspected, but kinda hoped she could fix somehow anyway.” ~ pets1st_peoplelater
“Additionally, the ‘more sex=looser’ scenario generally mostly applies to women with changing partners!”
“I’ve seldom heard somebody claim that sexually active women in monogamous relationships are suuuuper used up.”
“Sure, virgins will be thought to be especially tight, but once the freshness seal is broken, it’s only through different d**ks that vaginas lose their tightness!”
“It’s such obvious sl*t-shaming bullsh*t…” ~ msvivica
“It’s only mansplaining if you’re explaining something to a woman that she clearly already knows.”
“This woman was factually wrong and does not know how vaginas work so it is not mansplaining.” ~ peachjamsandwich
“I’m pretty sure mansplaining is a dude assuming a woman doesn’t know something because she’s a woman, usually when she actually knows more than him.”
“In this case, there are no assumptions because she said the wrong info out loud, and neither has any particular training that would make a correction inappropriate.” ~ MysteriousGuardian17
“I’m seriously wondering how she came to that conclusion while being a sexually experienced woman.”
“It makes me wonder if she is actually experiencing sexual abnormalities or possibly lying about her sexual experience.” ~ SachsPanther
“Maybe she became sexually active while still going through puberty and so her labia continued to grow and change.”
“And she is thinking ‘well I’m sexually active and my labia has changed’ rather than realizing that’s something that would have happened regardless?” ~ SunnydaleClassof99
“NTA. You’re right, she’s not, simple as that.”
“Just because you know more about female anatomy than she does doesn’t make it sexist.”
“I always took ‘mansplaining’ as a guy automatically assuming a woman knows less about a topic because of her gender.”
“I’ve had this done to me over computer parts before, and it drove me nuts.”
“However, you weren’t assuming her knowledge based on her gender, you were correcting her on something very wrong, and as you said, pretty sexist.”
“I don’t see anything wrong there.” ~ shiningdialga13
“The tricky part is that in her ignorance from her view he was mansplaining.”
“Maybe he could have looked up something on his phone real quick and showed her or one of the other guys could have agreed.”
“But without that, it’s not surprising a woman could be distrustful of a man challenging her wrong beliefs about her body.”
“But yeah NTA, just a tough situation.” ~ Nogster
“I don’t think it was even that tough of a situation, to be honest.”
“He didn’t insult her or use condescending language.”
“He simply corrected her politely and even framed it in a way that was very pro-woman.”
“And she thanked him by being rude and dismissive.”
“Frankly, she sounds like she’d be exhausting to be around.” ~ Mochipants
“Yeah, OP was in a really awkward position there.”
“Women are all so used to dudes contradicting us to spout nonsense about everything to do with our bodies that it’s easy to automatically dismiss them without seriously considering whether they could be right.”
“He’s definitely NTA and his friend was unnecessarily rude, but her mistake is also understandable.”
“The only thing I could recommend to make situations like this easier in the future would be for him to immediately direct her to the source of the information.”
“So that it feels more like he’s just sharing resources and doesn’t put her on the defensive.” ~ Female_urinary_maze
“I’m a woman working in a S[cience], T[echnology], E[ngineering], and M[athematics] field and do encounter bona fide Actual Mansplaining on a semi-regular basis.”
“E.g. ‘I’m a researcher, my topic is on [highly specialized area of astrophysics].'”
“Random dude: ‘Well the thing about black holes is… [gives high school level summary on space time]”. Me: “……yes I know.'”
“Actually discussing something — especially when you’re wrong — is NOT mansplaining.”
“I hate mansplaining but I hate even more when people get the definition of it wrong + claim it applies to ‘anytime a man disagrees with me.'”
“Because it makes people think that it’s a BS concept made up by misandrists.”
“And it’s not! It’s real, but it’s very specific.”
“But by misconstruing what it is, it makes people likely to dismiss it as something that doesn’t exist.”
“In STEM, it’s obviously mostly men, and an important part of the scientific method is debating competing interpretations of topics.”
“I often correct my male peers and am also corrected by them.”
“If I tried to say that the Moon was bigger than the Sun, they wouldn’t be mansplaining to me by saying I’m wrong.”
“They’d just be telling me, a fellow human, that I am objectively wrong.”
“And that’s fine and should be appreciated. NTA.” ~ bellends
“NTA. It’s not mansplaining when someone is perpetuating an actually harmful and absolutely sexist myth about human anatomy.”
“You’re doing the good work.” ~ brillantezza
“NTA- Because you were right.”
“You’re educated on the topic and offered your knowledge which is accurate.”
“What she said is a wives tale.”
“You were being earnest and had good intentions, and I’m sure any gynecologist would tell her that the vagina does not stretch and wear out due to sex.” ~ weewooooooooo
“It just baffles me that a woman who has sex with 100 men can be ‘a sl*t’ with ‘a loose vagina.'”
“But a woman who has sex 100 times with the same man is ok.”
“If sex causes loose vaginas and big labia (it doesn’t), wouldn’t woman B have exactly the same condition as woman A?”
“Sh*t makes no sense in the first place, and it’s sad that some women actually buy into this internal misogyny. NTA.” ~ comfy_socks
“Mansplaining is (supposed) to be when a man explains something to a woman that he wouldn’t to a man, just because he assumes she wouldn’t know, being a woman and all.”
“In this case, you literally asked if she knew before explaining.”
“Unfortunately mansplaining has become used for just ‘I don’t want to hear this explanation from a man’ without the whole sexism angle. NTA.” ~ shontsu
Well OP, Reddit understands your explanation.
Sometimes people just don’t want to hear what you have to say.
That’s no reflection on you.
You had good intentions.
Keep talking…