Size Does Matter

How curing my vaginismus taught me that everything I’d ever learned about vaginas- and by extension, men and women- was a lie.

Titian. Venus of Urbino, detail. 1538.

Midway through undergrad, I realized I had a problem. With tears pouring down my face, I googled my symptoms and finally accepted that there was, in fact, something wrong with being unable to take part in penetrative sexual activity without excruciating pain. My experiences met the exact definition for “primary vaginismus,” a “psychosomatic disorder” characterized by the involuntary spasming of the pelvic floor muscles in response to something being inserted into the vagina.

I decided to research pelvic floor physical therapists, and undergo treatment. I did, and it helped my symptoms a lot, but I eventually stalled out and discontinued the treatment, sensing that I had done all I could for the time, and that I needed to focus on other aspects of my life.

A few years after that, I experienced a great loss that caused me to face the gaping chasm that was my personal life. This brought many challenges I had been dealing with throughout my life, especially over the past several years, to the surface during the pandemic, and manifested primarily as severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

I signed up for an intensive Exposure and Response Prevention treatment program, which was something like being psychologically tortured for months on end. However, the brutal treatment did help me, and combined with the mental shift I had begun after my loss, my mind changed radically. I felt like I was finally taking off a pair of tinted glasses that had been coloring my vision, that I hadn’t even been aware I was wearing until that moment. I realized that, along with OCD, I had other manifestations of anxiety and body issues, which some might call “body dysmorphic disorder, “sensory sensitivity,” “obsessive compulsive personality,” “neurodivergence,” (add your label here depending on your worldview and stance on mental health and developmental differences/disorders), etc. and that it was time to go deeper.

I was finally able to identify that many of the ways I engaged with my body were primarily driven by anxiety and disgust, and this led me to return to vaginismus treatment, which I had brought up with my OCD therapist, and who helped me do exposure therapy not only for OCD, but also for body dysmorphia. (Everything is interconnected— OCD and body dysmorphia are both anxiety disorders and function in essentially the same way, although their manifestations are different).

Before I started pelvic floor physical therapy again, I had a deep discussion with a family member close to me about the messages I had received from her about sex and relationships, and how deeply damaging they had felt to me growing up. Those messages made me feel constantly unsafe around boys growing up, and caused me to unconsciously protect myself, both emotionally and physically, whenever around them. The result is that I had stayed completely safe from sexual abuses (a miracle, as that’s something that can’t be said for almost all the women I know), but without the ability to open up— literally and figuratively!— in a sexual or romantic relationship.

This person disclosed to me that she had been sexually assaulted more than once as a girl, and had simply been trying to protect me. To me, this explained almost everything. Perhaps the true fear and danger that I sensed underlying these messages, along with my religious upbringing, and naturally reserved personality, was what caused me to develop the unhelpful coping mechanism of vaginismus. I finally forgave her, thanked her for trying to protect me, forgave and thanked myself and my vaginismus, and began treatment with a radical shift in my mindset. A bridge that had always felt broken between my mind, and the sexual— and most female— parts of my body was finally being repaired. Something was ready to heal.

My second attempt at vaginismus treatment was different in several ways– I had a more experienced physical therapist, who engaged in a lot more discussion with me about the emotional elements of vaginismus. I finally refused to use the horribly-clinical, white, hard plastic medical “dilators” provided by the hospital where I had my treatment, and which the patients and staff alike referred to, with a shudder, as “the candlesticks.” I was finally able to face the sexual nature of this part of my body by doing the prescribed treatments always at home with my mind firmly in a sexual, romantic, or sensual space, rather than locking off that side of the issue to work with the physical therapist in the office.

(nb: vaginismus treatment involves medical dildos called “dilators.” These medical devices are called “dilators” erroneously because there is nothing physically constricting the pelvic floor muscles, or vagina, for women with vaginismus. Vaginismus is a psychosomatic condition- which means that the sufferer has a physically healthy vagina that nonetheless doesn’t function normally due to deep-seated psychological beliefs, such as that insertion of anything into the vagina is damaging, that sex is dangerous or dirty, or that the female body is shameful or vulnerable. Women can develop vaginismus due to religious upbringing, experiences of sexual abuse, or traumatic births. For women who receive pelvic floor PT because they have damage to their vagina due to cancer treatment, or atrophy due to complications from menopause, “dilator” may be a more accurate term, because the device could be accurately described as stretching, somewhat, their damaged vaginal tissue. However, the main reason, I suspect, that the term “dildo” is not so commonly used in these treatments is due to stigma, and the desire to not make the treatment seem sexual, which may scare away women who need the treatment most, and because, while sex is ultimately an integral dynamic in vaginismus that must be faced and addressed on one’s own in the comfort of one’s own home, the dilators are not intended to sexually stimulate the woman’s vagina and the exercises with the (always female) PT is never sexual in nature but rather meant to simply acclimatize the nerves to stop the disordered pain response. For these reasons, as well as to prevent any men from sexualizing this treatment for psychological or physical sexual trauma in any way, I will exclusively call the medical dildos “dilators” from here on out).

I was able to progress through the dilator sizes (which range from smaller than a woman’s pinky finger, to the size of a large-ish penis) so fast that my physical therapist was stunned. Even when I had stumbles and roadblocks, I cleared them relatively quickly. Between my first round of treatment a few years previously and now, I had radically altered my self-body connection, partly due to my intense OCD treatment, partly due to the conversation with my family member, and partly due to conversations I had in gender-critical spaces that emphasized the neutrality of having a female body, and the many sources of social and interpersonal power that women possess due to our female anatomy.

Towards the end of my treatment, another bombshell dropped in my personal life: I found out during a DNA test—taken purely for fun— that one of my parents was not their father’s biological child, and that my grandmother (a working-class child of strict immigrant parents who married young, had had an imperfect, old-fashioned marriage, and who had passed on extremely harsh and fear-based messages to my parent about sex and relationships) had had an affair and a lovechild (my parent). (I am being gender neutral here to completely protect my and my family’s privacy.) As I told my astonished pelvic floor physical therapist what I had discovered, I felt like I had finally found the missing piece of the puzzle that I had always suspected was there. She agreed. Why I had been raised with such intense shame, guilt, and fear-mongering messages about sex, even outside of religious influences, finally made sense. My grandmother’s fear, shame, and guilt had combined with my other female family member’s trauma. I was able to end the treatment when I could handle the largest size dilators without any pain response.

When you start with not being able to stick even a pinky-sized medical device into your vagina without pain so bad it feels like your genitals are being lit on fire, you can’t even look at, or contemplate using, the largest dilators without fear, and something like disbelief. However, as I progressed through my treatment, the pain I was experiencing started to change. What once felt like the excruciating pain of raw nerve endings similar to a burn— now felt no worse than a very tight muscle being healthily stretched elsewhere in my body— like a much-needed massage. So when I eventually reached those dilators, I wasn’t as scared as I might have been, but I discussed with my PT how I was worried that my pelvic opening might be too narrow to use them. I genuinely believed this, and also, privately, worried this might prevent me from giving vaginal birth should I someday choose to have kids. I remember her laughing, and telling me that pretty much every single woman who she had ever treated had had the same concerns, and that all the women were capable– even her patients who were under 5’!

She was right. 

This experience– that of finally progressing to the largest size dilators– radically altered my perception of the vagina as a sex organ, of the act of sexual intercourse, and of women and men and the social dynamics between them.

I had entered vaginismus treatment viewing, on an unconscious level, the vagina as essentially a raw, fragile and sensitive hole– a gash, a slit– which is often how the vagina is described in misogynistic cultures. Growing up, I never saw a medically-accurate diagram of the vagina, with the clitoral-complex wrapping around the vaginal canal, and I never learned that the vagina, clitoris, cervix, and uterus were all involved in the female orgasm. I also never learned that the vagina, cervix, and uterus lengthen and expand (it’s called “tenting”) with arousal (although I had heard that the clitoris engorged upon arousal). We have no popular or common terms in the English language to describe the female vagino-clitoral erection that a woman experiences when she sees someone attractive, reads a romance novel, watches sexual imagery, or engages in sex or masturbation. Linguistically, female arousal does not exist, with the sole exception of vaginal lubrication (ie called “getting wet”), which is a side-effect or reaction to arousal, not arousal itself, and is likely only commented upon because it is the element of female arousal most noticeable to men. I have never heard a woman say “I got an erection” even though we do get erections, nobody had ever pointed out that of course women get erections— because how could a three-to-four inch vagina accommodate an erect penis without damage unless the vagina also lengthened with arousal?— nobody has ever said the words “she’s pitching a tent” even though that’s what vagina lengthening is actually medically called!- and nobody has pointed out the implications of these facts. Like the fact that that woman I saw enjoying the book “A Court of Thorns and Roses” (a truly terribly-written “Romantasy” about a very, very tall Elven Fairy “Fae” King with very large hands that I nonetheless could not set aside my literary scruples to read for more than a few chapters) was doing so in public, on the train, without worrying about being inappropriate at all, because anyone who hasn’t read the book would be none the wiser about any physiological responses her body may or may not be having to the descriptions of seduction and sex. 

Success with the small dilator sizes eventually meant no pain. This was a relief. But as I progressed to the medium sizes, success didn’t just mean a lack of pain. I realized that they felt kind of pleasant. It wasn't until I progressed to the larger, human sized dilators that I realized that, once my brain adjusted and I no longer had a pain response, what was left was not just “no pain,” or a “slightly pleasant” sensation, but obvious sexual pleasure. I remember thinking “this one feels good, but that one will be too big.” I was wrong. Every time. After my nerves adjusted and muscles relaxed, the larger dilator always ended up being more pleasurable than the smaller one before it. For some reason, I was shocked! I had grown up entirely believing, although I wasn’t consciously aware of it, what I would now describe as misogynistic propaganda about the vagina. I had started to realize, with my first round of treatment, that the vagina was not a delicate hole in the body that can be injured or damaged with (non violent) insertion. But it wasn't until this second round of treatment that the scales fell from my eyes and I realized I had been actively lied to, and also, why I had been lied to.

The size of a man’s penis, combined with the consistent movement he can put behind it through his physical stamina, is directly correlated to the amount of sexual pleasure a woman experiences. Certainly, men who are skillful lovers can maximize what they’ve got, and men who are well-endowed can squander what they’ve got with careless maneuvering. But, as long as the woman is relaxed, and the penis (or sex toy) is not forced…with the same amount of effort, the largest sizes are clearly the most pleasurable. This was so blindingly apparent to me that I am still shaken by how little this is openly and unequivocally acknowledged in society (although I have found that women will admit– with much hesitance, guilt, or fear, that they have noticed the same thing).

Now, women's attraction towards tall height and large body size, compared to men’s much more variable preferences regarding female height and body size, also make sense. A big man may be a visual sign of access to easy sexual pleasure. 

Upon this realization, combined with that of my family revelations, the excruciating pain I had always felt at men’s oppression, social control, and disrespect towards women lessened somewhat. I began to realize that there is not some innate cruelty in men that causes them to be misogynists. Rather, the development of misogyny as an ideology is a psychological reaction, a coping mechanism, in some men, to the biological reality that women naturally control the means of (re)production, and may prevent men from gaining access to those means for any reason, including if they don’t “measure up”- literally!

A woman might have to learn to enjoy sex by relaxing, shedding fear and shame, gaining some control over her pelvic floor muscles through sexual experience, masturbation, or exercises– but her body will always be enjoyable to a man. That fact used to upset me, because it made me feel like I could be passively used. Now I understand that this physiological reality can also be a gift. Men have a certain degree of sexual performance which is required of them to sexually please a woman, some of which involves the size and shape of physical features over which they have no control: from that side of the coin, it is men who are in an incredibly (emotionally) passive position in the sexual dynamic. Realizing this, I was able to feel pity and empathy for the first time ever towards men regarding heterosexual sexual dynamics, and to begin to shed my fear and feelings of humiliation and victimhood as a woman.

Men really do have physical limitations that women don't need to worry about. I don’t point any of this out to be cruel, or smug (although we know speaking honest truths is frequently perceived as “unkind” when women do it). Honesty from women is treated like cruelty, yet in the same breath we’re treated like dishonorable manipulators for demurring, choosing careful words, “faking it,” or fawning— “size doesn’t matter; it’s the motion of the ocean!” (a lie).

I came away from vaginismus treatment viewing the ideology of misogyny (and the way it manifests in patriarchal societies) as an incredibly effective, complex, well-thought-out scam, invented and perpetuated by deeply insecure men who recognize their own lack of natural power and control in the evolutionary games of sexual selection.

So what next? A woman can do kegels if her vagina is feeling a bit loose after giving birth, or from frequent sex with a larger partner, or she can do reverse kegels and breathing exercises if she is too tight due to fear or lack of experience. But the girth of a man’s penis is not variable. Predatory entrepreneurs and doctors exist, promising to enlarge the organs of men who fear they are lacking, but these offers float largely beneath the surface of public dialogue in a way that is quite different from how procedures on female body parts that have no impact on a man’s physiological sexual stimulation whatsoever— breast implants, nose jobs, and lip filler— but are merely “decorative,” are publicly discussed, debated, and often defended, in public.

Strangely, male empowerment movements or male networks that promise to teach men of any size or physical capacity the sexual skills they need to truly please women do not seem overly common either. Although perhaps this should be unexpected: when men have the ideology of misogyny to rely on, and all that that offers– blaming, abusing, or shaming women into settling for men who don't prioritize or address their sexual pleasure, or else retreating into the glut of free porn through where they can fantasize that they have a gigantic penis that requires no communication with a woman to use effectively, that they don't have to do anything to become desirable to women. And porn doesn’t stop there: in porn, men turn the large penises that they so wistfully worship, instinctively knowing their value to women, into tools of domination with which to subjugate and punish the woman: subjecting her to rough, painful, and humiliating sexual acts as punishment for how nature made her body work.

Except that model (project all your insecurities onto women; drown yourself in misogynistic rituals) isn't working so well anymore for men. Maybe it never worked “well” (it certainly hasn’t for women!), but it worked well enough to allow many people to keep up the furious pretense that it is natural or possible for women to “lie back and think of England.” As human society evolves into post-industrial structures, male sexual coercion of females, including in its most subtle forms (like having unwanted sex with your male partner so he won’t nag, or worse), is increasingly unfeasible and irrelevant– not to mention, increasingly illegal. Religious and social teachings that dictate that women should be virgins at marriage, unable to going off to college or work jobs around men, and unable to use their own money to travel, are all an attempt to quash all opportunities for women to meet enough be-penised men to compare and contrast, and discover what good sex, and an attentive lover, actually feels like, are losing sway over society at a global scale.

Even in states that practice gender-apartheid (where women are legally defined as a subclass under the jurisdiction and legal control of males and without equal rights to freedom of movement, education and access to capital- what all nations used to be until the 20th century), the internet has allowed the genie out of the bottle: Even women in India (a country with extremely high rates of vaginismus– vaginismus is not equally spread across the globe, but is more common in more unequal, patriarchal, and religious societies that practice “purity culture” ie sexual shaming and control of women) who were virgins until marriage, can go on the internet, read up on why their vagina doesn’t work properly to get help from a trained physical therapist to overcome the pain that prevents them engaging in sex so they can make children,. But this will also inadvertently expose them to the reality of sexual pleasure, the power of the female body, and the profound scam that is misogyny and men’s sexual control of women. Women in Saudi Arabia post photos of themselves taken with their hair exposed clandestinely, longing for the social, educational, professional, financial, and surely also sexual and romantic opportunities that their more free global sisters enjoy, and the women of Iran actively fight gender-apartheid in Iran based in part on a refusal to continue being forced to wear garments that men impose on women to try to both control other men’s sexual access to the female body, and to cause women to be too ignorant, ashamed, or afraid of their own bodies and men’s reaction to them to seek their own sexual pleasure and desires.

Change continues even among developed nations— even Italy is beginning to move out of humanity’s patriarchal age— it gained its first ever female prime minister (before America- take note of that!), who recently dumped her chauvinist husband, and men are more concerned with swooning over her tough immigration policies— and good looks!— than subjecting her to the long-held standard of sexless motherhood historically demanded of female world leaders. Meanwhile, France is finding itself the subject of global shaming over its chauvinistic, antiquated rape laws in a horrific case where a woman has nonetheless refused to accept one drop of the male perpetrators’ sexual shame as hers to bear. Even in America, despite backlash, the #MeToo movement refuses to be destroyed– with conservative women increasingly speaking up to trusted friends and family– if not on public social media platforms– about experiences of sexual abuse from men (this claim of mine is anecdotal, yet I feel convinced this is a development in the #MeToo movement that mainstream media is missing due to political bias. In fact, I believe we are in an era of the rise of the Conservative Feminist– Riley Gaines is a great example, and there are many more).

Men are clearly struggling in this new age. They are asking questions about what they’re even here for: women’s actions as a sex are louder than words— across the globe we have fought, and continue to fight, tooth and nail, to get an education, get our own jobs, pay our own bills, and even buy specific clitoral vibrators to attach to our vulvas to completely bypass even the potential for male fumbling. I have trouble imagining a world where this internet-spurred, societal genie can be put back in her bottle. 

It doesn’t actually help men to play into their sabotaging, and ultimately self-sabotaging, lies about the vagina. This is a time for red-pilling. Furiously and defensively propping up a lie doesn't feel good. It isn’t empowering. And men know it (although they still show no signs of building large-scale, anti-misogynistic male empowerment movements). The gender critical feminist movement emphasizes facing, accepting, feeling, and processing the reality of physical differences between the sexes. That demands a great deal of vulnerability on women’s part: silly as it may seem to some, but acknowledging that you likely have significantly less upper-body strength than even chemically castrated men is a hard pill to swallow– even crushing– for women who have warrior spirits. I don't see any equivalent emphasis on asking men to take their lumps and learn some parallel lessons about the limitations of their own, male anatomy.

I have decided to share my transformative and perhaps unusual experience in a way that emphasizes the nuanced dynamic between men and women, that highlights the aspects of power that women have over men that we might be unaware of or surprised by (because we never share them openly in our societies due to fear, manufactured lies, and stigma) and in a way that stresses how keeping these secrets and believing those lies literally hurts women. 

Before I “graduated” from pelvic-floor PT, I unconsciously saw the penis as a tool of violence and violation– I am now learning that it is the man attached to the penis that chooses how to treat a woman. The vagina is an incredibly tough organ (as anyone who has had pelvic floor muscles so tight they have accidentally shot a dilator across a room would know), and it can only be hurt by someone choosing to be brutally violent towards it. Any organ, even bones, can be injured if subjected to violent force. The vagina is not uniquely violatable, or weak, rather, men uniquely target the vagina for violence. I still haven’t reached a place of acceptance with this fact (should I, ever?), but I have healed enormously by taking the responsibility for my pain out of my body, off my own shoulders, and placing it back onto men’s shoulders, where it belongs. I still don’t understand why men who are confident in their ability to please women, and therefore, who have no need for the Ideology of Misogyny, don’t speak up against this inappropriate neurotic male projecting of suffering onto women, more.

Whether men are ready for this cultural shift or not, women clearly are. The passionate, angry, constructive, and sometimes destructive, nature of the #MeToo moment suggests that our ancient societal mother goddess has emerged once more. Unlike the severed, halved iterations of the mother goddess like the Catholic Madonna Virgin Mother, or the seductive, kittenish, extremely pliable Venus Goddess of Love in her post-patriarchal, Greco-Roman form, we seem to be finally re-embracing older, more truthful archetypes. I recently read “Venus and Aphrodite: a Biography of Desire” by Bettany Hughes, and had my mind blown when I learned that the Greco-Roman goddess Aphrodite/Venus evolved out of Mesopotamian Ishtar, Goddess of Sex, Love, War, and Justice. That feels very fitting. Ishtar may not promise comfort, or stability, she may birth new cultural landscapes, or burn it all down, but she is definitely whole.