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OK. A bit more wrinkly than I thought.
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Until I have to.
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It's not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be.
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Like, maybe like a slug.
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Ugh.
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I'm Laura Doddsworth and I'm an artist, working on a project about our most intimate body part.
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In the past, I've attracted controversy with my work by photographing and writing a book.
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I've attracted controversy with my work by photographing and writing about penises and breasts.
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Now I'm ready for the last taboo.
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I'm asking a hundred women to get naked and talk about their vaginas.
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And I'm going to take part two.
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I'm photographing their vulvas. That's the part on the outside.
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And interviewing them about how their vaginas have shaped their lives.
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It's a part of ourselves that we don't talk about, understand or even look at.
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It's time to see what's really down there and how it defines us.
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Weird garden. Fanny. I say pissy. What's that? Pussy. I like the word.
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Vagina. Vulva. Vulva.
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Private. Front bottom and possibly fanny. Fanny.
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Foo-foos, lalas and minis and things. Front door of happiness.
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Rose cupcake. Cunt. Cunt. I call it my beautiful cunt.
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The vagina is such a magnificent thing.
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It does so many amazing things, including like giving birth to like whole new people.
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Growing up, I never looked at my vulva because there was no need to.
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I just washed it. When I did eventually look at it, I really felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me.
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There's still a lot of shame around the vagina. I think it starts in school.
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Boys are taught about wet dreams and erections and the female equivalent is about periods.
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We do bleed as well, but we also have the equivalent of an erection and a wet dream.
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The penis is this really funny appendage at one end and very powerful and like dominating on the other end.
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But nobody wants to think about a vulva. No one wants to think about a vagina. Just like, ugh, gross.
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When you tell me you're ready, I'll take the photograph.
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Yes, ready. Ready? OK.
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As well as taking photos, I'm interviewing women about every aspect of their vaginas, from pleasure to pain.
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That's all right. It's different seeing it like that, but it's fine.
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It's mine. It's fine.
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I wear my pubic hair, oh, naturally. It's neat and tidy. I keep it reasonably short.
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I'm sporting a full-on afro right now. Bold.
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If we get the back in the side shave, you know, like level three trim.
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I've always liked pubic hair.
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Is there for a reason? Is there to keep bacteria around?
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Usually I'm bold. And I like that I have a bold patch in the middle because of my operation.
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You know, trim around it. I'm actually thinking about making blonde one side.
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I literally have not done anything in terms of grooming to my vagina in maybe two years.
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Occasionally my boyfriend will help me when I ask him to with his clippers,
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which involved me like screaming at him because I thought he was going to cut off my clip.
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But he did a really great job and he was very calm whilst he was doing it.
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He was like, I'm just going under here now, just so you know.
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Can you just like spread them a little bit further apart? I'm like, you're such a good guy.
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But we tended to avoid that little grooming ritual just because it's too stressful for me.
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The clitoris, it's at the top, I think, a little bit awkward. I'm seeing this.
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It's not just the little bit that you see. It's a huge, great, big elaborate creature.
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If we knew more about the clitoris or talked more about it, like the fact that it's got 50 times more nerve endings than the penis,
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it's a lovely, sensitive, powerful piece of our anatomy that is really misunderstood because you don't see visual representations of it.
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It actually is pretty much the same size as a penis. There's obviously the little bowl, the little button,
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but then there are these kind of extended parts of it that go into the body so we don't see it.
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It's made of erectile tissue and when aroused kind of engorges and grips the vaginal wall.
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There's a fear around the clitoris because most men don't know where to find it and if they do, they don't know what to do with it.
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There is a lot of shame still around about vaginas and the slut stuff. She has this messy cunt.
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It bleeds. It isn't nice. It must be kept under control because also we know somewhere she can have a lot of pleasure and we don't want women to have that.
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I love to wank and I always have and hopefully I always will until my dying day.
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My favourite time for masturbating is when I'm in the bath. I just have to feel completely relaxed and that's like it's often just after I've changed my bed sheet so it just smells clean and I feel in the water all around my body.
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So my clitoris is kind of there for the taking.
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I prefer to masturbate but I see the morning when we wake up or the evening before I go to sleep.
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Inside in the woods, the breeze, smell the flowers.
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I like to masturbate in my bed.
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In my bed, in my space.
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In the afternoon, sunshine, nice weather, candles are on.
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All that.
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It plumps itself up and it's kind of like come and play with me.
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The perfect way to start and finish your day. Sometimes twice a day.
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I think there's a lot of shame attached to self-pleasure.
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But actually, if you don't understand what you like for yourself, how do you communicate that to a partner?
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I want to be really frank with you because I really feel like even though I'm finding this really hard, I'm embarrassed by it and I'm worried about who's going to see it.
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At the same time, I feel like those feelings are wrong and that society's understanding of women and masturbating is wrong.
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The average orgasm for a woman is like up to 11 to 20 seconds.
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I mean, it's like five or six seconds.
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When it's on its way, it's kind of like you can hear the thunder in the distance and you know it's getting closer, so it's not a surprise.
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I can feel it building.
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You get this sort of, it's almost like swacking and electricity like bouncing around.
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All of these neurons and synapses making so many different connections and the vulva itself is the hub.
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Look at the smile that's playing to my face just talking about it.
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I'm role-playing things in my head.
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My cunt goes slippery and slidey and juicy.
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Suddenly, the cells will become on fire and I feel the run down through the body and then it always, for me, it's the toes.
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It's in the toes, it's like this.
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You get this involuntary bucking, you know, that right before you're going to go and it's like, oh.
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Your whole body is pulsated and everything's kind of being pumped.
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A lot of poor and often I go deaf.
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It's like being drugged physically.
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Intense.
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I feel my deafness and all this energy.
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It's almost like an overload beyond words.
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It's just one.
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When you're wiping yourself and you can see the colours.
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It can be painful, it can be really bloody painful.
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It doesn't smell pleasant, but it doesn't smell disgusting.
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My whole body starts to feel heavy and exhausted.
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I feel the contracting muscles.
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It feels like a big punch in the stomach.
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Carnage.
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Different textures.
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Sometimes it's like a light red, like fresh blood.
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I would say it's dark, it's a darker blood.
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I was always grateful that I was getting my period, I was always grateful that it was coming.
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Absolutely dread them.
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I don't like the feeling of tampons.
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I was very happy with my moon cup, which I now carry with me all the time.
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I think the worst thing about having your period is the fact that you can smell your period.
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And you're just sitting there like, oh my fucking God, I can smell my period.
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The person next to me can clearly smell my period.
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And then like a dog sniffs you in the crotch.
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And you're just like...
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I think a tampon's quite painful.
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I can remember everybody in school saying, oh, oh, it feels like sex.
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I'm like, well, if that feels like sex, I'm never having sex.
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Free bleeding is basically where you just decide to not wear a tampon or a sanitary towel or anything to stop the blood.
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Having your period is totally normal.
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Like, it's something that's really expected.
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So why should I have to feel so self-conscious?
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In the Asian community, there is a huge taboo around periods generally.
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I remember being on a period and going into the kitchen.
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And I was told not to because my period would spoil the food.
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And I was really confused because my period's there, the food's there.
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I don't know how it would spoil it.
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I got my period when I was 12 on Christmas Eve.
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I got them when I was nine years old.
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It was really exciting.
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Run to the top of the stairs and shouted, I've started.
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I think I had my knickers still around my ankles.
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I was like, mum, mum, I'm bleeding.
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My mother said, oh, oh, I'm so sorry, dear.
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It was quite a special time in my house.
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I was 13 when I had my first period.
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I remember feeling devastated.
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It was like, well, now there's no hope.
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I don't get on with my vagina at that time of the month.
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We're not friends.
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It gets quiet, and then it gets angry, and then it does all the pain.
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When I'm in the middle of my cycle, so I'm assuming when I would be ovulating,
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it's quite a different story.
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It's much more interested in sex, penetrative sex.
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I tend to find I have kind of two times of the month when I'm sort of most interested.
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One is around about ovulation, which, you know, just biologically makes complete sense
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because it's when your body's gay. It's baby time.
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But I also have a time, usually a couple of days before I bleed as well,
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and my hubby's always a bit surprised because he's always a bit like,
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aren't you about to have your period? I'm like, yes, and.
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And even just now and again, day three bleeding can be quite arousing.
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Can you lie down in this space?
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How do you want my legs?
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Just relax them to the side, just let them flop in a way that feels comfortable.
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Looking very yogary. That's all good.
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There she is.
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God, it is so pretty, isn't it?
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My vulva looks and reminds me of a pink cupcake
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because it's very pink and plump and where the labia and clitoris are,
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it looks as though someone's piped layers of pink icing.
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There's a little mole to the left of my labia,
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which reminds me of a little chocolate chip
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that's just been popped on the top of the cupcake.
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The penis is this knife that is cutting in to the layers of the rose velvet.
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It's kind of slicing through, cutting up the cake,
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which means it's sort of almost disintegrating.
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It's not in its previous solid form,
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which I think plays on my wanting to be ruined in a way and sort of fucked up,
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and it ends up just being this messy mixture at the end,
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which is when I'm at my most kind of shaky, in a good way, vulnerable state
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because I'm completely done and wobbling and I'm just a mess of rose velvet.
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At 26, I met a skinhead who absolutely ruined me.
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I had to go home the day after and Google what just happened.
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He was the one that first discovered that I could squirt.
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I didn't even think sex like that was out there.
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I always thought he had really good sex.
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A clitoral orgasm is different from a penetrative orgasm,
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is different from a squirt.
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There was no going back from that moment.
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Then it was always wanting to chase that kind of sex and the squirt.
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The privilege of being allowed in or near someone's vagina,
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she needs to be vulnerable.
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She needs to be accepting of the situation,
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but it's so intimate that it's more intimate than anything else
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because you're going inside somebody that's penetrative sex.
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That's an enormous deal.
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That's not a small thing.
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But we live in a society that doesn't think that way.
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We live in a society that treats women entirely like a cock pocket.
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OK, that's that done. Thank you very much.
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If you just get to a really relaxed position there.
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Brilliant, OK, come on.
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Wow.
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It's difference-looking in a mirror, isn't it?
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It is very different from looking in a mirror.
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It's telling you to pick up the scars far more easily.
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How do you feel about it?
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OK, it's not perfect.
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It doesn't need to be, you know?
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I still really like it.
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It does me. It does what I need it to do.
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I grew up in a pretty rough town.
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You know, a lot of violence going on and a lot of macho culture going on.
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So, at eight years old, I came to the realisation that,
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while I was a boy, I should have been born a girl.
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My penis itself felt very much like a foreign body.
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It was an alien object that was attached to me.
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That was attached to me for some reason.
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My vagina is just as sensitive as the penis before it.
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My clitoris is made up of essentially a section of the head of the penis.
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And, yeah, it's awesome.
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The sex is incredible.
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My generation are realising that having a vagina or having a penis
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doesn't necessarily define your gender.
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It's much more about, you know, how you identify
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and how you feel. It's a much more personal choice.
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Like, the label Virgin, I don't like.
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It's just, you have had it or you haven't had it.
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I told my mum. I actually sent her a text.
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It literally just said,
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So, Mum, I've got something to tell you.
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I promise not to be mad, but I just lost my virginity.
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And she took ages to respond.
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And she was like, I'm crying and I feel very emotionally overwhelmed,
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but I'm glad that you feel that you trust me enough
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and can be open enough with me to share that experience.
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I was 15. I was with my boyfriend and it was in his single bed.
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It was like a cartoon duvet.
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And it was over within about 30 seconds.
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00:18:22,000 --> 00:18:25,000
It was a few pumps and done because it was his first time too
227
00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:27,000
and he was probably super nervous.
228
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:31,000
And then we had sex six more times on that sleepover
229
00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:33,000
because I was like, we've got to get good at this.
230
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:40,000
I'm 19. I'm still the Virgin.
231
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:44,000
My friends are quite mixed. A lot of them still are Virgins.
232
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:47,000
I don't have a wish list.
233
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:50,000
I don't want to set my expectations of anything too high.
234
00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:54,000
And I just think if it happens, it happens.
235
00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:59,000
I think the young men I slept with or had done anything with
236
00:18:59,000 --> 00:19:03,000
had basically just an idea that there was one type of vulva
237
00:19:03,000 --> 00:19:10,000
and one sort of uniform look as to how women look down there.
238
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,000
And I think they had a slightly warped idea
239
00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:19,000
of how they're meant to be treated.
240
00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:23,000
Obviously, in a lot of sex that you see in porn,
241
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:27,000
it's very hard, very intense.
242
00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:31,000
And especially when you're a young teenager
243
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,000
and you're having your first experiences with sex,
244
00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:38,000
some people might not want to go hard and fast the first few times,
245
00:19:38,000 --> 00:19:41,000
especially when you're like, what is this?
246
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:51,000
You don't really get to talk about the mechanics of sex.
247
00:19:51,000 --> 00:19:55,000
You just get to talk about how a child is made through sex
248
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:58,000
rather than any sort of care or compassion
249
00:19:58,000 --> 00:20:01,000
or respect for each other.
250
00:20:01,000 --> 00:20:06,000
So I think that through watching porn like that,
251
00:20:06,000 --> 00:20:09,000
I think a lot of previous partners didn't really understand
252
00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:12,000
that it was very much a two-way street
253
00:20:12,000 --> 00:20:17,000
and the myth of the female orgasm wasn't even a consideration.
254
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:21,000
Porn is an enormous thing.
255
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:24,000
There's really amazing, beautiful, artistic queer porn that's happening
256
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:28,000
and then there's stuff which is clearly really abusive
257
00:20:28,000 --> 00:20:31,000
and driving rape culture.
258
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:35,000
The way in which you supposedly make a woman come in porn
259
00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:39,000
is definitely not... well, maybe some women, but not for me anyway.
260
00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:45,000
The women have been so degraded that it completely puts me off.
261
00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:48,000
Black women are depicted as animals
262
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:51,000
and it's quite degrading in quite a racist way.
263
00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:56,000
Porn is very distorted and it's reinforcing the idea
264
00:20:56,000 --> 00:20:59,000
that your body as a woman is not enough the way that it is,
265
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:02,000
that it needs to be changed.
266
00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:07,000
It made me feel like my vulva wasn't normal in a shape
267
00:21:07,000 --> 00:21:11,000
and in the pubic hairs and how I grew so much.
268
00:21:11,000 --> 00:21:13,000
It was abnormal for me.
269
00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,000
I find it difficult to feel truly satisfied watching porn
270
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:21,000
because I don't know the circumstances
271
00:21:21,000 --> 00:21:23,000
and I want to check everyone, particularly the women.
272
00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:25,000
I want to check that she's OK.
273
00:21:26,000 --> 00:21:30,000
I do get off on watching a couple having sex
274
00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,000
and then having sex with someone myself at the same time.
275
00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:35,000
There's something quite animalistic about
276
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:38,000
not making eye contact with each other
277
00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,000
but just watching these two other essentially animals fucking.
278
00:21:56,000 --> 00:22:00,000
I'm photographing 100 women's vulvas, including my own,
279
00:22:00,000 --> 00:22:02,000
to help us see our bodies in a new way.
280
00:22:04,000 --> 00:22:06,000
But when I started this project,
281
00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:09,000
I wasn't prepared for the amount of pain and trauma I'd hear about.
282
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:19,000
I was raised in an evangelical Christian household
283
00:22:19,000 --> 00:22:21,000
and I was a woman.
284
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:25,000
I was raised in an evangelical Christian household.
285
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:28,000
I just knew sex before marriage was wrong
286
00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:32,000
and I was taught that if you want to be free from sin,
287
00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:36,000
you don't even open the door, you don't put a toe in.
288
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,000
In Islam, the vagina isn't really talked about.
289
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:44,000
There is still that stigma of dirty vagina
290
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:47,000
and that women should really keep their legs closed.
291
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:52,000
Growing up, I was completely scared of my vagina
292
00:22:52,000 --> 00:22:55,000
when I thought about it, which was rare.
293
00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:02,000
It was a hugely scary portal to trouble.
294
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:06,000
I went to Islamic border school.
295
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:13,000
We had to wear the whole abaya, niqab, everything, hijab, 24-7.
296
00:23:13,000 --> 00:23:15,000
You can't even have books from the outside world,
297
00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:18,000
no phones, no TV, no music.
298
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:21,000
I was singing a song, a random song by Brionte,
299
00:23:21,000 --> 00:23:23,000
a roommate casually came up to me and said,
300
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:25,000
you're going to hell for that.
301
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:30,000
My first kind of big crush was Ron Weasley from Harry Potter,
302
00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:31,000
guilty as charged,
303
00:23:31,000 --> 00:23:35,000
and I remember having a poster up of him when I was about 12
304
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:38,000
and I felt it was so wrong I took it down
305
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,000
because I felt it was sinful.
306
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:43,000
I didn't know what I was shutting myself off from,
307
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:46,000
but that door was firmly shut.
308
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:52,000
There are some thoughts and some papers suggesting that
309
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:56,000
and a religious upbringing can have an effect on vocal health,
310
00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:00,000
particularly the pelvic floor and like vaginismus
311
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,000
and like the pelvic floor just clenching up
312
00:24:03,000 --> 00:24:07,000
as kind of like a psychogenic response to that shame
313
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,000
that it's literally like your muscles go,
314
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:13,000
right, okay, then, no, thank you very much, not for us.
315
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:16,000
And sometimes women find that when they try
316
00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:18,000
and strip those barriers down,
317
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:20,000
the muscles do not get the message
318
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:23,000
and I think that was definitely the case for me.
319
00:24:23,000 --> 00:24:26,000
My longest relationship was about two years
320
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:30,000
and we never had a bunch of sex.
321
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:34,000
We tried once or twice, but it just wasn't happening.
322
00:24:34,000 --> 00:24:38,000
There was no way and it was also extremely distressing as well,
323
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:44,000
so I couldn't keep trying because it was such a horrible experience,
324
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:50,000
you know, yeah, but things are better now.
325
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,000
Sorry.
326
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,000
Honestly, I think I try not to think about that time very much
327
00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:07,000
because I'm feeling so much more positive now than I was
328
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,000
now that that avenue has opened up to me,
329
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:17,000
but I really felt like my quality of life was done for, really done for
330
00:25:17,000 --> 00:25:21,000
and that I wouldn't be loved, I wouldn't be able to be in a relationship
331
00:25:21,000 --> 00:25:25,000
and that I wouldn't be able to be accepted.
332
00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:30,000
Yeah, it was dire.
333
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:36,000
There were moments where I didn't know what I was going to live for
334
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:39,000
and whether I wanted to.
335
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,000
My nickname is a vagina woman
336
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:53,000
because I talk about vagina every single day.
337
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:56,000
As a sexual health nurse, I talk about vaginas
338
00:25:56,000 --> 00:26:00,000
it's like I'm talking about cup of tea.
339
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:03,000
We talk about masturbation, we talk about oral sex,
340
00:26:03,000 --> 00:26:06,000
we talk about anal sex, we talk about fisting, we talk about,
341
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:11,000
you name it, every single thing that can go on in a sexual health clinic,
342
00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:14,000
we talk about it.
343
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:26,000
So the morning I heard FGM, it was like Christmas for me.
344
00:26:26,000 --> 00:26:30,000
Imagine being seven years old and having a massive party
345
00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:34,000
and where there's a woman coming in to do your henna,
346
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:37,000
there's another woman there to do your hair.
347
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:41,000
It was amazing and that's the first time I actually got a watch.
348
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:45,000
So every time I look at the watch, I do remember those days.
349
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,000
I feel the needle going in.
350
00:26:47,000 --> 00:26:51,000
After that, everything just went quiet.
351
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,000
She looked at me, I said to me, now you are a woman.
352
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:01,000
Once she left and the local anaesthetic was coming out of my system,
353
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:06,000
I was burning and I remember screaming and just crying.
354
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:14,000
We were very lucky because we had money to afford local anaesthetics.
355
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:18,000
There are girls being cut without any medical assistance at all.
356
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:23,000
My clitoris was removed and labia minora, labia majora
357
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:28,000
and they stitched it all the way down until they left me a little hole
358
00:27:28,000 --> 00:27:31,000
that is no bigger than a matchstick.
359
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:37,000
And you would only always have one little hole to urinate and menstruate through?
360
00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,000
Yeah.
361
00:27:41,000 --> 00:27:47,000
I was in hospital because of FGM from the age of 11 till I was 17 years old.
362
00:27:47,000 --> 00:27:52,000
My period was accumulating inside and it wasn't coming out.
363
00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,000
FGM took away my childhood.
364
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:59,000
I was never that girl that was playing outside with her friends
365
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:04,000
or going to go to the cinema with her friends because I was always in hospital.
366
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:07,000
And it took away my chance to be a mother.
367
00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:12,000
Now I would never know what is it like to carry your own child.
368
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:20,000
All of that was taken away to prove to my future husband that I'm a virgin.
369
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:28,000
We know there's a lot of excuses of why FGM happens,
370
00:28:28,000 --> 00:28:32,000
but really FGM happens to control women's sexuality.
371
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:37,000
They think cutting a woman's clitoris and stitching her up will stop her sleeping around.
372
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:42,000
Growing up to hear that, we didn't even thought about pleasure.
373
00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:47,000
But what was surprising for me was even though the clitoris has been cut,
374
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:50,000
the rest of the clitoris is actually inside.
375
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:53,000
Women don't realize that actually the clitoris is inside.
376
00:28:53,000 --> 00:28:56,000
The nerve is all around our vagina.
377
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:59,000
So we just need to know what works for us.
378
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:03,000
As a woman who had FGM, do I have a really nice sex life?
379
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,000
Yes, I do.
380
00:29:05,000 --> 00:29:07,000
Do I have orgasm?
381
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:09,000
Yes, I do.
382
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,000
I've got clients that enjoy the smell.
383
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:26,000
They will be like, make sure you've run your knickers all day.
384
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,000
My pants are a bit fishy.
385
00:29:30,000 --> 00:29:32,000
I'm going for it.
386
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:34,000
Crushed strawberries and cream.
387
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,000
That's what my vagina smells like.
388
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:40,000
Apparently my vagina smells different before I'm about to get my period.
389
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:43,000
If I have a lot of sugar, a lot of dairy...
390
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,000
A slight smell of blood.
391
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,000
That changes the smell of my vagina.
392
00:29:47,000 --> 00:29:50,000
There's a really big taboo around the word discharge.
393
00:29:50,000 --> 00:29:52,000
People think, oh, that's disgusting.
394
00:29:52,000 --> 00:29:54,000
Or, oh, I don't get any discharge.
395
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,000
You do. We all do.
396
00:29:56,000 --> 00:29:58,000
There's nothing to be embarrassed about.
397
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:00,000
It changes throughout your life and your cycle.
398
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,000
And yes, I have discharge and my vulva looks moist.
399
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:10,000
I still struggle with the kind of more corporeal aspects of that kind of thing.
400
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:14,000
I just feel like it's the same with the hair and stuff.
401
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:17,000
Like, vaginas have a smell, vaginas have hair.
402
00:30:17,000 --> 00:30:21,000
It's a thing. Like, that's something that I'm still working on.
403
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,000
I was born in Ireland in 1975.
404
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:38,000
So when I was growing up, a lot of things around people,
405
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:41,000
but particularly women, was silenced.
406
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:45,000
We were just left with this kind of feeling of shame and misunderstanding.
407
00:30:50,000 --> 00:30:53,000
My parents are really liberal, open people.
408
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:57,000
They grew up in Brighton in the fifties and seventies.
409
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:00,000
They're cool people.
410
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:07,000
They always talked about how sex was a really important thing between two people.
411
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,000
Not that it had to be with one person forever,
412
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:15,000
but the person you were having sex with had to mean something to you
413
00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:17,000
and you had to have feelings for them.
414
00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:36,000
So at about seven I was very, very switched on.
415
00:31:36,000 --> 00:31:38,000
I knew what I wanted to do.
416
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:43,000
I saved. I worked to make sure that my life was ordered.
417
00:31:43,000 --> 00:31:48,000
And then my world was turned upside down in a very unpleasant way
418
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,000
because I was raped by someone I really trusted.
419
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:55,000
And that caused a huge amount of chaos and upset,
420
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:59,000
which at that age I really didn't know how to deal with.
421
00:31:59,000 --> 00:32:03,000
And not being able to talk about it meant no one else could help me deal with it either.
422
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:06,000
So we were just kind of left with that.
423
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,000
Not knowing what it is and not really understanding what's just happened.
424
00:32:21,000 --> 00:32:25,000
So when I was 19, I was on holiday
425
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:30,000
and I was raped by the manager of the hotel that I was staying in.
426
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:35,000
And then I came back on holiday and I just sort of
427
00:32:35,000 --> 00:32:37,000
brushed it under the carpet as a,
428
00:32:37,000 --> 00:32:39,000
okay, well, that probably wasn't a very good thing,
429
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,000
but just didn't think about it.
430
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,000
And then as the years went by,
431
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:49,000
I just started to realise that it was really affecting me in so many ways.
432
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:53,000
My confidence levels just plummeted.
433
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:57,000
When somebody's violated you in that way
434
00:32:57,000 --> 00:33:01,000
and just taken from you in that way,
435
00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:06,000
your self-worth is like, and nothing.
436
00:33:06,000 --> 00:33:09,000
It can make you not want to be alive.
437
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:12,000
And that's how I felt for a long time,
438
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:17,000
just like, well, if I died, it wouldn't make any difference.
439
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:24,000
I went from being a super confident, really happy young woman,
440
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:27,000
wearing low-cut tops, loved my boobs,
441
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:30,000
thought they were the best thing ever,
442
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:36,000
to suddenly hating anything that was sexual about my body.
443
00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:43,000
In all of the warnings that were given as girls by our mothers and fathers,
444
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:48,000
it's almost like you could expect something like this is going to happen.
445
00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,000
And because you've been told about it,
446
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,000
it is almost like, well, then it is your fault.
447
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:56,000
If I'd done something differently, if I'd not drunk,
448
00:33:56,000 --> 00:34:00,000
if I'd not said something or done something or been in a certain place,
449
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:02,000
would it have turned out differently?
450
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,000
Those questions that get round and round in your head,
451
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:08,000
they're the questions that ruin you.
452
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:10,000
You know, what happens at such a young age
453
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:13,000
has become such a part of you
454
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:17,000
that you sort of don't know who you might have been without it.
455
00:34:17,000 --> 00:34:19,000
I just wish I could be normal.
456
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:25,000
I knew what it was like to just be able to enjoy sex.
457
00:34:25,000 --> 00:34:28,000
And even just silly things, like I don't really like watching films
458
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:33,000
or TV programmes because so many of them have sexual assaults in them.
459
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,000
Like everyone keeps saying, have you watched The Handmaid's Tale?
460
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:38,000
And I'm like, I can't, I can't, I can't watch it.
461
00:34:38,000 --> 00:34:48,000
Understanding how that feeling of violation must be turned around
462
00:34:48,000 --> 00:34:56,000
in something that energised me to learn, to understand.
463
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:04,000
You can't fix it, but you can kind of resolve it.
464
00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,000
I'm currently in a relationship and the sex is great.
465
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:13,000
I feel completely differently about it, which is just such a relief.
466
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:18,000
I just think it's so, I really was worried that this was me forever.
467
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,000
I was just never going to enjoy sex.
468
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:26,000
And I am at the moment and I can't begin to describe how fantastic that is.
469
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:31,000
I feel like I'm normal again and that's really nice.
470
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:39,000
I promised myself that I wouldn't let the people who raped me
471
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:43,000
take my presence and my future.
472
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:22,000
Like every orgasm is different, every birth is different.
473
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,000
I went in at the last minute because I didn't want too much interference.
474
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:29,000
Every vulva is different, every baby emerging is different.
475
00:36:29,000 --> 00:36:32,000
You have to concentrate and focus and nothing else seems to matter.
476
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,000
And I just did what I was told.
477
00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,000
I was just throwing up all the time like the whole birth.
478
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:38,000
I was just pooed and threw up and pooed.
479
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:40,000
You just carry on, don't you?
480
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:46,000
The first time was really hard and I told her I had a stick to be tear.
481
00:36:46,000 --> 00:36:49,000
I also had vantus and forceps, so I had quite a lot of pain.
482
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:55,000
I had an episiotomy and forceps and it was absolutely horrendous.
483
00:36:55,000 --> 00:36:59,000
The tear went through the muscle tissue around my anus.
484
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:01,000
And I feel angry that that happened.
485
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,000
It took me probably 15 years to get over having cesarean sessions.
486
00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,000
When I was sewn up, I was sewn up incorrectly.
487
00:37:08,000 --> 00:37:10,000
I didn't feel like a proper mother.
488
00:37:10,000 --> 00:37:13,000
I couldn't even manage to give birth to my children.
489
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:15,000
After he stitched me up, I did feel the same.
490
00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:22,000
I've never been able to exactly pee straight down because my cunt has been made wonky.
491
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:27,000
I was really sore for a couple of weeks, but you kind of don't care
492
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:32,000
because you've got this little snuffily bundle that's just, you know, really gorgeous.
493
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:37,000
You know, birthing can be such an amazing thing
494
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:42,000
within a world that tries its best to tell us it's the hardest and worst thing in the world.
495
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:47,000
After the horror of childbirth, breastfeeding was a doddle.
496
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:50,000
You breastfeed, it makes your womb contract harder.
497
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:55,000
Sucking, you could feel the contraction in your uterus and of course in your cunt.
498
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,000
And then you realise that you're gushing down below and you're like,
499
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:00,000
is this okay? Is this normal?
500
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:03,000
I'd be really grateful if I'd known that was going to happen.
501
00:38:20,000 --> 00:38:25,000
I think when I was first told that it was really unlikely
502
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:29,000
that I would ever be able to conceive,
503
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:35,000
that massively made me question my entire identity
504
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:40,000
as a woman, what did womanhood even mean if you couldn't have kids?
505
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:49,000
We are socialised from a very young age to believe that we are entitled to a family.
506
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:57,000
We're entitled to that biological right or capacity to conceive.
507
00:38:57,000 --> 00:39:00,000
You have to find new ways to explore womanhood.
508
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:08,000
I'd wanted a child for a long time with my partner
509
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:12,000
and was told that it wasn't going to be possible.
510
00:39:12,000 --> 00:39:15,000
But then it was possible.
511
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:19,000
I got to the stage of seeing the child's heartbeat
512
00:39:19,000 --> 00:39:26,000
and then I was staying with a friend and realised I was having a miscarriage.
513
00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:32,000
So I went into the hospital and I went to the toilet to pee
514
00:39:32,000 --> 00:39:36,000
and then the whole miscarriage just came out.
515
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:42,000
And I remember looking in the loo and thinking, that's my baby in the loo.
516
00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:48,000
So I put my hand down to pick her up and just held her.
517
00:39:52,000 --> 00:39:59,000
And it was like a massive piece of liver, dark, warm, bloody.
518
00:40:01,000 --> 00:40:07,000
There is a loss there, but it's taken me to this age of 52 to be able to say,
519
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,000
it's not the end of the world.
520
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:22,000
I'd been bleeding for a few weeks in between periods
521
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:26,000
and a lot after sex with my boyfriend at the time
522
00:40:26,000 --> 00:40:29,000
and he said, is it because my dick's too big?
523
00:40:30,000 --> 00:40:34,000
So when the doctor said, you've got cervical cancer,
524
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:41,000
it felt like a tonne of paving slabs had just been thrown onto my chest
525
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:47,000
and I just thought, I'm 24, like, I haven't even had a smear test yet
526
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,000
and I'm being told that I've got cancer.
527
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:56,000
I had my cervix removed, the surrounding kind of tissue area
528
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,000
and the top third of my vagina.
529
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:02,000
There's a lot of kind of stigma around having a gynecological disease
530
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:07,000
like somebody at my old job when I was leaving to go and have the operation
531
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,000
said, what kind of cancer have you got?
532
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:10,000
And I said, cervical.
533
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,000
And she said, well, how do you get that?
534
00:41:12,000 --> 00:41:16,000
And, like, you wouldn't ask the same if I'd said breast, bowel or brain.
535
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:19,000
When it's something in between your legs, there's this assumption
536
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,000
that you've done something wrong as a woman,
537
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,000
there's a lot of judgement and inaccuracy.
538
00:41:24,000 --> 00:41:27,000
It's medically inaccurate that you have to, you know,
539
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,000
slept with a lot of people to have a gyne problem.
540
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,000
There is this stigma around gyne health,
541
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:36,000
which means that some women will not be as lucky as I was.
542
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:43,000
When I was really little and I didn't understand
543
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,000
about what bodies were, gender was,
544
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:49,000
I honestly thought I would grow up to be a boy.
545
00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:51,000
I just thought that that's just how it was.
546
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:53,000
Some people changed.
547
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:55,000
And maybe I didn't even think that I was going to change,
548
00:41:55,000 --> 00:41:57,000
maybe I thought I already was a boy.
549
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:07,000
I don't really see myself as male or female.
550
00:42:07,000 --> 00:42:11,000
I understand that my physical body is female,
551
00:42:11,000 --> 00:42:17,000
but myself, excluding the skin sac, is much more neutral.
552
00:42:17,000 --> 00:42:20,000
I have elements of masculine and feminine.
553
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:24,000
I think everybody does, really, but I feel that mine are very balanced.
554
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:27,000
And I sit somewhere, sort of, very cleanly in the middle,
555
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:29,000
though it fluctuates a fair bit.
556
00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:32,000
So non-binary is a shorthand way of saying that.
557
00:42:32,000 --> 00:42:35,000
The moment that I understood what non-binary meant,
558
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:38,000
or gender neutral is the term I was using at the time,
559
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:42,000
it was honest to God like I was flooded with light.
560
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:46,000
I felt so alive and so connected and so calm and centred,
561
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:50,000
and it was just like, finally I make sense.
562
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:54,000
All right, fine. I've done it. Can I turn it off?
563
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:56,000
Cool.
564
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:58,000
Off.
565
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,000
Go away.
566
00:43:01,000 --> 00:43:03,000
My vagina is what it is.
567
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:07,000
There's nothing I can do about that, and I don't think I'd want to.
568
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,000
It takes up a lot of head space.
569
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:13,000
I'm very aware of it at all times.
570
00:43:13,000 --> 00:43:15,000
It never goes away.
571
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:19,000
Just let your legs relax to the side.
572
00:43:19,000 --> 00:43:21,000
Just get comfortable. Ready?
573
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:23,000
OK.
574
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,000
That's great. OK, one more.
575
00:43:28,000 --> 00:43:29,000
Fantastic.
576
00:43:29,000 --> 00:43:31,000
Oh, wow.
577
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,000
Gorgeous. That's really lovely.
578
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:39,000
I can't wait for men pause.
579
00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:41,000
I want my period to be over with.
580
00:43:41,000 --> 00:43:42,000
I want it gone.
581
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,000
Let the bleeding stop.
582
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:47,000
I'm just about to have a hot flush. I'm sorry, guys.
583
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:54,000
I never had any of that stuff about,
584
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,000
oh, you're going to be a dried up old woman.
585
00:43:58,000 --> 00:44:02,000
I kept getting wet when I was having sex.
586
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:07,000
I'm 70. I was 70 in May, and I still enjoy sex.
587
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:12,000
I'm more dry than I used to be, so I use a lubricant.
588
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:17,000
A little bit of spit, you know, solves that little problem.
589
00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:25,000
I didn't stop desiring sex.
590
00:44:25,000 --> 00:44:30,000
I didn't stop wanting orgasms.
591
00:44:30,000 --> 00:44:34,000
Really, your life goes in different ways, up and down.
592
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:36,000
You want sex or you don't want sex.
593
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:40,000
I didn't want sex after I had my kids.
594
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:44,000
But after menopause, I then thought to myself,
595
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:49,000
honey, you're on your own. Make the most of it, my dear.
596
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:55,000
I wanted to bring the reality of our bodies
597
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,000
and the truth of our experiences into the open.
598
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,000
I've now photographed 100 vulvas up close.
599
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,000
It's been transformative.
600
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,000
I'm looking at them all together. None of us are the same.
601
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,000
We're not all neat, pink and perfect.
602
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:16,000
I think a lot of people have this really solid idea
603
00:45:16,000 --> 00:45:19,000
of what a vagina should look like.
604
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,000
And if everyone just kind of dropped that
605
00:45:21,000 --> 00:45:24,000
and knew that there were loads of different vaginas,
606
00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:27,000
then I think vaginas would be a lot happier.
607
00:45:27,000 --> 00:45:33,000
What if women did a sexual Brexit and took back control?
608
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:36,000
And then said to men, you're only allowed near it
609
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,000
if you know what you're doing.
610
00:45:38,000 --> 00:45:40,000
And then said to men, you're only allowed near it
611
00:45:40,000 --> 00:45:42,000
if you know what you're doing.
612
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,000
And we set up a kind of driver's licence.
613
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:48,000
I think it would be useful.
614
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:53,000
This part of ourselves which we're so conditioned to conceal
615
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:57,000
actually defines so much of our lives as women.
616
00:45:57,000 --> 00:46:01,000
And our most intimate experiences, pleasurable and painful,
617
00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:07,000
shouldn't be treated as taboo, but as a testament to our strength.
618
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:22,000
We're support available on Channel4.com slash support.
619
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:25,000
And the fellas get to have a say about their fellas.
620
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:29,000
Me and my penis streaming on all four anytime.
621
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:33,000
Back to tonight and it's shameless on Channel4.
622
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:42,000
Thank you.
54234
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