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Why do we need to understand our bodies?
Why do we need to understand our bodies?
It's a large misconception that we shouldn't know about how our bodies work and what's important about them. There are lots of things to check on as we get older and go through puberty, so it's important that we discuss the genitalia you have as well as others. One day, not only may you encounter another person's genitals, but you would want to know how to respect them and get consent for actions involving any genitalia of yourself and others. Regardless of actions we may one day take, we should keep expanding our knowledge of our bodies as a vital piece of our safety during youth and learning process.We make it a priority to discuss these private parts of the human condition with care and respect, because of the lack of respect often given to both typical female and male genitalia. Also important to keep in mind that there are no people who should touch your private parts or genitalia without your consent or need for emergency medical care.
As humans, we are multicellular beings, that also means our bodies have specialized systems that provide different resources, jobs, and protection for the body. When we first look at the body systems it can look somewhat overwhelming, but we have to remember that everything is part of the whole system. Working in tandem, our body systems are able to keep us going. Many people have chronic illnesses or disabilities that can impact their body systems functioning ability, which can cause people to need to take medications, have assistive devices, and can require medical procedures to internally fix any complications. While we don't need to worry about things happening to us directly, it's important we educate ourselves on the ways our body function so we can look out for ourselves and loved ones, while also being able to provide social comfortability around topics, some people still need to destigmatize in their lives, so all people to feel accepted without judgement.
Knowing Important body parts to keep healthy as you grow:
Knowing Important body parts to keep healthy as you grow:
Feet
Feet
Why is foot health important?
Foot health is important especially as you enter puberty and adulthood. Being in new places, common areas, common showers/ bathrooms, as you get older; allows for newer health issues to arise. If you have itchiness or discolored skin, its important to see a doctor. Commonly transmitted skin rashes like Athlete's Foot, or Ring Worm, can be transmitted in these common areas, and it's important to clean your body often. Especially cleaning open wounds on the legs and feet when you are in new areas.
Hands
Hands
Why is hand health important? Well in acts of inspecting our bodies, or having sexual touch with our/other bodies, we are typically using our bare hands. So you should always make sure to wash your hands prior to sexual interaction, or touching of private parts. Do make sure that you wash your hands afterwards as well!
It's unlikely, but some STD's and STI's can be transmitted by hands if they are used in sexual intercourse. Such as: fingering, hand job, etc.
Mouth
Mouth
Why does mouth hygiene matter?
Well believe it or not there are many acts that include this body part. We eat, we drink, we may smoke, some may experience vomiting. Regardless keeping our mouths clean and checking in on our oral health is important. We of course can brush our teeth and use floss, but mouthwash can also be used to clean the mouth between eating & etc.
If you are using your mouth to perform or participate in sexual actiions, then it's important to check for signs of STIs and STDs and get tested if youstart to see symptoms. Oral sex can still transmit diseases and infections, so if a body part of yours has come in contact with another person's mouth, it would be wise to keep an eye out for any differences.
Breasts
Breasts
Breasts are present on male, intersex, and female bodies, but female bodies are the most likely to experience breast cancers or tumors. So as you experience puberty and grow older, it's vital to check your breast tissue often and get checked out by a General Practitioner when possible. It's important to keep this part of our body clean and supported. Finding the right bra can be tough: I Support the Girls is a great foundation that works to help connect AFAB individuals with their most needed support.
Arm Pits
Arm Pits
When it comes to Arm Pits and body odor, it can be difficult to approach this conversation with adults or the guardians around you. It's important to just be honest and up front when you first start to notice.
Making sure you choose the right kind of deodorizing products is also important. Many products are made with aluminum, and have irritating factors that can even cause chemical burns. Do some research on what products you think will be best and most accessible to you.
Butt
Butt
Other words for Butt: Ass, Asshole, Back-door, etc.
The importance of keeping this area clean is important regardless of sexual activity with this orifice. Many types of sexual relationships include using the Butthole for sexual intercourse. When doings these kinds of activities it's important for you to keep detailed awareness of these body parts before and after the intercourse.
It's vital that the health of all of these areas of your body is in regular check by your trusted doctors.
Penis
Penis
The Penis is refered to is several different ways: Phalic, Dick, Penis, Cock, etc.
The penis is responsible for releasing sperm when having sex, or to complete reproduction. Erections can occur at any age growing up but typically does not happen regularly until after 10-12 years old. The penis typically grows pubic hair, once a person has reached puberty.
When caring for this body part it's important to wash often with soap to avoid rubbing rashes. If you have a penis and are having sex with it, it is important to look out for any bumps, rashes, or unknown itchiness or tingling. The best protection for people with this genitalia is condoms, and regular self cleaning.
Vagina
Vagina
Vaginas also have many names: Pussy, Cunt, Vulva, etc.
The vagina, during reproduction, is responsible for intercepting sperm in the effort of the egg joining with sperm. The egg comes from the ovary that sits against the falopian tubes, when the time line of ovulation meets up with the presence of sperm the chance of pregnancy from heterosexual intercourse is more likely.
To keep a vagina healthy, AFAB individuals have a self cleaning organ, so washing the outside of the organ with body wash in the shower (and peeing after sex) allows the full cleansing of these areas.
InterSex Genitalia
InterSex Genitalia
While we don't think about it this way, the sexual binary doesn't fully exist. There are several people who know or never will know that they are Intersex. Some genitalia can be a mix of the two standard forms of genitalia, while some can present traditionally with different sex organs internally. Regardless, sex organs are sex organs. We are still meant to take care of them with regular washing in the shower, checking of private areas for any signs of rash or STIs (if having sexual contact). Because intersex genitalia can vary, it's important to remember the ways that we can over estimate the frequency of traditional sex organs. All people have different bodily features, this doesn't change when we discuss sex organs.
Taking Our Hygiene More Seriously:
Taking Our Hygiene More Seriously:
Do you know how your body works?
Do you look at your body frequently? Is there anything that you feel that seems new?
Do you know if you have checked your skin recently for any irregularities?
Does anything seem different than it was in the past?
Brushing our Teeth Regularly
When it comes to brushing our teeth and keeping our dental hygiene good, know that you can start at any time! Many people struggle with good consistent dental hygiene, and many don’t have access to reasonably priced dental care.
Brushing our teeth, two times a day is the recommendation, but doing it as often as you remember (more or less) is the best practice when you struggle with a dental cleaning routine.
Flossing our teeth and using other tools than just our toothbrushes, to clean our teeth.
Washing our Bodies
Do you wash all the parts of your body regularly?
We know sometimes bathing ourselves can seem hard to do, especially when we have trouble with our mental health; however, it can also be relaxing and regulating for the body.
Do you know about the microbiome your body has, and how to keep it healthy?
We should not use anti-bacterial soaps to wash our bodies regularly; it can cause serious damage to our microbiome and cause other infections of the skin and body.
Discussing our Health with Others
Discussing our health with others, consensually and with consciousness for our health’s impact on one another during the viral season.
Checking for Breast Lumps
If you are concerned about any of the abnormalities you find you should reach out to your doctor, or make an appointment to a Planned Parenthood for a Breast Exam.
Food Consciousness
How can we be better about fueling our bodies with food and clean water, if we have access?
Are we using the proper food protocols when storing and cooking foods we plan to eat and/or share with others?
Are we protecting ourselves and others from pathogens when cooking and handling our foods?
How can we provide meals and clean water to those in our community that are struggling with access to them?
Hydration/ Electrolytes
When you drink liquids are you getting enough water into your body?
Are you making sure that when you are drinking liquids including water, that you take into account how they affect your body’s electrolyte system? Are you getting enough salt in your diet to match your water intake?
Childhood
Childhood
When you are young, your body is most interested in growing itself by height and weight. Typically we see growing pains, allergies, and regular injuries, as the most important health concerns. As long as the child is bathing often, eating regular healthy meals, and having a positive mental health education from parents; many children are being fully supported in the areas of health.
Puberty
Puberty
Puberty is a weird time in a young person's life. They are learning new things about their bodies whether from friends, curiousity, or educational conversations. There is so much to know is such little time in the perspective of young people. Exploring sexuality, gender identity, political ideals, drugs and risky behavior, are all typical behaviors of people entering or going through stages of puberty. All of these behaviors can be scary to parents, but giving your child the best information to make their decisions with is the primary objective.
Adulthood
Adulthood
Adulthood is a whole new time of change for young adults going into their own lives. Sometimes adulthood is a change in the body, but it is also a change in the mind. So while you some of us may be younger adults, we are still experiencing full on adulthood. This can be due to physical health declining at a younger age, or a difficult transition into self-reliance and independence, after exiting a family situation. Regardless of how old you may be, adulthood can bring on an immense about of seemingly hopeless emotions. We have begun to learn and try new things. This can be a triumphment time, as long as we remember our mistakes are normal. The consequences are still real, but you can only do what you know, until you know better.
Its important for us to discuss all the ways that understand our bodies can benefit us; many of us as children didn't understand our pains and aches when we first experienced them. If you are experiencing more pain than usual or having different perception, it can be hard to determine that for yourself at a young age. For this reason many learning differences and disabilities, chronic illnesses, and other medical issues go on noticed for a long period of your youth. Some Chronic Illnesses and Disabilities force people to grow up a lot earlier than they expected to, and have difficult conversations about health and benefits of possible treatments. Just because someone may not appear to have a disability or difference, doesn't mean they don't have one. If you are an abled bodied individuals it can be hard to take this kind of respect or understanding into context, because you haven't experienced it. That is okay, but it doesn't mean it is okay to disregard the people impacted by Ableism around you. Many social systems have several forms of ableism build into them, we saw this as the pandemic made many businesses and their employees learn how to work from home and adapt to different environments in the hope of preserving life.
It's also key to rememeber that the differences that any individual may experience may change the ways in which they choose to experience sexual pleasure, comfort, etc. So it's important to keep really good communication when engaging in any sexual acts, but even more when you are navigating a body or feature that you may not understand yet.
"Pain starts in receptor nerve cells found beneath the skin and in organs throughout the body. When you are sick, injured, or have other type of problem, these receptor cells send messages along nerve pathways to the spinal cord, which then carries the message to the brain. Pain medicine reduces or blocks these messages before they reach the brain."
Pain is sometimes an ambiguous word, but it generally refers to the discomfort/instability /actions&injury that evoke very unpleasant feelings, in the body. While we can also experience pain mentally and emotionally, we often first understand pain as suffering as a result of something happening to us. However, it's important to keep in mind that some people feel pain differently, due to chronic illness and helth conditions; and that while for every pain there is a cause, many (even with the support of doctors) do not find answers for their pain and suffering. As upsetting as pain can be, we have to remember that pain is one of our strongest primal pathways in the nervous system, so that we can know when something is wrong or when we should stop doing an action, etc.
This is why we heavily encourage that when you see a trusted doctor, that you are honest about your pain and encourage them to find answers. Many people ignore pains from overuse (typically due to job type), or pains that are from a internal issue that may slowly be arising. This is why going to the doctor, or seeking medical advice is so vital for people everywhere when they are feeling new reoccurring pain. Many people will see new things on their bodies and ignore it because life is too busy, we totally understand, but that doesn't mean we aren't in this together. We encourage that anyone with a concerning health condition seek healthcare, but if they are unable, to do the research you can and find community members who can help you seek more answers.
Short-term pain, (traumas and injuries) often become longer-term issues, because we refuse to acknowledge the body's true bounds. From childhood to adulthood, we are taught to play though injuries, that we are youthful, or that our body's are unbreakable, this is all unfortunately false. It's important that we acknowledge that everyone falls down sometimes, we get cat scratches or paper cuts; however, when a anyone has a trauma that could've caused greater harm, we should always make sure to have them seen by a doctor. When children are hurt, often times they will be emotional, but there are many children who don't respond this way, and may hide important diagnoses from parents or caregivers. This is why we have mutliple types of pain scales that should be cross examined in order to understand the level of care required. (Of course we always assumed it's the highest level of care until proven otherwise).
Pain is used against us often by systems of oppression that are imbedded into all of the corporations and government departments. We know with the recent loss of Medicaid & SNAP and rising of insurance rates in the USA, that we are facing a great issue of people not seeking medical care. We want to remind you that there are still options and that pain is scary for everyone, but no one wants to be in this pain alone. Planned Parenthood, does provide regular healthcare, in times of need. They treat men and women for their health needs, it's important that we donate to these organizations during this time of need.
Historically in societies under colonization, the way you were raised, the color of your sheets, the job you had (or weren't allowed to have), and the life you were allowed to lead as a whole, was all determined by your sex. Sex, as a form of identity, has often taken the name of gender as well; however, gender is a construct that relies on assigning itself to your assigned-at-birth-sex. Now this can get tricky to understand, but it's often easiest when we fully separate sexual (sex-assigned-at-birth) and gender (how one expresses oneself) identities. That doesn't mean that the two groups don't heavily overlap, it just means that they are inherently separate and are applied differently to our lives. To live life in any physical body comes with a lot of nuances and differences in that experience in comparison to others, and to flatten that experience based on an incorrectly held societal definition of a biological sex binary, does no service to the truth of human diversity.
The constructs of gender impact both AMAB and AFAB people in society via enforcement via patriarchy, but there is a need to highlight not just the historic rates of violence against AFAB people across society but to particularly hold space for the context of the weaponization of our own reproductive system against us in the context of sexual assault, pregnancy, and access to reproductive healthcare.
Society creates these gender roles for us to play into, and with enforcement via the power structures inherent to patriarchy, both AFAB folks and many groups within LGBTQ+ circles who are seen by many to be 'queering' from 'traditional values' (Christian heteronormative monogamy), are often active participants as reinforcers of the harms of gender roles.
As we grow up there are a lot of ways that people imprint on another, and on the larger scale there are social systems (societal norms) that imprint on us as well. Some of these social systems are effective by having us make assumptions about our life's purpose. To have a gender or sexual identity is completely up to you, and don't really carry any weight that you don't want them too. There is fluidity in any identity because all of us learn over time about who we are.
All of these terms and understandings come from our prior knowledge of Sexism and its place as a Social System. Sexism has primarily been used in our history to prioritize the white wealthy male ideals which caused women to be abused and seen as property until the more recent century. This is not to ignore the tole sexism has taken on the male community. Femininity and Masculinity are uniquely used against people to make it seem as though your sex at birth has any implication in the way your life must go, or what roles you must take. When it comes to the ways these ideals can effect us mentally, we have to try really hard to evaluate the ways it has impacted us so far.
Toxic Masculinity is a term typically used to describe the obscene expectations for male identifying members to provide for their family, to be mentally tough and emotionally absent, and to be overtly sexually knowledgeable.
Hyper-Femininity, is a term typically used to describe the ways that women have been expected to be perfect at being caretaker, birthing and raising of children, time management, being pretty and/or having the perfect body, being the best sex object, etc. There are several pressures put on women in the current society, especially when it comes to work/life balance.
Also many AFAB individuals are expected to act as though they don't menstruate in all professional or public settings. Even in some private areas or around conservative family members, women are expected to completely ignore the presence of their menstrual cycles and it's implications on daily tasks.
Intersex Individuals:
Intersex Individuals:
While we don't often hold space for this truth as a society, the sexual "binary" doesn't technically exist. There are about as many people that are 'intersex', or that fall out of line from the stereotypically acknowledged 'male/female' binary as there are redheads in society. And as intersex traits can include visible and invisible differences across hormones, genetics, and sex organs, there are many people who never even learn that they are intersex. In cases with reproductive organ differences, there can be a mix of the two standard forms of genitalia, some that can present 'traditionally' with different sex organs internally (unseen without imaging). Regardless, sex organs are sex organs. Because intersex genitalia can vary, it's important to remember the ways that we can over estimate the frequency of traditional sex organs. All people have different bodily features, this doesn't change when we discuss sex organs.
Intersex: (Planned Parenthood Glossary Definition)
"People born with sex traits that are excluded by traditional ideas about male or female bodies (the sex binary). There are many ways that people are intersex. About 1-2 in every 100 people born in the U.S. are intersex."
Internal sex and reproductive organs (Planned Parenthood)
"The organs inside the body that are responsible for reproduction. Internal reproductive organs that respond to sexual stimulation (like the vagina) are also called sex organs."
De-Sexualizing, Sex -Why we should understand our body's history and prioritize enthusiastic consent:
De-Sexualizing, Sex -Why we should understand our body's history and prioritize enthusiastic consent:
We hope that we can foster a conversation where the act of sex itself is not sexualized. It is vital that we are able to come together as a species, across both sexes, to understand that sexual activity has historically not always been pleasurable for everyone involved, and the force of birthing and sex on females, has created a generational shift in how one may view sexual activity. When coming at these conversations from a scientific perspective, we have to remain aware that these are functions of our bodies, and for some the lack of function or ability is really difficult to manage. The more we have educated conversations on these topics, the less scared or stigmatizing it will be to experience them. We all have these bodies, yet we still want to live in a world where we pretend we don't know. There is nothing that should be forcibly hidden from the rest of the world, especially if it is about the state of our bodies or lives, we are here on Earth to wittness one another. We should curate a society where there is no justification for unconsensual actions that comes from ever mistaking another human's state of being as 'promiscuity', for that is a grave dishonor to our own species. Promiscuity itself, is a word that should have never needed to exist, only used to describe a women's presentation from a horrendous man's perspective.
Another example, being able to discuss an orgasm and how they can occur for/in different bodies, without sexualizing the conversation, is imperative for us to have a framework and move through discussing the ways pleasure can occur with another person, without creating unnecessary pressure or being uneducated about potential needs.
There are many groups of people who do not experience, or define, sexual pleasure in the ways typical society may; and beyond their ability for such, they carry entire lives with them still. We often forget about people's traumas (old or new), and that emotional, physical, or mental these traumas stay with us, changing in the soft ways they might, but they never go away. We have to keep in mind that outside of ability or want, all bodies experience orgasm and pleasure differently in the physical form. This along, with the complexity of different genitalia potentially needing different stimulation to achieve pleasure, can influence the series of actions so that sexual acts are only pleasurable for one person at a time.
From a neurological perspective, we have to keep in mind that sexual pleasure and sexual desires have always lived in the part of the brain responsible for fight or flight, and our adrenaline centers, which means for those who've experienced a lot of their life in severe fight or flight, sexual activities may be a different experience. It is often that people experience intense emotional releases when they experience sexual pleasure, which is something that we as a society should be foster more in conversation.
Many groups of people experience their pleasure in different ways depending on how sexual activities have occured in their lives, and how it affects them. We know that 1 in 6 women have been assaulted, so we understand that there may be direct trauma associated with the act of sex, and sexual pleasure. The act of sexual reproduction for the intention of birth can also bring it's own from of trauma for many people. Experiencing a misscarriage or loss of a child, is a life-changing experience, one that may temporarily or long-term affect the people who are in that relationship. For parents going through infertility, the act of sexual activity can become associated with negative emotions rather than positive ones. That does not mean that sexual activity isn't pleasurable for people in this situation, but that the pleasure is not being done for the act of pleasure, but to lead to a child.
Other pages like this:
Other pages like this:
There is always more research being done!
There is always more research being done!
If you would like to help us write about commonly silenced areas or personal experiences you may have with these topics, contact us at thisisactivism2023@gmail.com or fill out our Comments page. We want our website to be a continuous growth of knowlegde to share with each other in a positive way. There are so many things we don't talk about and we should!
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