Fear of Genitals

Which words name the same fear

Kolpophobia means the same thing, built from the Greek kolpos, meaning womb or fold and often used for the vagina, which makes it literally a fear of the vagina or of the womb. Eurotophobia comes from the Greek euros for vulva. Phallophobia is the corresponding male-directed term, which is worth noting because the two are usually discussed as a pair.

What separates it from ordinary distaste

An average person may be averse to a particular body part without anything following from it. What marks this out is that it goes past the disinclination most people show, and that it does things: anxiety, inhibition, distraction, loss of sexual desire, and an inability to build a romantic relationship. It affects both men and women, and the extent varies widely between them. The degrees reported differ widely:

• straightforward repulsion
• a reaction only when the subject is raised
• avoiding any thought of female sex organs at all
• deep fear A common surface sign is euphemism, a compounded preference for any word other than the one that names the thing.

The second-hand version is stranger than the first. A woman may hold the aversion directly, or she may hold it vicariously, through what she imagines a spouse or anyone else thinks of her vulva, which makes the fear a piece of received opinion she is administering to herself.

Where the accounts point

The proposed origins are various and unevenly supported. Some frame it as innate. Some trace it to childhood, to repeated criticism of appearance and to remarks that landed early. Some treat it as a spin-off from aversion to what the genitals are perceived to produce, discharge or mucus. A strenuous event can trigger it. It has been observed in medical students, particularly in obstetrics, sometimes to the point of leaving the field. Older explanatory routes get named too, from the transmission of the vagina dentata legend to the Freudian apparatus of castration anxiety, and molestation by an adult woman appears as a route in some accounts. A Romanian women's magazine, Ele, describes women who take on the condition themselves developing depression and self-harm, and attributes the origin to a highly prudish and puritanical upbringing.

That range of sourcing is itself informative. The condition has an entry in Planned Parenthood's published lexicon and a place in the discussion of erotophobia, but the literature underneath it is thin and mostly non-clinical.

What the aversion costs medically

The practical cost of the aversion is medical rather than romantic. Fear or embarrassment while discussing the vagina shows up in women with health problems, and it gets in the way of diagnosis and of dealing with conditions that need dealing with. A word a person will not say is a symptom a doctor does not hear.