That Burning When You Pee (More Properly Titled: Having A “Pierced Clit” And Answering Silly Questions)

I got my hood pierced on Friday!  I’m ecstatic about it.  Despite having a slightly smaller hood, my piercer (who also did my nipples, and is probably the most fabulous woman in the world) was able to compensate with the placing, and while I will god-honestly say it was a shock when she poked me with the needle, it was completely worth it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with female genital piercings, a hood piercing is having the skin of your clitoral hood pierced.  A lot of times, if a bio-female tells you she has her clit pierced, what she means is that she has a hood piercing.  Most women don’t have enough clitoral tissue for a proper, safe piercing of the clitoris, and some piercers won’t even perform it.  My hood piercing is vertical, and I’m very excited about it.

The shop was empty when my piercing was performed, which was good, because I screamed.  My boyfriend accompanied me and was extremely disconcerted by watching -because- of my screaming, and the blood, and the fact that he just watched part of my gorgeous sexybits get a needle rammed into them.  Realistically, though, it hurt less than when my nipples were pierced.  The difference is that a ton of people said, “Oh, having your hood pierced doesn’t hurt at all!  It’s really thin skin, it heals quickly, you’ll hardly feel it!”  They are either numb from the waist down (and I often suspect that I am, so that’s saying something), or they’re lying.  I’d say it was on par with my eyebrow, which hurt more than my tongue.  However, if I had been prepared for that pain, it would have been okay.  I expected that I would hardly feel it… and so the shock made the experience seem ten times more painful than it was.  However, it was a very brief pain, and even though it hasn’t even been a full week yet, I’m delighted with it.

 

The point of this post is not to share my piercing tale, really… if that was the point, I would have made all of that information much more lengthy and entertaining.  The point of this post was to share what happened afterward, when I was hanging out in the shop while my piercer consulted another client.

Two young women came in with the client, and through some part of the grapevine (probably the tattooist that returned to the shop a few minutes after we finished my piercing), had heard that I’d gotten my genitals pierced.  They were incredibly curious, and I was (and am) more than happy to answer questions.  The conversation went a bit like this:

“Are you the girl who got her clit pierced?”

“I got my hood pierced, yeah… you don’t usually pierce the actual clit.”

“Holy crap!  I don’t think I could do that… did it hurt?”

“Oh, definitely.  But not as bad as nipple piercings do.”

“Well what about when you pee?  Won’t it burn?”

That’s right, kids.  Two young women who were definitely over 18 but under 25 were under the impression that their clitorises were either involved in the process of expelling urine, or were at risk of being in the path of a stream of urine during expulsion.  Now, genitalia can vary vastly in configuration, especially when we’re talking about the configuration of a vulva, but for most individuals, the urethra is located below the clitoris.  It just is.  That’s usually what you’ll find on any diagram of “standard” genital configuration for biologically-female bodies.  It reminds me of when I was five and I assumed that my urine came from my vagina.  (At the time, I had no idea what a “vulva” was, must less the rest of the kit.)

I was both dumbstruck and amused by the situation.  They also asked what I would do if my tampon string got tangled up in it.  Since the strings do have a tendency to run a bit wild when you have thicker outer labia, that wasn’t a particularly stupid question, but when I stated that it was a moot point because I wore a menstrual cup, these women were kind enough to ask more questions which restored my faith in the belief that most American bio-females are walking around and have no fucking idea what is going on in their pants.

<standard comprehensive sex education rant here.>

I don’t even remember the specific questions asked about the menstrual cup, but there were many, and some of them also demonstrated the fact that these women didn’t know too much about their anatomy.  I don’t deliberately intend to ridicule the anatomically uninformed… and I’ll happily educate them on how their bodies actually work.  But when you are informed, it’s moments like this that walk a very fine line between hilarious and outrageous.