If there’s anyone who knows what bad sex education looks and sounds like, it’s me. Growing up in Texas, one of 11 states that don’t mandate sex education but does mandate stressing abstinence when it is taught, I remember: learning the anatomic basics of reproductive systems (because sex was strictly for reproduction); being told that the only way to 100 percent not get pregnant or contract sexually transmitted diseases was to not have sex; and that I needed to protect my reputation as a “moral” woman.
In other words, the state wanted teens to know that you shouldn’t have sex out of wedlock and that you should feel shame if you decide to do otherwise. Which, you know, doesn’t stop teens from having sex—it just means they’re going to be poorly informed about the sex they are having, feel bad about having said sex, and be reluctant to bring up sexual health issues with people they should be able to trust.
Unfortunately, conservative governments aren’t the only entities peddling this misogynistic bullshit aimed at sex shaming women. Take this tasteful photo of four tuna, or possibly salmon, steaks circulating on Twitter. The grey (possibly rotting) filets lay side-by-side, sporting gaping holes arranged in order from smallest to largest, symbolizing vaginas “ruined” by numerous sexual partners.
https://twitter.com/renoomokri/status/963280461647659008
Yes, someone deliberately fingered four fish steaks in an effort to show women what they too will experience if they have sex with up to four different partners.
“God made virgins for husbands not boyfriends,” author Reno Omokri writes in the post, blasting women who have pre-marital sex. “A Virgin is more likely to have a TIGHTER connection with her husband than a LOOSE woman who has had multiple sexual partners.”
It’s unclear which argument is more infuriating: the idea that a woman’s vagina is purely purposed for male satisfaction; the concept of virginity being an indicator of a woman’s worth to another person, let alone herself; or the completely wrong assertion that the vagina is some poor fish filet that permanently widens with each penis it encounters (never mind the existence of anyone other than cis, heterosexual women!).
Sure, Reno, you can try defending your outdated religious constructs of feminine virtue and a woman’s “responsibility” to remain “pure” and “chaste” for a man who she is supposed to marry. But asserting that the vagina loses its elasticity between sexual partners is just lazy peddling of a long-debunked sex myth, a willful ignorance of something so easily verifiable that it’s almost laughable.
https://twitter.com/KayleesiTweets/status/963904872025387009
https://twitter.com/KayleesiTweets/status/963905588181831681
https://twitter.com/KayleesiTweets/status/963906098179735552
https://twitter.com/KayleesiTweets/status/963906508076568576
For fact, the vagina doesn‘t turn into a cavernous, insatiable monster with each foreign object it encounters—the vagina is made of tightly-folded, elastic tissue that actually expands when someone is aroused and allows the vagina to contract back to its natural shape after sex, every time, no matter how many times someone has sex. A lot of sex will not “loosen” the vagina.
Again, dear Reno,
A lot of sex will not loosen the vagina.
It’s at least comforting to see that, across Twitter, people who know better have absolutely grilled Reno and his rotting fish-based vaginas for asserting such an obvious falsity.
someone doesn’t know how vaginas work https://t.co/qVKiOkF0uf
— ani (@Aniii_h) February 15, 2018
https://twitter.com/thatsokayrailli/status/964479695642226689
Dear Christian Men,
— Eric Sprankle, PsyD (@DrSprankle) February 14, 2018
You made virginity for husbands’ ego. Keeping your controlling behavior & slut shaming out of your marriage is the best gift you can give to a spouse. A partner’s sexual history has no impact on their anatomical size or relationship depth. #PenisInsecurities https://t.co/CWfYLC39wi
1. You marry a person for who they are, not for their virginity.
— Millennial Doktora (@MillennialMD) February 16, 2018
2. How can u be an author and not know that the vagina is a muscle. It can stretch to allow a baby to pass through it.
3. Did you gift your virginity to your wife? If not then sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. https://t.co/9rcIj42K77
And to be sure, there’s an element of curiosity that comes with reading Reno’s post about vaginas—how exactly did he widen the holes in those poor fish steaks to make his point?
https://twitter.com/gogreen18/status/964275638713528320
1) A vagina is not a raw piece of tuna and does not operate like one
— Jennifer Wright (@JenAshleyWright) February 16, 2018
2) Marry someone who you trust, love, laugh and have great sex with, and don’t worry about anything else
3) Did this guy fuck those pieces of tuna? https://t.co/WeXIbbDaGW
https://twitter.com/IjeomaOluo/status/964334967466606592
Dear Reno. Vaginas are different to tuna steaks. I suggest you stop having sex with the latter and respect the former. https://t.co/tGkIM3vXCt
— Sophie Walker (@SophieRunning) February 15, 2018
why this dude fucking tuna steaks though https://t.co/HJdl9VY6bc
— chloe sargeant (@chlosarge) February 16, 2018
Hey bud, those aren’t women. https://t.co/ffz3SFyGGB
— devon sawa (@DevonESawa) February 16, 2018
https://twitter.com/inihelene/status/963956810284707844
Honestly, though—how does this man think having sex as a married person works? Do you just have sex four times, and then you’re widened beyond repair?
https://twitter.com/LadyPJustice/status/964561906538352645
https://twitter.com/penhoIder/status/964006477567578113
If there’s any lesson a clueless, sex education-deprived teen can learn from this man’s misguided post, it’s that you most definitely don’t want to ruin the magic of sex by sticking your penis into a dead fish, because the internet will definitely see through your slut-shaming facade and drag you for it. (As if the coconut lesson wasn’t enough of a cautionary tale.)
