PSY 3122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Coin Purse, Erogenous Zone, Breast Self-Examination

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 3122
• Professor: Lisa Henry

Document Summary

There are a lot of words that refer to genitals. They replace the words and make them avoidable through euphemisms. Some of these words we use as insults. This relates to how we view genitals - negativity. Having more words for an item in a language generally represents the importance of that thing. This makes genitals seem ambiguous because the matter-of-fact names are tainted with shame or embarrassment. Depends on who you are communicating with (partner vs. doctor for example) Social impact on the individual - socialization through language and words. Boys have a penis and girls don"t defines women by what they don"t have. Consider how parents or care-giver teaches about genitals (penis & vagina, wee-wee. & va-jay-jay, not being spoken about at all) Conspiracy theory: society has been keeping the secrets of the. Children need to know about their body by the time they are bathing or potty trained.