Considering how miniscule the human egg is, it’s amazing how many misconceptions there are about its release! When I first got my period at age 12, and for several years thereafter, I was convinced that if I just looked hard enough, I would find the tiny egg nestled on the sanitary napkin amidst the red blood. So when I was older and learned that the unfertilized egg never actually came out with the menstrual flow, I was frankly a little disappointed. As I got older, it seemed that there were always concepts (or were they just myths?) swirling around about a woman’s eggs. I’ve picked the question of orgasms triggering ovulation because, well, it’s just a juicy concept, but is it true? No, no, and no! Orgasms and ovulation [...]

The following is an abbreviated list of medical terms that are still or were routinely used to describe common female conditions and functions. Cover the right side and quickly glance down the list of phrases on the left. After all these years, you’d think someone would have developed more (cough, choke) appropriate means of expressing these concepts. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that the English language is capable of producing more gender-sensitive terms than “senile vaginitis” or “incompetent cervix.” I suspect that no man is ever told he has a medically incompetent anything, but if he were, he might start to understand why these terms are simply inappropriate in this context. I only hope that one day these conditions will be communicated in a [...]