From the Mouth of the Flytrap
"I was the Venus flytrap, and my vaginismus was telling me something about myself that I didn’t know."
Eva Murillo is a 21-year-old writer from Chicago studying Biology and Anthropology at Swarthmore College.
“I have something called vaginismus. My vagina’s like a Venus flytrap.”
I hadn’t heard about vaginismus before watching the first season of Sex Education in 2019. I was fifteen and just dipping my toe into the world of awkward teenage sex. Watching Lily struggle with sexual pain despite her readiness and excitement for penetration scared me — I remember thinking, “God, I hope that’s never me.”
The first time I had penetrative sex was post-pandemic. I was seventeen and had already done everything else with my long-term boyfriend at the time (parents and Covid had gotten in the way of the “real thing” — apparently giving head in a basement with your boyfriend’s parents upstairs is less consequential than fucking). My boyfriend, let’s call him Adam, had coerced his parents into leaving him alone for the afternoon. The whole thing was very ceremonious. Adam’s bed was made, his stuffed animals hidden. I’d worn a pretty dress and shaved my entire body. There was a fuss about condoms and lube, but then he carried me upstairs like a bride and my anxiety disappeared. We followed all the steps like a ritual — makeout, clothes off, foreplay. Then the moment of truth.
Pain like blue fire all the way up to my stomach. A surprised yelp. We kept trying, new positions, new angles. Nothing. Just a raw, sandpaper sensation. An unabating tightness. We stopped. Adam said, “You’re bleeding,” and I broke down crying. The rest of the day I hurt. How could my body betray me, embarrass me so much at such a crucial moment in my young adult life? “It’s ok,” Adam reassured me. “We’ll try again another time.”
That night I rewatched the Lily episode from Sex Education. I called my best friend and said, “I think I have vaginismus.” She, equipped with only the knowledge most people have about the condition, said, “I don’t think you do, it’s pretty rare. You just have to keep trying.” That’s what everyone said. Try again.
So I did. And for two years, it was the same. Two years of painful sex, physical therapy, baby steps, and disappointed boyfriends. Two years of hating my vagina — not just my vagina, but my entire body. Two years of believing I was broken. Finally, sophomore year of college, I tried with a guy I liked but barely knew — neither of us expected anything, there were no strings attached. It worked. Felt good, even. And I was, finally, normal.
Excited about my new-and-improved vagina, I decided that my vaginismus was just a weird blip and tried to forget all about it.
Then, my sophomore spring, I took an anthropology class called “Comparative Perspectives on the Body.” Through a deep dive into medicine, gender, and that strange sense of separation between the mind and body, I started thinking about vaginismus again. All the time I struggled with painful sex, I imagined that my vagina was acting independently of myself — my desires, my readiness for sex, my feelings of emotional connection to my sexual partners. I didn’t realize until “Comparative Perspectives” how bizarre it is to imagine your body as a separate entity from the self. My vagina wasn’t the “Venus flytrap,” as popular messaging à la Sex Education had me believe. I was the Venus flytrap, and my vaginismus was telling me something about myself that I didn’t know. I wanted to find out what.
So I thought back to the beginning, to that awful first-time experience with Adam. After calling my friend that night, I did what any confused teenager does when they’re concerned about a weird medical thing: consult WebMD. With my burgeoning anthropological eye at the ready, I revisited WebMD and some other pop-medicine websites. These were the common definitions of vaginismus that came up:
“Vaginismus is a type of sexual dysfunction” (Healthline);
“There’s not always a reason for vaginismus… in some cases, no direct cause can be found” (MedLine Plus);
“Vaginismus is the body’s automatic reaction to the fear of some or all types of penetration. Whenever penetration is attempted, your vaginal muscles tighten up on their own. You have no control over it” (NHS).
Dysfunction. No direct cause. Muscles tightening up on their own. When people first learn about vaginismus, this is what they see. And to an extent, these definitions make sense — vaginismus is confusing and can feel beyond one’s control. But reading them again didn’t answer my questions. If anything, I was more perplexed. What makes penetration so important that inability to accept it is considered dysfunctional, to the point where even medical websites can only explain vaginismus as the vagina acting of its own accord?
Of course, penetration is an essential part of human biology — we need it for reproduction. In that light, inability to engage in penetration — because of vaginismus, its phallic cousin erectile dysfunction, et cetera — might seem like a failure of one’s “biological purpose.” To be clear, I don’t want to reduce penetration to its biological role or play into heteronormative narratives of what kind of sex is meaningful. Penetration of all kinds is pleasurable, fun, and can foster a sense of closeness between sexual partners. But what I saw in online descriptions of vaginismus was reductive, producing a narrative that bodies experiencing vaginismus are out of control, unable to fulfill their “normal” function. Fixing the problem entails training the body and mind, often treated as separate entities, to accept penetration: all of the aforementioned sites suggest dilator training — inserting progressively larger phallic instruments into the vagina — and cognitive behavioral interventions to treat vaginismus. But these are Band-Aids that fail to address the larger issue of why vaginismus exists in the first place.
It didn’t just come out of nowhere, and I certainly wasn’t convinced that my vagina was its own independent entity. Sexual trauma explains vaginismus in some people, but that isn’t the case for others — I wasn’t afraid of sex until I knew it could be so painful. Finally, if we were dealing with human biology in a vacuum (which we literally never are), I don’t think vaginismus would happen — it’s unlikely that chronic sexual pain serves an evolutionary purpose. So again I asked: why does vaginismus exist in the first place?
I did more digging online. I found a few scientific papers that went deeper than pop-medicine sites — they discussed the role of shame in underreporting of vaginismus and pushed for a socio-cultural understanding of the condition. But clearly, such understandings of vaginismus were slim. So, like the cringe undergraduate anthropology student I am, I conducted a critical analysis of my own sex life. If that sentence makes you vomit, I give you full leave to close this article. For better or worse, though, thinking about my vaginismus in this way helped me. A lot. And maybe framing vaginismus from a socio-cultural perspective instead of a purely medical one could help other people experiencing sexual pain.
Driving home after my first sex attempt with Adam, all I felt was shame: shame for failing at something I was supposedly programmed to do and shame for having sex in the first place. Interesting, to see myself as lesser both for trying sex and not being able to do it. But given the kind of messaging that young people, and especially people with vaginas, get about sex, this two-fold response makes sense.
Many kids (in secular, Western environments, to place a caveat on this entire article) start learning about the biological significance of sex around middle school, right as they start puberty. We’re taught that the primary function of sex is reproduction, for which penis-vagina penetration is necessary. Later on, in high school and college biology classes, we learn that reproduction is the biological goal of the natural world. I’m a double major in biology and anthropology, and I can’t tell you how much importance evolutionary biologists place on sexual reproduction in the natural world. And it’s true — reproduction is what keeps a species from going extinct, ensuring survival beyond the individual. But when that concept is infused with social meaning, things get more complicated.
Humans don’t have sex just for reproduction — we learn that in middle school, too.
So it’s not just the material importance of sex but the actual act of sex itself: the objective, scientific weight that penetration carries as a biological phenomenon gets carried over into sex that has nothing to do with reproduction. In middle school and high school, then, we learn to put condoms on bananas at the same time as we start consuming media where penetrative sex is idealized — coming-of-age movies, porn, romance novels, fanfiction. The messaging? Sex = penetration = an essential part of life, whether for reproduction or not. The equation is even more pertinent for people with feminized bodies, given that the kind of penetrative sex young people see in media often prioritizes male orgasm, which is often not achieved without heterosexual, penetrative sex. So, sex = heterosexual penetration = penis + vagina (where vagina = vehicle for male pleasure) = an essential part of life + the achievement of male orgasm.
The process by which an embodied phenomenon becomes ingrained in society is what Michel Foucault calls “normalization.” In Foucault’s language, normalization creates a homogenous population, making it easier to identify, survey, and discipline deviance. In my opinion, penetration is normalized in school and popular media, to the point where the phrase “having sex” implies penetration. Not having penetrative sex, then, is abnormal. And a body that cannot accept penetration is a deviant one.
This explains the first layer of shame that vaginismus brought me. Successful completion of the “first time,” that shining rite of passage, would have initiated me into the world of sex-havers, and proved the significance of my relationship with Adam. But what about the second layer?
At the same time that penetration is normalized, it is also loaded with taboo. The amount of penetrative sex a person has, particularly one with a feminized body, dictates their value. Because penetration and male pleasure are in alignment, masculine bodies are less punished for having lots of sex. Feminized bodies, however, are valued for their purity, a social truth that is in conflict with the importance of vaginas for male pleasure. Patriarchy, then, has to find a way to make sure people with penises get their orgasms, while also ensuring that people with vaginas don’t get too carried away with penetrative sex. So while you learn about sex and its importance in middle school, you also learn what “slut” means. What “virginity” is. That a guy who gets a ton of nudes on Snapchat is popular and that the girls that send them are worthless. Porn titles tell you how “tight” or “young” or “virginal” the female star is, at the same time calling her a “dirty whore.” All penises need is size, according to porn and popular messaging. But vaginas can’t win — tight and prudish, loose and dirty — somehow they must be the best of both worlds.
I remember another phone call I had after my first time, with an older friend who also experienced pain during sex. She joked around with me, saying, “Pussy too tight.” Men would like it, she said. After such a difficult sexual experience, I could at least take comfort in the fact that men might benefit from my pain.
This brings me to my diagnosis: the root of vaginismus. The mixed messaging that young people get throughout sexual development creates pressure and anxiety around sex, particularly for people with vaginas. Penetration carries deep cultural importance — achieving it is normal, encouraged, and even seen as a rite of passage — but also a lot of contradiction. Here is where vaginismus comes in. I believe that vaginismus is not the body acting in isolation, as medical websites might have you think, but the body acting as an agent of resistance to the complex mix of fear, curiosity, shame, and desire that normative sexual messaging can elicit. Rather than passively experiencing the tightening of the pelvic floor during penetration, people with vaginismus tense their vaginal muscles in response to cultural norms.
And how does society react? For a social, medical, educational, and cultural system that so values penetration, vaginismus is the epitome of mind-body disconnect. The medical field, specifically, reinforces this belief — because people with vaginismus cannot accept penetration, their vaginas are labeled “out of control.” This feeling of alienation that people with vaginas then feel from their bodies during penetration results in the frustration, pain, and embarrassment I experienced throughout my journey with vaginismus. I’d argue that these emotionally painful feelings become embodied, compounding pain during penetrative sex. For me, the dual forms of shame I felt after trying sex with Adam were both causative and symptomatic of vaginismus. And until that fateful college hookup, I was locked in that cycle of shame every time I attempted penetration.
Earlier, I mentioned dilator training as one of the suggested “cures” for vaginismus. Dilator training is the progressive insertion of larger and larger devices — essentially glorified dildos — into the vagina, often with the help of a pelvic floor therapist. I did dilator training, and I have pretty mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, dilator training certainly contributes to the normalization of penetration. While helpful at reducing pain, it can also deepen embodied feelings of shame around penetrative sex. On the other hand, I absolutely adored my physical therapist, Kay. She didn’t make dilator training feel like an obligation, just an option that would help me have penetrative sex if I wanted to. Over time, working with her reduced my pain upon dilator insertion. If Kay’s messaging was the only kind I received during vaginismus treatment, maybe I would have recovered more quickly.
I started dilator training about a year after my first sex attempt. Adam and I had broken up a few months after that disaster (for unrelated reasons), and I was seeing another guy, who I’ll call Peter. Now, Peter was a lot more invested in me than Adam was. We were in love, he wanted to marry me, et cetera. The whole, slightly codependent, shabang. With Adam, sex had felt like a “should” — we’d been together awhile, we liked each other alright, we were teenagers. With Peter, it was a “must.” Having penetrative sex would solidify our relationship, prove the depth of our closeness.
The effort proved disastrous. We’d try having sex. It would suck. I would apologize, he would say, “It’s ok.” After starting dilator training, attempts got more frequent. We’d try sex. It would still suck. I would apologize, and he would say, “It’s ok,” a little less convincingly each time. I would make progress in therapy. When it came time for the “real thing,” though, there was little change. We’d try having sex. It would suck. I would apologize, he would say, “Have you been practicing with the dilator?” I’d say yes, but I’d gotten to a point where it felt like a chore. When we went away to college for freshman year, the pressure only mounted. I’d say, “I’ll be ready by fall break.” Come fall break, the same cycle would repeat. Every phone call, Peter would ask me if I was practicing. I lied and said yes.
We tried tipsy. We tried high. Neither of those felt right for me. We tried with condoms. Without. Every position. Every time of day. By the end of our relationship, I hated sex. I expressed the desire to give up. But for Peter, penetration was too important to let go.
Things with Peter ended (for the first time — a story for another day) the summer before my sophomore year of college, in part because I wanted full freedom to explore sex beyond him. I met a guy who I’ll call Kris two months later. We started hooking up after a few weeks of hesitant flirtation and late-night talks. When we had sex for the first time, it was entirely spontaneous. Mid-makeout, he pulled out a condom and asked me if I’d like to have sex. Every part of me did, but the old fear creeped back in. I told him about my vaginismus and expressed my worry that he’d end up disappointed. But Kris had no expectations of me. When he told me it was ok if I needed to stop, there was no asterisk. So I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst: my millionth moment of truth.
Only a little pain. And then it was gone.
The whole point of looking back at my vaginismus was to figure out what my pain was trying to tell me. After all that anthropologizing, the answer seems simple to me. Even though everything around me told me I should be having sex, for the two years I struggled with vaginismus, I simply wasn’t ready. Adam was my first real boyfriend, and we’d done everything else, so I felt like I owed it to him. Peter loved me so much, but even with dilator training, something in me didn’t want to have sex with him. And Kris? He was charming. Respectful. Insanely attractive. There were no expectations — we were just having fun, and though we didn’t know each other that well, we trusted each other. Sex with him was easy, and it didn’t feel like a massive deal. That’s still true a year and a half later (though at this point, Kris is certainly a big deal in my life).
How, then, should we think about vaginismus on a broader scale? Socially, I’d argue vaginismus is the collaborative resistance of the mind and body to misogynistic, heteronormative ideology. So instead of obsessing about penetration, we must reduce its importance. We must dismantle the construct of virginity, value bodies beyond their reproductive capabilities, and untangle the biological significance of penetration from its social meaning. It’s time we reject the heterosexual, penis-centric image associated with sex and imagine diverse possibilities for pleasure, wherein penetrative sex is an option but not essential.
So if you’re like me and have felt inexplicable pain during sex, don’t hate the flytrap. Listen to it. Your future self will thank you.
I used to hate my vaginismus, thinking my body, its own spiteful beast, was betraying me. Now I’m grateful for it. I know now that penetration isn’t all that important when you aren’t trying to have kids — it’s just an option. I also know that any sort of sexual experience, whether penetrative or not, should never come with pressure attached. Societal and interpersonal expectations of sex are real, but once you start resisting them, you have more agency in deciding what kind of sex you actually want to have and with whom. When I reflect on having vaginismus now, I imagine that my body was looking out for me. Or rather, I was looking out for myself.
 | A guest post by
|
So good!!!!!
Loved this. Thank you so much for writing it.