I'm writing in response to your advice to Minora Is Majora. I can't believe you and your vagina expert got so deeply into the campaign to force this poor woman to love her labia that you tortured her for over three columns of print.

I'm a woman who's been married to a man for over 30 years. I have a vagina, with all the parts. I've used it a lot, but I don't like it. My husband likes it, and he uses it a lot, and it works for him and all the other stuff I need it for. I don't have to like it, and I don't think MIM has to learn to love hers either. Your attitude and that of your sanctimonious expert were way off base. Instead of succeeding at making her feel better, you probably made her feel worse because she doesn't like her labia. She does not need to dedicate her life to learning to love her labia. She just has to figure out how to come to terms with it; basically resolve her embarrassment about it and realize that others may like it even if she does not.

What should she have been told?

This epic letter continues... after the jump.

Something like this: Female genitalia are extremely odd looking in humans and most other animals. There is nothing wrong with being less than enamoured of them in general, nor of being uncertain about your own in particular. What's important to realize, if you have a set of female genitalia, is that men (and some women) find them attractive, i.e. both arousing and nice to look at. That doesn't mean you need to agree with them. Even less do you need to agree with people who fetishize them. That is their problem, not yours.

You can hate your labia just as you can hate your feet or your breasts or your nose or your disability or your height. It is always odd when someone likes about us what we ourselves don't, but it happens. So what you need to do is separate your feelings about your labia from your boyfriend's feelings about your labia, understanding that they may be different. Enjoy what THEIR feelings may bring you. Sometimes it's a relationship because they like the feature that you despise. So, enjoy the relationship. Similarly, here, relax and enjoy the oral sex, or whatever else your boyfriend is moved to do by his happiness about having access to your labia. And if you just can't enjoy it, consider it a favour you are doing him to give him access.

But while I'm on the topic of oral sex, Dan, can I take this opportunity to ask you to GET OFF THE BLOODY "OBLIGATORY ORAL SEX FOR WOMEN" BANDWAGON ALREADY. Just as it is OK to hate your labia, it is OK for women to not enjoy oral sex and for men to not want to do it. Just like every other act in sex, whether oral sex is included and who does it to whom is part of the negotiation that couples have, and "oral sex for me" doesn't require "oral sex for you." By way of illustration, I love performing oral sex on my husband. I HATE receiving it. He would do it, but I don't want it. This has nothing to do with my feelings about my labia; it's simply an act I don't enjoy—not the position, not the sensation, not anything, and I am not unique. But even if I wanted it, if he didn't like doing it I would not ask it of him.

It is off base for you to relentlessly bully every man on the planet to feel guilty about receiving oral sex if they don't reciprocate. It's also off base to suggest that women are "entitled" to have oral sex done on them if the man doesn't like doing it. The two acts are fundamentally different and they need not be partnered or subject to exchange. Unless it's the price of entry to a relationship with her, it's something a couple can navigate just like they navigate what groceries they buy. My husband and I have an extensive repertoire, but by mutual consent, that item is not on it.

Funnily enough, I rarely disagree with your relationship advice, but I often do with your sex advice. And that may just be because in terms of understanding women's sexuality, you keep going back to your sanctimonious experts and not to people like me, for whom sex is not a line of work but just part of a long and sometimes complicated life and relationship.

Some Labia Are Messy

Thanks for sharing, SLAM, but for the record: I don't believe in reciprocity for the sake of reciprocity. If two people are happy, I'm happy. I'm not in the business of kicking down bedroom doors and screaming "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" at couples whose sexual repertoires include oral for him but not for her or vice versa. That kind of imbalance is only a problem—it's only an imbalance—if the person going without feels deprived or shamed or used.

But thanks for sharing, SLAM, and congrats on your long, successful, happy, and cunnilingus-free relationship—and here's hoping your husband thinks your labia are beautiful!