Fallopian Horror
Tentacles that can inspire conspiracies (if people knew about them)
Hi horny readers! Thank you so, so much for reading the ADULT SEX ED newsletter.
New here? Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, comedy writer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter in 2023. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
Before I get to this week’s newsletter, a programming note: we’ll be dark next week, but will pick back up on April 9th.
Last week, I saw a bunch of friends share a video from a Tiktok-famous doctor that contained a fact about fallopian tubes that was surprising to many. Fallopian tubes are ‘tentacle like,’ very mobile, and one fallopian tube can actually reach across and pick up the egg from the other side. It sounds crazy, but it’s true.
In case you never learned this in sex education class (I didn’t!) here are the details: Fallopian tubes carry the egg from the ovary to the uterus. What you might not have learned is that they aren't fixed in place and they actually lie right underneath each ovary. Finger-like tendrils called fimbriae reach out from the fallopian tube toward the ovary and catch the egg once it’s released. You can still get pregnant naturally even if you only have one fallopian tube. When the egg is carried by the tube on the other side, it’s called ovum transmigration.
If you’re a well-adjusted person, you might be thinking, Oh wow, that’s so amazing, bodies are filled with miracles. But women’s anatomy and sexuality has been the source of conspiracies, crazy misdiagnoses, and horror stories since the beginning of time, so where are the fallopian horror movies? They are tentacles!! How witch-like! Here’s some context:
One of the original myths about the female anatomy was the myth of the wandering womb. The ancient Greeks believed that the womb wandered around the body, causing all kinds of horrors. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, explained at length how the movement of the uterus was believed to cause symptoms depending on where it went, putting pressure on the organs and even causing suffocation. Imagine if he had heard about a reaching fallopian tube?
The diagnosis of wandering womb eventually evolved into Hysteria, which translates to “womb disease.” Hysteria was a diagnosis that prevailed until the 20th century. The list of symptoms were long and vague, but could include anxiety, irritability, nervousness, having sexual thoughts, and vaginal lubrication. A hysterical diagnosis was often given to successful women as a means to keep them in place. This theme would continue throughout history.
The clitoris was a source of horror in the fifteenth century. I wrote about it a few weeks back in Discovering the Clitoris. “In the mid-fifteenth century, the clit had a new purpose in the cultural discourse and a new nickname: the devil’s teat. Women all over Europe were being accused of witchcraft, centuries before the Salem Witch Trials. In a famous text used to diagnose witches, the Malleus Maleficarum, witchcraft was linked to sexual desire. The origin of this desire, of course, was the clitoris. They even developed a test: if you stimulated the clitoris and it became engorged, then the owner of the clitoris was undeniably a witch. That’s a test I’m willing to take.”
The entire female anatomy has also been a source of horror, like in the pervasive myth of the vagina dentata (Latin for literally a vagina with teeth). The image of the vagina dentata and what it represents has been the root of wars against women around the world. As I wrote in January, many of the vagina dentata myths warn of the necessity of removing the teeth from women’s vaginas, in order to transform her into a nonthreatening sexual partner. You know, marriage material. Once in a while, the vagina dentata stories have an empowering message (a vagina that bites abusers), or even a happy ending. In a Russian/Finnish folklore, a beautiful young woman was married off to a gross man against her will. She puts a fish head with sharp teeth inside her, which severely pricks the man whenever he tries to enter, and enables her to escape sex with her gross husband.
Fallopian tubes were discovered in the 16th century by Italian doctor Gabriele Fallopio. He first called them "tuba uteri" (Latin for "uterus trumpet"), which is a horror movie itself, or at least an instrument I would love to play in a marching band. So with all the body-horror movies and folktales, where’s the fallopian fear? Most of us don’t have comprehensive sex ed, and even when we do, we tend to learn so much more about preventing STIs than actual facts about fertility. I would also be willing to bet that a lot of medical professionals don’t know this fact either, since so little money and time is spent on women’s health research. Judging by the reaction to this tiktok doctor dropping the bomb about our tubes, most people didn’t want to know this fact at all. We should be proud of our intuitive, witchy, tentacle-like fallopians! NO EGGS LEFT BEHIND.
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Learn something new every day! Good post!