[When I was growing up, there was a popular feature in Reader's Digest, then a huge-circulation U.S. magazine, that described different body organs in the manner I am employing here.]

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When viewing an attractively-dressed woman, both women and men are likely to focus on her breasts and her bottom, as both are prominently displayed even under clothing. But although I like my boobs and my bottom is cute—if you can still say anything about you is cute after you reach the age of 30—the essence of my femininity is found between my legs. Although I won't exclude the attraction of seeing a pronounced cameltoe when a woman is wearing tight panties, the line of sight when seeing a lady bare naked becomes totally evident when clothing is shed.

If while I am standing nude facing you, whether you are a man or a woman, you are likely to look down between my legs. Especially when we do not shave our pussies, women's sex organs are mostly hidden. Beneath the neat triangle of red hair covering my mons, you would see a slit with lips on either side running right down under me. All of these quintessential female parts including and inside those lips, considered together, comprise my cunt.

Yes, we regard cunt as a nasty word, although it dates back to Anglo-Saxon times much as does its even more widely-used, four-letter relative. But it is an indispensable word, because no other fully encompasses all of the organs and body parts that make up the female reproductive center of the body.

Until a woman engages in frequent sexual intercourse or gives birth, the lips tend to remain close together and thus my cunt looked closed, like a neat little slit running down what looks like a small pouch protruding slightly.

Each of these parts has its own special name. The outer area, usually referred to as the vulva, is made up of two sets of lips, which are called labia, which is Latin for lips, opens up to reveal the introitus, which is the entrance to the primary female sexual organ, the vagina, which derives from the Latin word for sheath.

While the word vagina is often used to describe all of our female sex organs down there, it really only defines the canal or tube, which serves two major purposes: first, this is the place the male penis is inserted during intercourse, or more colloquially, the organ I use to fuck with, and second, it is the birth canal, from which a baby emerges at birth from my uterus.

The uterus, or womb, is the organ into which the male deposits his sperm by ejaculating into its entry-point, called my cervix, when we have intercourse, and thus where my egg may be fertilized and eventually grow into a baby.

There are still more parts of my cunt to describe. I have one organ called the clitoris, or clit for short, that exists solely for sexual pleasure. Men have their penises and testicles, but those have other functions, namely, to pee and to fuck with by inserting the penis into my vagina, and to produce the sperm, much as my ovaries, way inside past the uterus, release my eggs.

But the clitoris is a tiny button at the top of the lips that grows when excited—it has millions of nerve endings that make me delightfully pleasured when I or a lover rubs the clit. The clit is much larger, as its roots run down each side under the surface next to the lips. It has a little hood that protects it because it is so sensitive but that can be softly pushed up to expose the head, or glans, of the clit, similar in function to the head, or glans of the penis.

In addition, there is a tiny opening, the meatus, which is where the urethra excretes the urine that accumulates in my bladder. In women, unlike men, the urinary system is entirely separate from the reproductive system. I pee from my urethral opening and I fuck using my vagina. This also explains why girls have to sit down to pee, because our urethral outlet is inside the whole opening and it's harder to direct the stream of urine. Men can hold their penis and the stream goes where they aim. Our urethras are much shorter inside—a guy's runs the whole length of his penis and then some—so the pee comes out with more of a blast, too. This shorter length is also why we are much more prone to urinary infections because the germs have a shorter distance to travel.

Further down in the opening between the two sets of lips—these labia are called the labia majora (big outer lips) and labia minora (little inner lips), is Bartholin's gland, which may provide some lubrication for intercourse, but which can become irritated and inflamed, resulting in its expanding and becoming very uncomfortable for me. How would you feel if part of you blew up like a balloon and was located in such a sensitive place?

Before I entered puberty, I was bare between my legs and the thin slit rarely protruded. Most girls have a thin membrane called the hymen, which mostly closes the entrance to the vagina. This is broken at first intercourse and is the traditional end of a girl's virginity. There are lots of ways it can be broken well before a girl ever allows a penis to probe into her vagina.

My mother had to remind me to wash in between the lips when I was in the bathtub. One day when I was about 12½, I found a dark red spot in my panty crotch and knew that I was now officially a woman because I now had my period.

Part of puberty is the growth of hair on the fleshy triangle above my cunt. This fleshy pad is called the mons veneris, or Mount of Venus. But the big changes in my body came when my breasts started to bud and gradually grow and finally when I bled from my vagina. The bleeding is called my menstrual period and it happens every month (which is what menstrual means) and is called menstruation. I learned quickly to put a pad in my panties or stick a tampon into my vagina to absorb the relatively small amount of blood that flows out of my vagina for three to five days each month.

Although I sometimes feel queasy or have cramps during my menstrual period, any other discomfort usually means there is some health problem in my cunt. Women get infections there, one of which is a fungus called thrush or another which is a form of yeast. The treatment is to insert some medicine in the form of a cream which is applied by sticking a plastic tube into my vagina, similar to the cardboard or plastic applicators I use to insert a tampon into my vagina.

I remember the first time I had to go to the drug store to buy what are called feminine hygiene products. These include sanitary pads, tampons, and all the various creams for different infections. There are also deodorant sprays, but those are not good to use, because the vagina is self-cleaning and its smell is natural. Most guys with whom I have fucked like my vaginal smell because it is the essence of femininity.

My mom told me that when she was a teenager, most women would not use tampons because men said it was wrong to stick anything but a cock into your vagina. Also, they did not yet make pads to stick to the crotch of your panties so you had to wear what was called a sanitary napkin, a pad with tabs that attached to clips on a little elastic belt you wore. She said these were awful because they didn't stay put so sometimes you would get period blood on your panties or on your skirt or it might even run down your legs!

Down between my legs, where sometimes women have hair all the way down, you will pass my labia and eventually reach my anal opening, from which I have my bowel movements. My anus is basically the same as a man's but if I'm being very naughty and letting a man fuck me in my vagina and another in my anus, the two cocks will press against the anal and vaginal walls and they may even feel that the other is inside me!

All of the organs I have mentioned, except the anus and, I guess, the mons veneris, are part of what I and others call my cunt. No other word really describes all of them. I think it's too bad that the word is so often used to describe a nasty, aggressive woman and I like it that some women now use the word in a positive way. I like that because I'm proud of my cunt—it gives me pleasure, both from the sensations in my clit and the lovely feeling of being filled in my vagina when I have a man's cock inside it.

Some women seem to feel deprived by having most of our sex organs inside us, unlike the man's penis and testicles that are hanging outside his body. I like the nice clean smooth line of my cunt, mostly covered with hair and I like the way it gets wet when I get sexually excited. When you look at classical sculpture of women carved by ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, you will often see the beautiful smooth female lower body, delightfully clean and with nothing hanging out of us.

But the most marvelous feature of my cunt is its role as the center of sexual pleasure. Yes, my boobs are sensitive to the touch and the lick, as is my sweet little anus, which has plenty of nerve endings and thus qualifies as an erogenous zone. But the two prime spots are my clit and my vagina, both found in and around my cunt.

There's not a really good way to describe the lovely feeling when a handsome man lovingly spreads my labia to insert his turgid organ into my wet and waiting vagina. Like many women, my clit is very very sensitive and I feel mostly discomfort when someone—male or female—roughly strokes its tip or grabs it. But more men know how to fuck and how to stimulate my vaginal nerves so that I can build to a glorious orgasm.

That's when I finally feel that my cunt truly is the center of my existence, the source of the most delightful pleasure a woman can enjoy. Men at some level understand this, even if they force themselves to ignore it as they merely wish only to plunge their penis into my boiling core. But this is doubtless why there are so many words for my most important place (here the English teacher in me appears): pussy, gash, slit, snatch, twat, box, snapper, clam, love canal, tunnel of love, fuck hole, and so many more. Moreover, while some men use the word "cunt" to label assertive women who may inspire fear, feminists seek to rescue the word for women to use positively as they work to give the word a strong, loving spin.

All this should make it clear that far from having anything resembling penis envy, I adore the wet, warm place between my legs, for the joy it brings and the power it inspires. So the next time someone—usually male—may refer to some "dumb cunt" or other slur, tell him he only wishes he had such a fabulous organ down there to call his own.