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Is "vagina" a dirty word? Some members of the Lynchburg City School Board have said yes.

On Wednesday, The News & Advance published a story about a textbook that the school board wants altered because it contains an illustration of, according to the article, "a vagina." The text was selected by a group of faculty, students, and parents for an 11th grade anatomy class. The teacher who will use the book calls it "the most valuable book for anatomy and physiology that I've ever seen."

The only problem is the illustration of a vulva on page 462. To prevent students from encountering the illustration, the school board voted to cover or remove the page. Having already placed an order for 200 books at a total cost of $8,000, the school system apparently had the good sense not to ask for an alternative text (we could have called that "throwing out the birth canal with the bath water").

To compound matters, the school board has also decided NOT to remove any illustrations of male genitalia, according to Friday's News & Advance.

I want to make very clear that I haven't seen the textbook in question, entitled "The Human Body in Health and Illness." The "illustration" in question is a diagram of female genitalia, not a photograph, according to Brenda Edson, author of the News & Advance article. The partially obscured image WSLS showed on its 11:00 broadcast Wednesday resembled a doctor's examining room diagram. Edson described it as "realistic." Prohibiting 16- and 17-year-old anatomy students from seeing such an illustration seems like taking away the maps in geography.

It's odd that the day before I learned about the textbook controversy, a student e-mailed me information about a play called "The Vagina Monologues." Through a network of schools called the College Initiative, campus groups nationwide sponsor performances of the play on or near Valentine's Day 2001. The program's goal is to eliminate violence against women and the atmosphere of fear caused by violence.

A colleague and I discussed whether the title "The Vagina Monologues" was chosen for its shock value. Not having read or seen this play, of course, I can't comment on the title's thematic relevance. Would some members of the Ferrum community be offended by the name? Would some students be drawn to important material because of the provocative title?

This same colleague recalled a time when her Sunday School class was prevented from seeing a photograph of Michelangelo's David statue in a book that was part of the denomination's curriculum. An adult disturbed by the censorship brought a picture of David to the class of teen-agers. Her act of defiance made a profound impact on my colleague. (Just this summer, the prohibition-defier was rewarded by getting to see the real statue, in Florence.)

People view the human body in several different ways. Some, like Michelangelo and other artists, view it as an object of beauty. Physicians and scientists view it clinically, as a subject of study. Others, such as distributors of pornography, view it as an object of lust.

Educators fit into the second category. Teachers of life science view the body as an organism to be studied and understood. They discuss the body in terms of systems: the neurological system, the circulatory system, the reproductive system, etc. If they do their jobs well, their students will adopt their scientific point of view and language.

Whether any illustration of the human body or its parts is appropriate is a matter of context and attitude. What are the acceptable reasons for viewing a drawing of genitals? It seems to me that understanding human anatomy is certainly among them. My copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" contains many photographs of female genitalia, some of which I would certainly show to children, in an educational context.

Members of the Lynchburg School Board who voted to censor the image illustrate the third view of the human body. They apparently cannot separate a vagina's biological function from its sexual association (which leaves us with the question, who really has the dirty mind here?) They don't trust young adults to view genitals clinically, either. And it seems to me that they certainly don't trust teachers.

It's especially interesting to me when people who loathe or fear the human body justify their prudishness on religious grounds. After all, according to the Genesis account, Adam and Eve didn't arrive clothed in the Garden of Eden. Only after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil did they notice their nakedness, feel shame, and cover themselves. Innocence, then, would seem to include a dispassionate attitude about the body.

I am surprised by the board's decision to excise the illustration of female genitalia but leave in the diagrams of male genitals. This runs counter to cultural practice, which is that for the hundreds of times we see a naked female body on film, we might see full frontal male nudity once. The implication of such images is that a penis is a hidden treasure but breasts are a dime a dozen. Don't misunderstand: I am not crusading for more penises on film or in textbooks. I just want some equity in exploitation.

I am also deeply troubled by Friday's announcement. The board's logic, as described in The News & Advance, suggests that young men would lose control of themselves when confronted by such an illustration, but young women would not. Teen-age boys may be more sexually aggressive (in general) than teen-age girls, but the school board's decision seems to say to them, "It's all right; we know you can't control yourselves where women's genitals are concerned." (I've always felt the same way about the Islamic prohibition on exposed female skin in public. It doesn't seem to give Islamic men much credit for self-control.)

This incident reminds me of one of our society's great absurdities: while we're saturated with prurient images and sexual innuendo many think harmless, we're squeamish about discussing sex organs clinically. Women are reluctant to discuss breast-self examination with their own physicians and make up excuses like "my stomach hurts" when we have cramps. It takes a former presidential candidate with prostate cancer to help men talk about the disease publicly, and most men would rather be seen in public in a dress than buying "feminine hygiene products." Parents' squeamishness about explaining sex to their children is a comic stereotype.

Our evasiveness extends to the silly nicknames we've concocted for our sex organs, none of which I will repeat here because, unlike "vagina" and "penis," they don't belong in a family publication. And I'm somewhat embarrassed for the people who use those nicknames. Once, a nurse asked me if I had to "wee-wee" before a pelvic examination, and I wanted to ask her "Where in the world did you go to nursing school?"

I don't know whether the Lynchburg City School Board or Brenda Edson chose the term "vagina" for the illustration, but this ignorance of anatomical terms shows how the censorship the board has ordered hurts us. Maybe if, as students, the school board members had seen the female sex organs diagrammed, they'd know the names of the parts. Instead, they made a mistake that "Our Bodies, Ourselves" says is common: the "vulva, or outer genitals . . . includes all the sexual and reproductive organs" that are externally visible. "Too often we confuse the vagina, only one part, with the whole area."

But our evasiveness about sex and sex organs extracts a higher cost than linguistic ignorance: teens become pregnant, venereal diseases are transmitted, and cancers are diagnosed, often too late. It's a high price to pay for our prudishness.

It is unlikely that any high school junior hasn't seen genitals in a medical book much earlier than biology class. (It pains me to think about how many have already seen the real thing.)

The vagina is a biological passageway through which most of us traveled to get into this world. Those who view it differently reveal more about themselves than about the human body.