Words, when deployed in relation to the vagina, are always more than "just words". Because of the subtlety of the mind-body connection, words about the vagina are also what philosopher John Austin, in his 1960 book How to Do Things with Words, calls "performative utterances", often used as a means of social control. A "performative utterance" is a word or phrase that actually accomplishes something in the real world. When a judge says "Guilty" to a defendant, or a groom says "I do", the words alter material reality.

Studies have shown that verbal threats or verbal admiration or reassurances can directly affect the sexual functioning of the vagina. One suggests that a stressful environment can negatively affect vaginal tissue itself. This "bad stress" can also, as it supports or inhibits orgasm, either raise or lower the levels of women's confidence, creativity and hopefulness overall. Women react strongly to male verbal abuse of their vaginas or to implied threats of rape, even when these are "just jokes", for these very reasons – though most of us are unaware of the science behind our gut reaction that this kind of abuse is bad for us.

Comedienne Roseanne Barr described male TV writers' behaviour when women made inroads into their profession: she noted that she hated going up to the writers' house because there would be a "stinky-pussy" joke within three minutes. When a woman faces a workplace in which her male peers want to show her she is unwelcome, similar words or images targeting or insulting the vagina will often surface: centrefolds with legs spread, for instance, and the face of the woman in question superimposed on the naked body, will appear in public.

Of course cultural and psychological motivations play a part in this form of harassment. But the role of manipulating female stress in targeting the vagina should not be ignored.

These acts are often impersonal and tactical – strategies for directing a kind of pressure at women that is not consciously understood, but may be widely intuited, and even survive in folk memory, as eliciting a wider neuropsychological "bad stress" response that actually debilitates women.

In 2010, male Yale students gathered at a "Take Back the Night" event, where their female classmates were marching in a group, protesting against sexual assault. The young men chanted at the protesters: "No means yes and yes means anal." Some of the young women brought a lawsuit against the university, arguing that tolerating such behaviour created an unequal educational environment. Ethically, they are in the right, and neurobiologically, they are right as well. Almost all young women who face a group of their male peers chanting such slogans are likely to feel instinctively slightly panicked. On some level they are getting the message that they may be in the presence of would-be rapists, making it impossible to shrug off immature comments, as women are often asked to do.

Sexually threatening stress releases cortisol into the bloodstream, which has been connected to abdominal fat in women, with its attendant risks of diabetes and cardiac problems; it also raises the likelihood of heart disease and stroke. If you sexually stress a woman enough, over time, other parts of her life are likely to go awry; she will have difficulty relaxing in bed, as well as in the classroom or in the office. This in turn will inhibit the dopamine boost she might otherwise receive, which would in turn prevent the release of the chemicals in her brain that otherwise would make her confident, creative, hopeful, focused – and effective, especially relevant if she is competing academically or professionally with you. With this dynamic in mind, the phrase "fuck her up" takes on new meaning.

I experienced firsthand the powerful impact that the words used to communicate about the vagina can have on the female brain. This book had just been signed by a publisher, and I was euphoric, in creative terms, about the research and writing ahead.

At the same time, I was anxious about grappling with such a strong social taboo. At that point, a friend of a friend – an impresario whom I will call Alan, who has a complicated sense of humour and enjoys creating social spectacles that heighten tension – said he wanted to throw a party celebrating my book deal. The party became a topic of conversation among his friends, often with a ripple of amusement – with something oblique in it – as an undercurrent.

Alan told me that he was going to do a pasta party at which guests could make vagina-shaped pasta. I thought that was a funny and sort of charming idea, possibly a tribute to the subject matter, or, at the very least, not awful, though it was not a thematic twist I would have chosen myself.

When I arrived at the party, though, there was a slightly ominous, mischievous stir at the far end of the loft where the kitchen was located. Alan was in the kitchen, surrounded by a crowd of guests. I made my way there, with some trepidation. As I walked toward Alan, I passed the table where the pasta maker had been assembled. A group of people stood around it – fashioning, indeed, little handmade vulvas. The objects were rather sweet looking: like the real thing, the little pasta sculptures varied – each person's experience (or body, perhaps) informing his or her interpretation. There was an energy of respect and even would-be celebration from that table, from both the men and the women. So the platter of pasta resting on the table seemed to me to be assembled with a kind of love: flowery or feathery, fluted or fanned, each small sculpture was detailed and distinct: lovely little white objects against a hand-painted blue Italian ceramic tray.

Alan appeared at my side. "I call those 'cuntini'," he said, laughing, and my heart contracted. A flash of tension crossed the faces of many of the women present. The men's faces, which had been so open, and some so tender, became impassive. Something sweet and new, that had barely begun, was already closing down.

I heard a sizzling sound. I looked to the kitchen: the sound was coming from several dozen enormous sausages, ranged in iron skillets on the big industrial stove. I got it: ha, sausages, to go with the "cuntini". I noticed that the energy of the mixed-gender crowd was now not simple. The room had become more tense – the tension that I was familiar with by now, as I was recognising those moments when women feel demeaned but are expected to "go with it" and have a "sense of humour". My heart contracted further.

Finally, someone called my attention to the final featured item on the evening's menu. On the back burners of the stove, several immense salmon fillets were arranged on another platter. Again: I got it. I got the joke. Women are smelly. Fish-smelling. I flushed, with a kind of despair that was certainly psychological – depression that a friend would think this was funny – but which also felt physical.

But that was not what was really interesting to me about that night. I can deal with a misfired joke, if that was all that the event entailed. What is really interesting to me is that after the "cuntini" party, I could not type a word of the book – not even research notes – for six months, and I had never before suffered from writer's block. I felt – on both a creative and a physical level – that I had been punished for "going somewhere" that women are not supposed to go.

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