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I'm a bit curious about female wiping after peeing. I mean most TG stories display it as something utterly necessary, or really bad things happen. I kind of wonder what women did in stone age when they didn't have toilet paper. Did they use fur, or did they not wipe at all?
Is wiping really that important for genetic girls, or is it more a problem for t-girls?
Just curious,
Beyogi
infection
Well, it's a problem for ALL females. The reason is simple hygiene, a dirty muff can lead to problems such as a urinary track infection or even yeast infection. Remember the female reproductive organ is a warm, moist enviroment that is an incubator for life. It's the ideal breading ground for almost anything, including bacteria, fugi and viruses.
what did they do before back durining the stone ages?... i can only assume they suffered, remember the average lifespan of people was at one point between the ages of 30-40 years old. Due to modern medicine we enjoy greatly longer lives. Thanks in part to good hygiene.
Edit: also note that people were also considered adults, thus ready to start families, as soon as they begun to grow pubic hair. With this thought in mind the concept of "teenage pregnancy" is laughable (in many countries the age of consent is 13-15).
Good Question, Beyogi !
I looked into this when doing Anthropology. There is strong evidence that early inhabitants of Northern Europe collected and dried soft moss for bottom-wiping. Ditto for the stone-age inhabitants of the Western Isles, whose megalithic monuments are often forgotten by people teaching the origins of cultures, as theirs are older and more complex than any others, and it has been proven that moving huge stones about and making ring shapes and so on or two standing with a roof stone over them, began in the NW edge of Europe and slowly spread from there to mainland France and then throughout the mediterranean and even as far as the Levant, India and Turkey ! round shaped, open stone enclosures giving privacy and just a short walk from the stone roundhouse typical of that culture have been found, with the remains of human faeces on moss remains, and dated back to those times (about 6 - 7 000 years ago.
From Central and Southern America the Pre-Columbian cultures used the cores of maize cobs, which are still today used as tampons. They are scratchy and rough, but the ones saved for this use are beaten with a piece of wood for a long time until they become soft enough.
According to Bronislav Malinowsky, the Polish-born Anthropologist who wrote "Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays", the south pacific Trobriand Islanders went into the sea to defaecate and washed their private parts using a bit of seaweed. All females bathed in the sea daily, and they believed that babies slipped into their wombs whilst they were in the sea, as they had not yet figured out that makiing love with the boys made them pregnant ! They had special bathing beaches for the girls from those for the boys, the boys had to defaecate in the sea too, but they peed all over the place.
Briar
In other words...
Genital and butt hygiene is as old as dirt. Makes sense. You'd think people would've been able to figure this one out very quickly. I mean. Even dogs know to wipe their butts in the dirt.
If there was a time period to be concerned about at all, it might've been during the dark ages in Europe... People in that part of the world during that time apparently forgot almost everything.
My bet though, is that even during the dark ages, people still thought to wipe.
Abigail Drew.
Ugh... I guess I kinda forgot
Ugh... I guess I kinda forgot about moss... I don't think people forgot to wipe during the "dark" ages.
It's kind of intereting to know really. I mean why don't females have a less problematic outlet for urine? Why not route it through the ass, or have an outlet abouve the vagina? Ah well, mother Nature just wanted to torture the gals, I guess :)
Seriously thought, does someone know what they used during the medival age? Moss, fur, or somekind of fabric? I mean both fur and fabric probably were more expensive than nowadays.
Urine
Actually urine is supposed to be anti-septic, isn't it?
Wouldn't that mean that it is being used as a natural cleaning agent, sort of? Same for the boys.
Nature did it that way because that way has the best outcome. Any other method would probably have problems which are far worse, in terms of individual/species survival.
Penny
Healthy urine
is aseptic, which means it's free of bugs as opposed to antiseptic which is generally accepted as inhibiting or killing bugs. In incidents where no clean water is available urine is probably the best thing for washing wounds in an emergency.
Angharad
Sterile...
Not aseptic but sterile.
LN
edit wrong reply... :/
The Legendary Lost Ninja
Poor design...
Might be a better question to ask of mother nature: Why does the throat and the air way cross? Seriously what 'god' came up with the idea to combine breathing and drinking/eating? You're more likely to die through choking than from any fungal infection... :D
LN
The Legendary Lost Ninja
Wiping ain't the half of it.
Of course I can only speak for myself here. Not only do you need to wipe, but you wipe your urinary orfice downward and when you wipe your bottom, you wipe up, the strategy being to keep the resident e-coli in your intestines and not in your bladder. I've even had the Doctor tell me to make sure that after being in the shower, and washing, pee just a tinkle to flush the uretha, before I shut the water off. The estrogen stinks to high heaven if urine is allowed to accumilate. Of interest, I just had my visit to an endocrinologist, and she said that my estrogen level was 55. The average woman runs between 25 and 72, depending on the time of the month.
A couple other women's issues that I did not expect is that it feels like my skin is about 1/3 as thick as it was. I used to just bash my way around and do fine, but now simply rubbing past a tree branch or piece of furniture can mean a scrape or cut. A simple bump into something can easily mean a quarter sized bruise.
The Doctor admonishes me to take an 81 mg pill of aspirin every day because of the estrogen.
Your mileage may vary...
Eh. Reading your comment, Gwen... I think I know what you *intended* to write, what you probably had in mind when you wrote what you did... but somehow, that is not quite the way I read what you actually wrote. So... just to clarify in case someone else reads her words the way I did... when Gwen wrote "when you wipe your bottom, you wipe up", I am pretty sure she means "up" in the sense of "up, towards the back". [As apposed to someone reaching back between their legs, and possibly thinking of "up" as being "forwards, towards the front" -- which is most definitely not recommended with female genitalia, given how close together the vaginal opening is to the anus...]
By the way, Gwen... a strong genital smell from urine is more typically an indication of a bladder infection, than high estrogen levels. Or, depending on what you mean by "urine is allowed to accumulate", it might simply be the smell of stale urine that you are noticing -- urine breaks down naturally, producing (fairly pungent smelling) ammonia, after a fairly short period of time after exposure to air. Not something you really notice so long as your take care of your genital hygiene properly... but, in keeping with the topic of this thread, if a woman did *not* wipe... that "urine residue break-down product" actually *would* be a smell that women would have to deal with...
Shrug. Just saying...
While I don't know my own numbers off-hand (it has been many years since I bothered to check that... as my HRT regimen hasn't changed in a very long time now...), I do cycle my estrogen. Meaning, I use injection HRT, and rather than injecting once a week or so (to keep my estrogen levels as close to "level" as possible), I prefer to let my estrogen levels cycle in as close as possible to a "natural menstrual cycle" pattern as I can. Which is to say... at my "peak", shortly after an injection, my E2 levels go all the way up to slightly above normal "natal female, mid-cycle peak" values... and then my E2 levels fall off during my injection cycle down to a bottom (just before my next injection) that is near the lowest level of a "natal female hormone cycle". While I suppose it is possible that there is some difference in the smell between my "high" and "low" values -- certainly, dogs and such can smell the difference -- I can't say that the difference is all that noticeable to me, normally. At least not so long as I do not have a UTI, or so long as I am maintaining proper hygiene...
The skin thing you mentioned, Gwen, is quite real... although "1/3 as thick" is perhaps a tiny bit of an exaggeration -- at least, for most people. As you said you did not expect it... if you are curious as to how if happens, there is a simple medical explanation.
Everyone (male or female) retains many layers of dead skin above the still living skin tissue, as a way of protecting the skin... but exactly how many (while it varies from individual to individual) tends, on average, to be higher in males than in females. Normally, new skin cells form at the "bottom" of the layer of skin, then slowly migrate outwards. As they do, a compound known as "keratin" (the same stuff fingernails and hair is mostly made of) is added to the skin cells, which tends to make the cells "tougher", and increases their ability to protect the lower layers of skin... but which interferes with the internal chemistry and slowly kills off the cells. So you have living cells at the bottom... slowly dying, but increasingly more protective cells layered above that... dead cells that have been "fully keratinized" above that, but still held to the skin by those keratin structures... and finally, several layers of "old, dead skin" -- where the keratin is slowly breaking down, allowing the outermost cells to "flake off" -- as the top, outer layers.
A side effect of testosterone effects how the skin keratinizes (and eventually sheds) the older skin cells, increasing the length of time it takes to break down the keratin bonds... which means that, on average, females tend to retain fewer layers of "dead" cells -- or conversely, that males have "thicker" skin than females. That fact means that female skin tends to be "more sensitive". Both in the sense of being able to "feel" things easier... since there are fewer layers of "padding" between the nerve endings and whatever you are touching... and in the sense of being more easily damaged -- since there is less "protection" as well, from those fewer layers.
The 81 mg of aspirin thing you mentioned is not uncommon... but I just thought I would add that it is not, strictly speaking, something that *everyone* on HRT should be doing. Shrug. There was a time when it was a "routine precaution" for HRT, and there are probably still doctors out there that remember that view... but these days, there are divided opinions in the medical community about that. Shrug. Aspirin is used in that particular application as an inhibitor for the blood clotting factors in a person's blood. That can be mildly useful with HRT, since the estrogen tends to increase blood clotting factors a bit... but it is a trade off. The aspirin also means that your blood clotting can often end up *lower* than normal, too... which, depending on other health factors, may or may not be a good thing. These days, the usual practice is to recommend aspirin only for those women on HRT who have a history of blood clot risks.
So... if *your* doctor has recommended *you* do this, Gwen, by all means follow that advice. But if someone else reading this is perhaps considering "do it yourself" HRT... don't automatically reach for an aspirin. It has its uses... and may be useful for many people... but it is definitely not for everyone. That "quarter sized bruise" Gwen mentioned that a "simple bump" can give her is likely as much to do with her being on aspirin (reducing her blot clotting and making bruising easier) as it has to do with having a thinner skin... and that increased risk of bleeding from any injuries is why blood thinners like aspirin should be used with caution, and only on medical advice.
Primitive female healthcare...
Another "old time favourite" (among those who lived on plains, where moss was a little hard to come by) was simply to use small balls of dried grass or hay...
Actually, I pretty much agree with what others have written, and I would not have bothered to add anything... except it occurs to me that most of these replies have addressed "what women did in earlier times", rather than "what women did in true cavemen days". I am not sure if you really wanted to know or not about *really* primitive times -- but just in case, I thought I would add my two cents worth.
The thing to remember about those times, was that humans were basically just another species of animal back then. Clothing, if any, was *really* primitive -- a fur wrap, or whatever. No real "underwear", as such... and do real "leggings" -- which means that you could think of such wraps as a sort of skirt. The genitals were exposed to the air... and hence, would "dry off" naturally. Also keep in mind that urine, at least for a healthy person, is basically a sterile liquid -- letting things "air dry" that way leaves the genitals rather smelly (not a problem in an era where most did not bath regularly anyway), but does not really harm a female's health.
It was only after the evolution of clothing that it became so important to "wipe after peeing". With the genitals enclosed in some form of clothing, the moisture is retained... and the "breeding ground" Sadarsa mentioned becomes relevant.
[Wiping after defecating is another story entirely... but not what you asked about. Still, most of the comments seen so far apply to that, too. Just add that it is also possible to clean yourself after defecating with simply your bare hand -- a practice still done in some parts of the world, and one possible source of the custom to use your right hand for most other tasks... and your left hand only to "clean yourself".]
As for your question about whether this is more of a problem for "T-girls" than "genetic girls" (GG)... the answer is no.
Other than the lack of ovaries/uterus (and the consequent lack of need for a "T-girl" to use periodically use tampons/pads), there is very little difference between the two varieties of female genitalia -- the "routine sanitation care" is pretty much identical.
Externally, things are so identical that while a good gynaecologist *should* be able to tell the difference between a "T-girl" and a GG, at least upon *close* genital examination of the *interior* parts... [there are slight differences in the elasticity of the tissue lining the vagina... the faint but microscopically detectable presence of certain scars... and the internal end of the vagina tends to be somewhat different than would be expected even of a woman who had had a complete hysterectomy, including her cervix]... but even regular medical staff usually won't be able to on casual inspection. Not unless they use a speculum to look inside the vagina, anyway... which normally only a OB/GYN does...
Shrug. I live stealth, including my health care. As someone in the medical profession, where I was concerned about a co-worker accessing my records... I have taken that aspect of my documentation to an extreme most stealth "T-girls" don't bother with -- many years ago, I formally requested that my provincial Health Minister seal my former records. [The letter of the law requires that those records not be destroyed during my lifetime... but they can and have been restricted to "paper only" records in a sealed file, dead-filed in a locked cabinet containg "classified documents" only at the Minister's office -- so unless someone specifically knew to look for them there, and had the security clearance and "need to know" to break those seals, they would not find them]. I was issued a new "unique lifetime identifier" (ULI) number... and a new record was created from scratch for me, that makes no mention of anything "trans-related". Although there is a reference in the sealed files of my new ULI number, by Special Order of the Health Minister, there deliberately is *no* corresponding link from my new file back to my old one.
Which is to say... any medical person who opens my "public" records sees nothing that indicates I was ever anything other than a "genetic girl". A born female, who has lived my entire life that way -- at least as far as my medical records indicate.
I mention that, as I have a number of health problems (cancer related), and am a frequent patient of various medical specialists. I have been "up in stirrups" on many occasions... and catheterized all too often -- a procedure that requires rather intimate contact with my genitals, as well as close inspection of at least the "external" parts. Despite this, I have never had even the slightest problem maintaining my stealth. Not even after being raped, when a nurse at the rape clinic *did* use a speculum on me, in order to perform internal genital swabs to test for STI's.
Visually, the resemblance between the GG and "T-girl" model genitals is *that* good -- at least, for those of us who had a good surgeon, anyway. [I have heard of some unfortunates who went to "less than first class" surgeons... or had some sort of complication during their healing... where the results were "less realistic". But those are the exceptions, not the general rule]. And functional, the resemblance is also virtually identical -- other than not being able to have children.
[In case my last statement causes someone to think of the need for a "T-girl" to dilate... that is mostly only an issue in the first year post surgery, or if you are not active sexually for prolonged periods after that. As a sexually active, heterosexually married woman... I can't even remember the last time I actually dilated. Many years ago, certainly. And actually, there are "genetic women" with the same health issues -- it is not that uncommon for a GG who has had a vaginal tear while giving birth, or otherwise developed some sort of medical problem resulting in internal scarring of her vagina, to need to stretch those scars with dilation... in pretty much the same way as a post op TS does. A GG who has had a hysterectomy also has the exact same occasional "depth" issues that a "T-girl" does... since they no longer have a uterus for their vagina's to "stretch into" when necessary during sex...]
Shrug. In fact, I remember shortly after my "corrective" surgery that I was told explicitly by both my surgeon, and my endocrinologist (on a separate occasion a few months later), that if I was ever in a health care situation where I was dealing with a medical professional who was not "familiar" with dealing with a transsexual, that I should simply tell them that I was a woman who had had a complete hysterectomy, including uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and cervix. That telling them that would tell them everything they would need to know about my medical condition to successfully treat me medically -- as the actual surgery I had had was "medically equivalent" to that other, more commonly encountered condition... and both from an anatomical, and endocrinological point of view, there was no practical difference. Something my own health training backs up... as while with my "exotic" medical problems, I *do* carefully consider whether a particular specialist "needs to know" about my actual history... so far, the answer has been "no, they don't really need to know". The number of occasions when the actual "legacy" anatomical differences between a "born male" and a "born female" body are actually medically relevant are exceptionally few and far between...
Smile. Probably more than you wanted to know... but I think it does answer your question. There really is no difference as far as the "health care" of the external parts of our genitalia is concerned. No difference in the length of our urethra -- and consequently, no difference in our susceptibility to urinary tract infections. No real difference in the "warm, moist environment" that might result in it becoming a "breeding ground" for various infections. About the only difference as far as that sort of thing is concerned, is we are always "between periods" -- we never have a menstrual cycle, so we don't have to deal with that messy aspect of being female. We are always equivalent to a GG during the rest of her cycle... when she is not menstruating.
Hmm. I was ready to post this... when I noticed a couple new comments others had written while I was writing this. Oh, well. Maybe I will address those posts in a separate comment... or maybe not...
Thanks for the explanation.
Thanks for the explanation. If you were wondering why I asked wether there was a difference between t-girls and genetic girls it was because tg stories tend to mention the importance of wiping. I'd never else seen it before, so I was kinda curious.
About the drying thing, I guess that would be what female apes do then.
Thank you and everyone else for the information,
Beyogi
Because guys don't
Little boys and little girls are taught things by their daddies and mommies as they grow up, including what to do in the bathroom. I would assume mommies tell their daughters' during potty training to wipe after peeing and which way to wipe (see other comments as to up or down). Daddies do not need to tell their son's to wipe; maybe to jiggle a little before puting it back in before zippering up the fly.
So depending on the situation, the former boy, foreign to the way of girls, must be instructed on what to do.
Depending on the nature of the story, this instruction could be given either for health reasons, or in the case of boys either voluntarily of forced to masquerade as a girl, to go along with the "remember to sit" instruction.
Rami
RAMI
When women wore no panties.
I have not done any research on this, but I remember hearing that women wearing panties is a relatively recent development. So, depending upon when it happened, they would be quite well "ventilated". I never go commando because I feel insecure doing so. :)
Gwendolyn
Did women wipe in stoneage?
Ask an archeologist.
May Your Light Forever Shine
How would they know? Moss,
How would they know? Moss, fabric, paper, fur... it would be totally decayed by now. Well I guess if they'd always depositioned their wiping material in the same place an archeologist might be able to tell...
Archaeologists...
Any archaeologist worth his or her salt always look for the midden of any settled site as many of the evidence of life is found there. In cave sites - from neolithic sites - this is often less defined because neolithic man was less tidy. (Perhaps.)
Soft biodegradable matter can survive extremely long periods in very cold, very dry or anaerobic environments. And cloth, paper, plants and other things used by our ancestors have been found. (Like the contents of the stomach of a mammoth found in the Siberian perma-frost.)
I don't know if we know for sure that neolithic man used moss, but he was remarkably adaptable and bearing in mind that fire was the pinnacle of technology he managed a huge amount.
LN
The Legendary Lost Ninja
Did stone-age women 'wipe'
Well Viking women certainly 'wiped' as did Viking men. Archeological evidence discovered in York, England and now displayed in The York Viking museum demonstrates unequivically that both genders used assorted mosses for personal hygiene functions and this factor is discussed at length in the museum.
It is also a matter of documented record that Roman legionaires cleaned themselves with VINEGAR so it's quite reasonable to surmise that their ladies/wives probablyused something similar. My own personal experience tells me that vinegar does not sting or hurt my sensitive parts. (I am intergendered both mentally and physically (Vestigial blind vagina between scrotum and rectum which causes strange and painful sensations in my prostate gland if the 'aperture' is invaded by uneducated, insensitive fingers.)
My 'weenie' has a tiny strip of sensitve tissue either side of the 2cm entrance but vinegar does not sting it. So I'm presuming roman women used something similar.
It's my contention therefore that stone-age cro-magon people probably used mosses or other vegetable materials to wipe their genitalia.
Bev.
Wiping and Infection
Cheers to Ms Hawke; extremely interesting comments!
As usual, I have a difference in opinion about the value of hygiene; I think it's generally fine, but possibly harmful if overdone. There has been study recently of the biomes (sort of small scale ecology) in and on the humyn body and the composition of the microbes there. It is thought most helpful to have certain ratios of bacteria species for the health of the skin, mucus membranes, gut, etc. Having good stable bacteria will stop fungus and other microorganism infections. This is why I, at least, was told not to use a Betadine douche (which seemed a little bit popular 20 years ago). Having a good bacteria colony in that "warm, moist environment" is needed protection for anything else that would like to grow in such a good place to incubate most anything.
Personally, I always wipe, but outdoors, sometimes I don't have TP or even a paper towel with me; I have resorted to using dry grass or leaves. In my vag's 20+ years, I've had one UTI that needed (at least I thought at the time) antibiotics and have never had yeasties. The right bacteria can aid in the microhealth of the base tissues in maintaining moisture, oils and vitamins, besides fighting off badies. I try to never use antibiotic soap unless I'm cleaning a wound or the like; I think it's just a way to breed more antibiotic resistance into whatever microorganisms are present and it might harm my friendly bacteria.
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Hiar
I was once told that having a nice bunch of hair on your body, gave charming little beasties a place to live and fight off the enemy also. I stupidly had all of it lased off except for about a dozen hairs un down there and between the girls. Now I am wishing that I had left um down there alone. :)
Some clarification needed...
"The Stone Age" is a bit of a problematic term -- ignoring the issues of applicability and Eurocentrism involved -- as the best definition for "it" covers a period of approximately 3.4 million years, longer than the existence of genus Homo. Even restricting it to (relatively) physiologically modern human existence, it still covers millennia of profound variations in human cultural practices, rendering the question as posed hopelessly imprecise at best. Even further limiting it to the neolithic period, beginning approximately 10,200 BCE in the Middle East and ending between 4500 and 1700 BCE in most of Eurasia depending on region, still allows for a fairly significant number of answers, as the plethora above suggest (and most that are placed by their authors "in the Stone Age" are likely to date from this period, given the availability of interperable evidence).
That said, the idea of using fur, which would require a fair amount of effort to acquire in the first place, as a disposable (or even reusable) material for hygiene is... incredibly unlikely. Note that the reason for wiping involves not trapping moisture close to the body. Undergarments are a fairly recent invention, relative to the spread of "Stone Ages" available. Likely, it wouldn't be an issue until or unless a between-the-legs garment of some sort became available (and common, as the absence of underwear continued in many locales until as recently as the 1800's CE).
-Liz
Successor to the LToC
Formerly known as "momonoimoto"
Your question about how women
Your question about how women wipe themselves during the stone age got me thinking if they indeed observed such hygiene practices during that time. Meanwhile, I would like to share my thoughts about relationship between wiping and incidence of yeast infection.
That would be interesting, I
That would be interesting, I think.
Have you...
Have you ever heard the expression, "Dirty end of the stick?" For butt wiping in some places, sticks were made available. Clean ones sitting in a bucket of water. Be sure to feel to see which way the grain goes to avoid splinters. I read somewhere that estimates of how much traffic travelled the Silk Road were once made by counting how many discarded sticks were found in toilet middens.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.