Bring back sheela-na-gigs to help Irishmen find their way

Just to warn you, before we go any further, there's sex in this column. And 'women's troubles' too.

We know from past experience that some of you will take offence - but don't go saying you weren't warned.

The campaign to bring back the sheela-na-gig is being officially launched here today.

The piece is very much aimed at men but women might like to read the content. I'm sure most women are in no need of a body map. I was in a doctor's waiting room one time and a man of my acquaintance was reading 'Woman's Way'. The man next to him was shocked.

"What are you reading that thing for?" he asked.

The reader replied: "I'm only looking at it because I'm trying to figure out what the women are thinking." So, ladies, read on.

Not a day goes by but that an intrepid expert with more letters after his name than Newtownmountkennedy isn't paddling waist-high in some remote Amazonian backwater and peering into murky pools for a previously undiscovered species of lizard or a new newt.

And astronauts have travelled the heavens. But no one was searching for the clitoris and the womb was a place of great mystery where any ailment of significance was peremptorily dismissed as 'woman's troubles'.

Men have a better understanding of the topography of the moon than the womb.

There's no sat-nav for the clitoris. "Take the next left and move a little to the right, no left, right again. Down a bit, up a bit. Leave the M1 at the next roundabout. Nearly there now. You're at the last junction. Will you stop, will you? You've passed it out. Go back. Go back outa dat. Travel back again to Junction 2, just above the labia. No it's the labia, I said, not the fibia."

Our guess is more than a good few men should have an L or an N plastered on their backs and fronts.

Last spring, we called on the Government to appoint a Minister for Sex. But there was no response. I often wonder if the only people in high places who read this column are either roofers or sherpas.

And it's not just sex, is it?

No man can properly claim to understand women unless he first learns how women function biologically and emotionally.

I was flicking through the channels the other night and I counted seven simultaneous food programmes. There were recipes for Moroccan chicken and Atlantic mussels but the only sex programmes were of writhing women trying to get men to phone them up at a very high rate per minute. We need a co-ordinated response and an Irish educational refit. And not just for kids but for adults too. The night class season starts around now. I couldn't find even one for men dealing with the inner sanctum of a woman's body.

When I was a very small boy, we had a snug at one end of our bar. The older women used to go in there for a secret sherry. The old ladies used to wear long black shawls right down to their ankles. Just in case men were tempted. I was an invisible boy. I used sit there in the snug listening to the old ladies going on about cystitis and thrush and no one took any notice of me.

There were men with 10 or 11 kids who knew far less about how women's bodies worked than the eight-year-old me.

I want men to know more. It's time then to bring back the sheela-na-gig or a modern version thereof.

The sheela-na-gig was a woman made of stone. And don't go saying your partner is one of them. Maybe if you knew more about her body then you would get a better response.

This definition is from Barbara Freitag's excellent book 'Sheela-na-gigs: Unravelling an Enigma': "Sheela-na-gigs are stone carvings of women exposing their genitalia."

There are sheelas all over Ireland. Many are to be found in medieval churches. The carvings are graphic, crude and even grotesque representations.

There is some controversy as to their origins and meaning but at least there was some sort of sex education going on centuries ago.

We haven't made much progress since.

Some of the sheelas were destroyed by embarrassed clergymen. Some are in the national museum.

And there's bound to be one in a church near you. Not in any modern church though, only in old ruins.

There seems to have been a conspiracy going on to keep the workings of a woman's body a state and church secret.

My theory is the sufferings of women were to be kept quiet in case there would be some sort of break in the birthing of Catholics. Doctors warned women if they had any more kids, then they would die.

And die they did. That's not a hundred years ago either. Contraception only became legal in Ireland in recent times.

So here is our proposal. We must bring back the sheela-na-gig. Every man in Ireland should be given a free guided tour of the workings of a woman's body.

The tour can be virtual but I would suggest a life-size working model made in the best labs, a latter-day sheela with respect, technology and tactile responses.

There seems to be a terrible embarrassment when it comes to discussing sex education or "women's troubles" in this country.

Every home should own a sheela. Bring back sheela.