Semantic Surgery for the European Mind

When the editors of the Dutch reference work Dikke van Dale recently opted to include "vulvalippen" in their upcoming digital edition, activist circles celebrated a victory over historical etiquette. For generations, the standard Dutch word for labia has been "schaamlippen"—literally translating to "shame lips." To campaigners like Shari Klein of the Schaamteloos group and Esther Van der Valk of Dolle Mina, replacing linguistic shame with anatomical precision is an urgent matter of social progress.

Yet the dictionary’s editor, Ton den Boon, presents a far more detached reality. Dictionaries do not lead social revolutions; they merely record them. Den Boon noted that the term earned its spot simply because it has seeped into medical leaflets, biology textbooks, and media reports. Whether the public actually adopts the word remains a separate question. Critics have already pointed out the obvious limitation of the project: changing an entry in a lexicon does not automatically transform human sentiment or everyday life.

The Netherlands is hardly the pioneer of this linguistic sanitation drive. Across Northern Europe, progressive groups have long operated on the belief that scrubbing awkward or morally loaded terms from the vocabulary will fix deeper social anxieties. In Sweden, the sex education association RFSU successfully campaigned in 2009 to replace "mödomshinna"—maidenhood skin—with "slidkrans," or vaginal corona, in academic dictionaries to dismantle virginity myths. Germany witnessed a similar push in 2018, when journalists Gunda Windmüller and Mithu Sanyal petitioned to drop "Schamlippen" in favor of "Vulvalippen," a shift that caught on in women's magazines even if lexicographers have yet to sanction it officially.

In the United Kingdom, activist attention has turned toward clinical jargon. Campaigns seek to replace "hysterectomy" with "uterectomy" to sever historical ties to hysteria, while midwifing guidelines from 2022 push back against terms like "incompetent cervix" or "failure to progress." Linguistics researcher Dr Beth Malory warns that shifting medical terminology carries risks if clarity is sacrificed for sensitivity, noting that functional understanding must come before ideological refinement.

Beyond the clinical sphere lies a broader linguistic labyrinth that enthusiasts will struggle to dismantle. Dutch vocabulary remains saturated with similar constructions, from "schaamhaar" for pubic hair to "schaambeen" for the pubic bone and "schaamluis" for pubic lice. Cleansing one entry in Dikke van Dale creates an isolated island of neutrality in a sea of traditional terminology. Bureaucratic word shifts offer an easy symbolic milestone, but whether they fundamentally alter medical outcomes or social reality is quite another matter.

Written by Christiane Hofreiter christiane.hofreiter@alpineweekly.com