Hands up, guys, if you know where your epididymis is. How about your vas deferens? Your seminal vesicles? “Ah, seminal,” I hear you say. “From semen — must be around my penis somewhere.” And you definitely know where that is.

While most guys are made painfully aware of their scrotum area at some point growing up and it’s impossible not to clue in to the ups and downs — and eventually the ins and outs — of one’s penis, few men pay much attention to the inner workings of their privates. It’s a bit like the stereo — if the outside buttons and knobs are all functioning and doing their job, who needs to know what’s going on inside?

But if women pay for their anatomical ignorance (with so much focus on that vagina, the clitoris often gets ignored until someone clues us in to its pure pleasure potential) men’s ambivalent relationship with their privates can result in diseases like prostate or testicular cancer going undetected until it’s too late.

Many men also tend to put off going to the doctor, in part because they aren’t comfortable having a stranger touch their genitals. And most guys won’t even let their female partner stick a finger in their butt, never mind some dude in a white coat — or, heaven forbid, dudette — no matter how professionally qualified. I don’t expect guys to get naked and sit in circles together holding hand mirrors between their legs, but a little heightened male anatomy awareness is not such a bad idea.

After all, while the penis may be the star of the male genital anatomy show, it’s just the, er, tip of the male reproductive iceberg.

Speaking of the tip, it’s actually called the glans (that’s right, same as women’s clitoral head) and it contains the urethral opening, or meatus, where pee, semen, and pre-ejaculate, um, come out.

Uncircumcised guys (more on the issue of snipping later) wear a hoodie, just like the ladies; this extra layer of skin is the foreskin, or prepuce.

The glans, along with the corona (that’s the raised ridge that separates the tip from the shaft and the frenum or frenulum, the underside of the corona, just below the glans), are the most sensitive parts of the penis. And despite terms like “boning” or getting a “boner,” the penis is actually boneless (though you can still break it). An erection is just a penis full of blood. And, despite popular opinion, an erection doesn’t automatically mean you’re aroused.

The scrotum, more commonly and oh-so-charmingly referred to as “the bag” or “ballsack,” houses and protects the testes or testicles, your sperm storage tanks, pulling them up safe and warm when they’re cold, letting them hang and get some air when they’re hot, keeping your swimmers at just the right temperature to do their job. The line down the centre of your scrotum is not where you were sewn together; it’s the raphe, and indicates the internal wall of muscle that separates the boys. The testes themselves produce testosterone and sperm.

As for the epididymis, that’s a little comma-shaped thing on the back of each testicle where the sperm lie awaiting lift off. When you ejaculate, the sperm are ejected into the vas deferens and these tubes send it off to your seminal vesicles where it joins all the other fun stuff that make up semen (sperm’s only about 2-5 per cent of the mix; the rest of the stuff consists of various contributions from the prostate, the Cowper’s glands, and the vas deferens and the seminal vesicles themselves) and they all head out together for ejaculation.

Blogs We Love
Be it a great sexy story, the sexual position of the week (Jigsaw Sidestraddler, anyone?), or a list of the “Top 10 Things You Don’t Want Your Girl To Find In Your Secret Drawer”  you’ll find lots to entertain, amuse and arouse you on Montrealer Lexi Sylver’s blog “Mating Season” at lexisylver.wordpress.com.