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Gamers think ‘vagina bones’ exist—and want them to stop getting censored

The vagina bone's connected to the woman bone. Or something?

 

Jay Hathaway

Internet Culture

Posted on May 17, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 6:34 pm CDT

It’s an outdated cliché that video game nerds know absolutely nothing about the female anatomy (because they’ve never seen a woman naked). It’s a lame joke rooted in decades-old jocks vs. nerds stereotypes, and it’s probably time we move past it, right? 

I’d say yes, but gamers on Twitter are at this moment seriously upset over the “censorship” of female characters’ “vagina bones.” 

Vagina bones. Let that one sink in for a minute. Roll it around on your tongue. It might be the most beautiful two-word phrase in video gaming. 

How did we get here, so far afield from women’s actual body parts—which include beloved classics like pubic bones, the mons pubis, and the labia, but do not, according to medical professionals, include “vagina bones”? 

Let’s return to the beginning, when a gamer noticed some disturbing differences between the Japanese and Western versions of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. He decided to report it to Censored Gaming, a Twitter and YouTube account that makes note of “censorship” in games—mainly, any change that makes the women in the games less nude.

In this case, not only did some of this female character’s cleavage vanish, but “they also removed her vagina bones.” 

Holy shit! That sounds painful and gruesome.

This lack of anatomical knowledge was swiftly and mercilessly mocked, and “vagina bones” grew into a legit meme overnight.

Of course, Censored Gaming still retweeted the original “vagina bones” complaint, and some gamers, sincere in their outrage, were upset that the jokes were distracting from the true scandal here: vidyagame cens0rsh1pz! 

https://twitter.com/SerenveCraft/status/731166672267042816

I’m rolling my eye-bones so hard at all of this. 

It’s important to note, though, that “vagina bones” has a storied history in nerd circles. Circa 2011 or 2012, an anime fan translation group wrote a hilariously bad subtitle for the series Yumekui Merry

ggsubs

“Couldn’t you have found a swimsuit that shows off Merry’s vagina bones a little better?”

The mistranslation is infamous on anime forums like 4chan‘s /a/, so it’s possible that @sebban_e was referencing it in his awkward censorship complaint. 

Or maybe not.

Either way, the old meme is mainstream and getting a second act on Twitter, all because of his careful attention to… vagina bones. 

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*First Published: May 17, 2016, 1:35 pm CDT