The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine | 
pickI actually finished one in the month it was the pick of. I got this back in Feb. as part of a book swap, and would recommend every woman own it. While I didn't read every section, but at least skimmed over some sections that I didn't feel applied to my life. There is so much information about our lady parts that I would not have thought about or even known before reading this. In the future it will be a great reference if I come across issues.
July #bookspin #doublebookspin #bookspinbigo
@thearomaofbooks
Can't wait for July reading. I did pretty well in June!
pickIt felt very empowering to read this book. Dr Jen Gunter (my new hero) has a vagenda: to empower women with accurate information about vaginas and vulvas. To help us know how our bodies should work and what to do when something isn‘t quite right. To fight against bias, lies, and shame that have been surrounding women‘s bodies and lives as a whole. I had so many “a-ha!” moments while reading and connecting dots ⤵️
so-soI have mixed feelings about this book. It has some valuable parts, but other parts are a bit questionable. I‘ve never had a doctor that said petroleum based products are safe to use on the genitals, but she‘s in love with them and thinks you should be too. Never mind they‘ve been on the OB/GYN “never ever” list for ages now. 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Not down with this at. all.
How about, cosmetic surgery should be reserved for women who have a legitimate medical need for it and not for ridiculous and arbitrary beauty and patriarchal expectations.
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible #SexPositive2021
I KNEW IT!!! I bloody well knew it!!! This book was written in 2002 (I know because I doubt checked when she mentioned VCRs) four years before I had my first reproductive exam. 10 years ago, my GP didn‘t care if I didn‘t want her to do it, she didn‘t care if I didn‘t want one, she made me have a pelvic exam every year. Even when I did my research and suggested it wasn‘t necessary, she did it anyway. MOTHER 🤬
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible
Shout out to the opioid crisis. This is crazy. So every year (every day even) all these women give birth, and 1/3 of them are given opioids and if 1 in 300 will end up addicted, that‘s at least 33 new addicts A DAY in America. No, this isn‘t a problem.
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible #SexPositive2021 #opioidcrisis
@julesG this makes me think of the time you told me Reading is like sex, only do it if you want to. So now, I‘m thinking of it as a reading party. I‘m not even sure if that‘s a thing, but I‘m a nerd so if it is, that would be my kind of party. 🤣😂🤣
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible #SexPositive2021
🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
I don‘t understand. Female toddlers can pinpoint their clit WITHOUT HESITATION!!! Surely a grown man can figure it out.
🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible #SexPositive2021
Restarting sex positive 2021 right here. I‘m very excited to read this, especially after @Riveted_Reader_Melissa read it just about a week ago.
#DrJenGunter #TheVaginaBible #SexPositive2021
pickThis is a book every woman should read and own. She dissects what medicine knows and what historically was guesswork or outright falsehoods based on patriarchy and myths of uncleanliness. What you need to know through different life changes, what‘s an old wives tale and totally unproven, what you should be asking your doctor about, what treatments tend to have proven results and which are the modern equivalents of natural/celebrity snake oil.
An aside...this 1 paragraph explains so much about what is wrong with the US health insurance
& pharmaceutical industry. In the US you must buy your own health insurance or go without & pay full price, BOTH are extremely expensive for those with low income. Then a company that develops a life saving medication can both charge a ton, even if they developed it with public money AND can block generics, & can simultaneously sell cheaply elsewhere.🤯
When your library ebook is due back today, but you just haven‘t had time to finish it, and now you‘ll have to put it on hold again for like another 4ish weeks until you see it again.... but wait, miraculously it‘s on kindle sale today!
That‘s some great #BookSerendipity #Bookendipity especially since this was one I was thinking I should buy anyway. 👍
That rarely ever happens, like once every 20 blue moons, but I was really excited! #BookNerd
pickI loved this book, I learned a lot about my body. Dr. Gunter is pro-choice AF, she‘s an lgbtq+ally, she‘s funny and tells it like it is; an amazing ob/gyn. Anyone who has a vagina is on the vagenda to be educated/empowered and needs this book!
The patriarchy and snake oil have had a good run, but I‘m done with how they negatively affect and weaponize women‘s health. So I am not going to stop swinging my bat until everyone has the tools to be an empowered patient and those who seek to subjugate women by keeping them from facts about their bodies have shut up and taken a seat in the back of class. That‘s my vagenda.
Seriously, Dr. Gunter. You rock!🖤
Vaginal tightening sticks: Anything offered to tighten your vagina is an astringent and will damage the mucosa and your mucus. It is also a part of the patriarchal idea that a “used” vagina stretches and is undesirable. This mythology harms women medically and emotionally, and people who promote it should be ashamed of themselves.
Preach!!!
Steaming the vagina: this is promoted to “cleanse” the uterus. This ties into a destructive myth that the uterus is unclean or that a period is cleaning the uterus. The idea of a toxin-filled uterus is literally used by many cultures to exclude women from society – it‘s a defining characteristic of the patriarchy. So telling women this exists is promoting a patriarchal idea. This is harmful on so many levels.
Goop‘s feminine energy, from what I saw at one of their *cough* “health conferences,” is hopelessly hetero normative and conforms to the patriarchal ideal. A vagina does not make you a woman, how you feel inside does.
This is a great start to talk about how the gender assigned at birth does not define us.
Does the site use words like “detox” and “cleanse”? Words like “pure”, “clean”, and “natural”? Women are constantly fed lies about toxins in their periods or that the vagina is dirty. “Pure”, “clean”, and “natural” are just modern riffs on that destructive messaging. They also do not mean anything medically. You want sound hypotheses and clinical evidence, not patriarchy‘s dog whistle.
Folx, this is real talk from an amazing ob/gyn⬆️
Does your doctor get money from Big Pharma? You can look them up on Dollars for Docs, a service from ProPublica. It does not mean your doctor is bad, but if they recommend a medication and they also get $30,000 a year from the company that makes that drug, they might be biased in their recommendations.
In general, .gov sites have better quality information than .edu (university sites), as well as .org or .com sites. The .gov sites are typically curated by medical librarians who have no bias. I personally think librarians will save us all; we just need to give them the chance. They are the true superheroes of knowledge.
Libraries are everything!
There has been no change in causes of genital odor over the past 25 years; what has changed is the proliferation of products designed to shame women about the normal smell of their body and tame the female genital tract for some misogynistic ideal.
Preach!
Another option is to take a photo of an illustration of the vulva, mark on the image the location where you feel your symptoms, and then show the photo to your provider.
Thank you Dr. Gunter—this is a great idea! Peoplx with vaginas and vulvas, remember this tid bit!
Every time we make a woman jump through a useless hope to get better, we add a burden, be it financial, or emotional, or the exasperation of doing so many things and yet realizing that you are running very hard but not getting anywhere.
Dear anti-choicers and misogynist systems...it‘s ALL an undue burden, and we are sick of it.
Untreated, gonorrhea and chlamydia cause pelvic inflammatory disease, a serious infection of the uterus & fallopian tubes; PID scars fallopian tubes that can lead to ectopic pregnancy, infertility, & pelvic infections, increasing the risk of chronic pelvic pain. Chlamydia is often silent—it can lead to significant tubal damage that causes infertility with no symptoms at all.
(Preventative/treatment care at Planned Parenthood IS pro-life)!
The bulk of this cancer burden is for women in countries with no access to the HPV vaccine, screening for pre-cancer, or treatment for pre-cancer or cancer. Cancers of the vulva, vagina, and anus or less common than cervical cancer.
Hey ‘pro-lifers‘: Planned Parenthood provides this care!Show us how ‘for life‘ you really are by taking away access to preventive and treatment care. I‘ll wait.
Cervical cancer is the fourth most frequent cancer among women worldwide in the second most common cancer among women every productive age (15-44). Over 500,000 women worldwide are diagnosed with and over 250,000 women die from cervical cancer each year.
Hey anti-choicers: Planned Parenthood provides vital preventative care that saves lives. Stripping peoplx of this care and allowing them to get cancer, is not ‘pro-life.‘
PrEP is two anti-HIV medications, tenofovir and emtricitabine, sold under the brand-name Truvada. A generic has been approved and available in many countries, but not available in the US. In US the brand-name Truvada is $2000 a month (without insurance). Cost in Canada for generic is $200 a month. In most other countries, PrEP is purchased for the equivalent of less than $100 a month, often much less.
America...GET WITH IT. NOW.
It is also important to remember not all women have a choice with condoms. Many can‘t ask their male partners out of perceived risk of sexual or physical violence.
Please consider the many barriers to contraception. Womxn are not at fault for this, nor are they to be ‘punished‘ for it, (or when contraception fails). Don‘t assume, and never judge.
Vaccinating kids does not make them more likely to have risky sex. This has been proven by studies. (Also, no one worries that teaching kids to buckle up produces unsafe drivers.)
Anti-choicers who harass womxn need to think about this⬆️.
I have read about plastic surgeons who do labiaplasty so women can look “sleeker in so-called athleisure wear.” What I never hear is that men should seek out plastic surgeons to get their gluteal clefts sewn shut. I also can‘t imagine a similar industry for men that profits from surgically trimming penises so they look better in tight jeans.
Preach!!!
I hear from women that while they are sitting half-dressed or completely naked at their doctor‘s office, they see posters for vulvar cosmetic surgery and vaginal “rejuvenation,” which in that most vulnerable state leaves them feeling, “Maybe there is something wrong with me?”
There is an ever-growing market for cosmetic procedures and “enhancements” for the vulva. Many of these products and procedures are undertested or completely untested. Some are offered with predatory marketing, amazing promises that capitalize on genital shame and fear of aging inflicted upon women by the patriarchy.
For women there is another cultural barrier—the uniquely terrible way that society treats aging women. Talking about sex is hard enough for many people, but the idea of an older woman daring to be sexual? There is a culture of silence about aging vulvas and vaginas.
Ageism...it‘s wrong.
The patriarchy is a relentless foe. Vaginal cleaning has a complex history, and undoing centuries of misinformation and misogyny is hard. The idea that a healthy vagina is unclean and/or requires some kind of prep for men is a great example of the dangers of ancient medical beliefs.
The only parts of your body that medically need regular washing are your teeth and your hands. We don‘t shake hands, eat or cut raw chicken with our vulvas. Also, the vulva evolved to cope with semen, blood, feces, and urine long before the Romans mixed a paste of fat and ash to create the first soap.
The main reasons women report that they wash their vulvas are odor prevention and to “feel clean.” It is important to remember that the concept of female cleanliness has largely been driven by a male-dominated society that for centuries, if not longer, has decided normal female genitals and secretions are “dirty.”
Trans women and men also face other barriers to obtaining care. Almost 30 percent report being verbally harassed in a medical office, and 20 percent report being denied care.
Trans mxn are mxn; trans womxn are womxn. Care first, no discrimination, ever!
I believe the hymen was a pre-puberty physical barrier against dirt and debris. As we evolved and begin to walk upright, physically taking the vaginal opening further away from dirt, the need for a physical barrier for the lower vagina lessened, and evolution became less invested in a rigid, physically protective hymen. This would explain why we now have so many variations in hymen shape: it is simply no longer biologically important.
fascinating
The vagina is a fibromuscular tube that connects the vulva with the cervix. I realize this is the least sexy way to describe something that brings so much pleasure.
Dr. Gunter, you are hilarious 🤣
In 1938, a Los Angeles teacher, Helen Hulick, was held in contempt of court for daring to show up in pants to testify as a witness and for refusing to change into a dress when the mail judge insisted. She was given a five day jail sentence. Much of women‘s health, especially sexual health, was deemed unimportant or irrelevant because that is how women were viewed.
🖕🏻
The problem? The vulva is often neglected. A lot of this vulvar neglect is a result of patriarchal society‘s lack of investment in and fear of female sexual pleasure. When we exclude the vulva from conversations about women‘s bodies and sexuality, we erase the organ responsible for female orgasm. We also make it harder for women to communicate with their healthcare providers.
The vulva is the ultimate multitasker – it is the most important organ for sexual pleasure, it protects the tissues at the vaginal opening, it‘s built to handle the irritation of urine and feces, and it can deliver a baby and heal as if nothing happened. And do it all again. Oh, yeah – and multiple orgasms. The penis and scrotum have nothing on the vulva.
I‘m never going to f finish this before my library loan runs out - and there‘s a queue behind me. I‘m totally going to up buying a copy aren‘t I?!
Latest nonfiction library hold to come in...
New podcast episode! 🌟
Today we're chatting with Dr. Jen Gunter about her fabulous new book THE VAGINA BIBLE. We cover tons of topics, from what not to put in your vagina to how to find trustworthy and true medical information online.
Tune into this episode on your favorite podcast app or stream directly from our website - feministbookclub.com/dr-jen-gunter
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