Disclaimer: Not a licensed health professional
So you have a vagina? Odds are, you’ve tangled with an infection before, be it a yeast infection, a UTI, or bacterial vaginosis. In fact, yeast infections are an extremely common ailment and are often recurring. UTI’s are also a common misery among many, with nearly 50% of women reporting having one in their lifetime. So if that’s the case, what’s up with the stigma around vaginal infections? Why do we not talk about them until a painful trip to the bathroom sends us on our way to the doctor’s office, or to Mayo Clinic after a panicked google search.
While not everyone that has a vagina is a woman, it holds true that the unwillingness to discuss vaginal health or anything related to the vagina is rooted in misogyny, due to society’s association of womanhood with vaginas.
Women are expected to be clean, undefiled, and modest, and any form of infection often suggests the opposite. Herein where the problem lies: vaginal infections don’t necessarily convey a lack of hygiene or sexual activity, and you don’t have to have sex to experience them. A vaginal infection can mean you wore the wrong underwear, used a soap or body wash that does not get along with your parts, or even simply took an antibiotic. When the body doesn’t like something we’re doing, it often shows us in unfavorable ways that it wants us to stop. This is no different with the vagina. So upholding misogynistic mantras is dangerous to the wellbeing of not only adult women, but young girls and non-binary children as well. Talking about health should never be a source of anxiety and discomfort.
So what’s the first thing we need to do to make the world a safer place to talk about vaginal health? The obvious: we have to make the v-word, vagina, safe to talk about. We have to make it okay to talk about in a non-sexual context and we must penalize those who make any conversation around them unsafe or uncomfortable. Vaginal infections, as they are reported, are way too common for people to be uncomfortable discussing them and seeking help to prevent or stop the occurrence of them.
Prevention of vaginal infections is something that should be discussed far before a visit to a doctor’s office. It’s something that should be covered in school, by parents and guardians. It’s something that should not be met with accusatory questions, derogatory comments, sneers, or insults. Going to the doctor needs to be a comfortable experience as well. For many, especially trans men, trans women, and non-binary people, it proves to be an uncomfortable experience. A visit to the doctor should be to address concerns and discuss healing and preventative measures, but showing any association with womanhood often calls for prying questions and unsolicited advice, as is what happened when a mother visited the doctors office due to a UTI, and underwent prejudice in front of her children.
I think it’s safe to say the second and most important thing to do is to sever the ties between our ignorant depictions of womanhood and sexuality and the vagina. Perhaps if we were to consider the vagina to be a part of the body, rather than a symbol of woman, we could more easily discuss it in pretense to wellbeing.
Please note that it is completely fine to value your vagina, or regard it however you like, as you may any other part of your body. However, you must also note that the vagina has its ways of letting you know something is wrong. When it does this, there is nothing wrong with you as a person for having “caused” this, just as infections are common they are treatable and preventable. Don’t allow society’s misconceptions weigh down on your right to be and feel healthy.