#more specifically if anyone has ever heard the phrase 'cultural expectations for a prescribed burn plan' let me know <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[mashmouths]

i feel like after spending almost 3 months in a class i should know how to answer what seem to be basic questions about the material we're supposed to have covered? or at least understand what the questions are asking <3 and yet <3

[alittledizzy]

a long-winded but true story in which the moral is: why being able to talk about penises freely but not vaginas/vulvas is dangerous

this is about something that happened to me lately that could be considered tmi but you know what? it’s about physical health for a body part which in my case is no more sexual than my knee, so: if you find this story squeamish because physical health talk in general makes you uncomfortable that’s fair enough, but if it makes you uncomfortable specifically because it’s about physical health regarding my vulva (unless you have a specific reason for the idea of vulvas making you uncomfortable) it’s even more important that you in particular read this

(trigger warnings for antibiotic drugs/pills; mentions of vomit, abuse, genital mutilation, rape)

so two sundays ago i woke up and long story short it felt like my vulva was on fire with the amount of irritation it was experiencing — i’m not just talking about mild itching, i’m talking about ‘if this were a pain scale in the hospital for an injury that the nurse/doctor is giving you it would be a solid 6 or 7 for ‘severe, cannot concentrate on everyday activities as a result’’ irritation and pain, and it only got worse whenever i needed the toilet (which was frequently). so i couldn’t focus on anything, but it was okay because i knew exactly what to d- no, i didn’t. i had no idea what to do. i’d never been taught about everyday vulval health to the extent that i wasn’t even sure if this irritation was supposed to be an issue or not. that might sound stupid, especially considering i’ve been living with my vulva for decades, but: - it wasn’t the first time i’d experienced that irritation (only this time was the worst) - i’d never been able to discuss vulval health openly with anyone because no one had ever made it clear to me that i could talk to them about it if i needed to for whatever reason - and thus i’d never heard anyone complain about any similar experiences - therefore i couldn’t be sure whether it was normal or not - additionally the number of times i’d heard the phrase ‘UTI’ was lower than the number of digits on my hand - and even though i knew what it stood for i still had had no idea what the symptoms might include

so, because of my lack of education about vulval health, and especially because i was embarrassed about it — considering my entire life i’d been grown up surrounded by the attitude of ‘if it’s not absolutely necessary to discuss your vagina, don’t’, which funnily enough sounds like the saying “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it at all” (which is where the topics stigmatisation and misogyny come in, because that attitude implies that vaginal health is a dirty or improper or ‘rude’ topic to talk about in comparison to phallic health) — i didn’t do anything. i’d never been given the knowledge to be able to know that something was wrong, and i’d always been subliminally taught that it wasn’t socially acceptable to discuss vaginas or vulvas anyway, so i said nothing and researched nothing. monday to thursday i suffered in complete silence, still going into work and trying my best to act like nothing was wrong, even though the pain felt like the equivalent to a severe migraine (i’ve had plenty of migraines, thanks genetics, so i can judge). the only time i got a break from the pain was when i was asleep, and even then sometimes i woke up in the middle of the night because it burned so much, during which points i lost a lot of sleep because it took a couple of hours to drop back to sleep from sheer exhaustion. it was this constant never-ending demon that i couldn’t ignore or forget or ameliorate with medicinal creams of any kind, and what made it even worse was that during that week my work was undergoing intensely difficult graded assessment. i was stressed, in constant pain, loosing sleep and fucking terrified at what was going on.

thursday afternoon and i decided i’d had enough. i was suffering too much that even though i had no idea whether it was even an unnatural thing or not, i knew that whatever it was i couldn’t let it control me so much anymore. i couldn’t talk to my mates or anyone else about it because the mentioned internalised stigmatisation, so i ended up asking my own mother about it (which even now i still feel annoyingly embarrassed about, annoyingly because i know i shouldn’t feel embarrassed when it’s about my goddamned wellbeing). when she inevitably told me that no, it’s not normal to be in that much pain, i was relieved because it meant that i wasn’t just overreacting, but now even more scared because i now knew something was wrong and to someone as ignorant on the topic as me, it could have been anything. she told me to see a doctor as soon as possible, which i did.

i managed to see a doctor the very next day, on the friday (bless the nhs); i knew at the time that there was no shame in talking about what had been happening (again, it’s my health and health takes priority) and i knew that to the doctor it wouldn’t matter because that’s what they’re trained to do, to help your medical issues regardless of any potential disgust factor, but i still felt embarrassed as hell about it all. i described what i was going through, gave the obligatory urine sample etc etc and lo and behold, i did indeed have a UTI. he gave me antibiotics, which i duly took friday through to last sunday, and then it was gone! celebrations!

now here’s the thing. although i left it a long time to see the doctor, i still managed to catch it before it spread to the kidneys. during that appointment we had discussed it and it was revealed that thank god it had not yet spread, BUT if it HAD spread i would have started to experience the following symptoms, as stated by the doctor himself: - back pains - fever - headaches - fatigue - nausea and vomiting additionally, if it had spread to the kidneys and been left untreated, it could have also led to the following in the long run: - decreased or weakened kidney function - if my kidney was already weak, the possibility of overall kidney failure - the infection spreading to the bloodstream - therefore spreading to other organs so you can probably understand at this point why it’s lucky that i saw the doctor and caught it when i did, before it escalated even further. however, even as it was, i still didn’t see the doctor for nearly a full week after infection, and even after being prescribed with antibiotics the pain lasted until the day after i took my final pill, which was last monday. eight days of constant pain, internalised embarrassment, sleep loss, fear/paranoia (especially when it seemed like the antibiotics weren’t working by the last day), and reduced potential in the workplace. in fact, i looked it up, and i can actually receive extra credit for those graded assignments considering i fell under the category of “experiencing a distracting minor illness” as long as i provide a doctor’s note proving that i had the appointment.

eight days of constant pain, sleep loss, fear, paranoia and reduced potential in the workplace. and you know how this could have been avoided? if my social environment had felt safe enough for me to speak up about the issue, the issue being my vulval health, and if i had been taught enough previously to know that something was wrong.

during school all i’d ever learned about my genitalia is how menstruation, fertilisation, pregnancy and birth worked in bio class, and outside of/after school i’d basically never been taught anything. i’d never been taught about everyday vaginal/vulval health topics such as masturbation and UTIs — my parents had never taught me anything about such things (except how to use sanitary products) because they were too embarrassed and had expected the school to do it, and the school never taught me about those things beyond what we had to learn for biology or for pshe (where we only learned about contraception) because they expected my parents to teach me, so in my youth i was stuck in the middle, not knowing that i was supposed to learn all these things for my own good health and thus i never taught myself.

keep in mind that during and since secondary school i’ve been living in the uk, which compared to some other countries is pretty forward-thinking with issues like misogyny and wellbeing. now imagine how fucked i would have been in a culture where women are taught even less about their own bodies, where women are outright viewed as inferior, are viewed as less or not at all deserving of knowledge or rights to their own bodies, where women are frequently abused or raped or forced to undergo genital mutilation, or any other kind of abuse. all of society has a massive issue with letting people talk about their genital health, especially when it is specifically about vaginas or vulvas rather than penises, but i’m fortunate enough to be living in a country where i at least have the right to attempt to control how much suffering my body goes through, but in many other cultures a woman’s body is not considered her own right or her own property, and the thought of a woman even discussing her own health in a shameless or self-empowering manner is unimaginable. all of society shows more disdain towards discussion of vaginal/vulval health than phallic (for want of a better word to relate to penises) health, because of the still-widely internalised attitude that vaginas and the like are inherently dirty or sexual. the only difference is that some cultures look down upon such discussion more than others.

it is for these reasons that even “small” things, such as being afraid to directly mention vaginas and vulvas while having no hesitation in mentioning penises, contribute to misogynistic oppression. vaginas and vulvas are automatically thought of as sexual whether the context regarding them is sexual or not, while penises are viewed less frequently as sexual and more as jokes. because vaginas and vulvas are more likely to be viewed as sexual even if the context has absolutely nothing to do with sex, it leads people to view the discussion or context as dirty and improper, which brings shame upon the person whose vagina/vulva is being discussed. like this post, for example. nothing about this post is describing my vulva or vagina in a sexual context. i am not describing my sex life. i am not a sexual person. i do not use my vagina or vulva for sexual reasons, i am not sexually active and i am not seeking sex, so my vagina and vulva are about as sexual as my knees (hint: not at all sexual). i am simply describing my general health regarding them, i am not sexualising them, so this post deserves no shame but does deserve every equal amount of consideration and maturity that might be given to a post about a hypothetical infection in my knee. i suffered so much and for so long from my UTI simply because i was embarrassed (because of internalised misogyny) and uneducated (something that is also because of societal misogyny, the lack of education regarding all genital health rather than just reproductive health), and if i had let that hold me back any longer, as my doctor so described, the infection could have spread to my vital organs and caused much more serious problems that could have led to me being admitted to hospital.

tl;dr no one deserves shame simply for whatever genitalia they may have, and no one deserves shame for wanting to discuss and seek answers or cures for genital health problems. if we are told not to discuss our genitalia whatever the context because it is viewed as “improper”, we are made to feel ashamed and therefore hesitant to speak up and seek help. we (‘we’ referring to anyone with a vulva/vagina) are unfairly prevented from feeling shameless and empowered with our bodies, which results in oppression both because we are made to feel inferior and because we are less likely to seek medical guidance or help even when we most need it, resulting in unnecessary suffering (and potentially even death or at least a close encounter with it in some cases). this is why prejudice against open discussion of vaginas or vulvas is not excusable in any manner, and why i’m frankly disgusted with the amount of people who say it’s “not a big deal” when such prejudice is expressed (particularly since a fair amount of said people probably have vaginas/vulvas themselves)

(submission from @imagjnative)