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The care & feeding of the vagina

#1
C C Offline
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_care_...the_vagina

We are pleased to introduce here a new regular column by Skeptical Inquirer contributing editor and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Fellow Harriet Hall, MD, well known and respected for her incisive writings on pseudoscience and pseudomedicine. She has titled her column “Reality Is the Best Medicine.” —Editors

EXCERPT: . . . There is no need for douching or other procedures to cleanse the vagina. It cleanses itself. (Just as the colon cleanses itself with no need for “detoxification” regimens. The idea that its walls are coated with years-old hamburger residue is preposterous.) Douching is not only unnecessary, but it can change the normal pH of the vagina and lead to infections and other problems.

[...] Admittedly, sometimes the vagina does require a bit of help. One of my most vivid memories of medical practice was when a woman came in complaining of a foul-smelling vaginal discharge. I removed a putrid, rotting tampon that she had forgotten to remove after her last period. I can’t remember ever smelling a worse odor; that exam room was out of commission for hours afterward. But I didn’t have to do anything but remove the tampon; her vagina took care of the rest. It cleansed itself and was soon back to normal.

The vagina has been seen as “unclean” for centuries. The Roman author Pliny wrote: “Contact with the monthly flux of women turns new wine sour, makes crops wither, kills grafts, dries seeds in gardens, causes the fruit of trees to fall off, dims the bright surface of mirrors, dulls the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory, kills bees, rusts iron and bronze, and causes a horrible smell to fill the air.”

In many societies, menstruating women were isolated in a special menstrual hut. In Nepal, the tradition of chhaupadi required them to stay in a cattle shed or makeshift hut, avoid any contact with men, and avoid eating certain foods. Women have died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning in poorly ventilated huts, as well as from snakebite, rape, and wild animal attacks. [...] Orthodox Jewish women must take a ritual bath in a mikveh seven days after menstruation to restore them to a state of spiritual purity where they are ready to procreate. The restrictions mean they have no sex for half the month. To determine when menstruation has ceased, they insert a white niddah cloth into the vagina.

It’s amazing what women will put into their vaginas. [...] Doctors have had to remove all kinds of foreign bodies from vaginas. [...] Women have put things in the vagina for health reasons, for sexual pleasure, to hide illegal drugs, or because of psychiatric disorders. In the 1700s, Mary Toft inserted live rabbits into her vagina to fool physicians into thinking she was giving birth to rabbits. [...]

[...] There are numerous brands of vaginal tightening gels, creams, pills, and sprays that promise to “make a woman a virgin again.” One online columnist likened these practices to treating vaginas as “walls at which to throw medicinal spaghetti.” There’s not a scrap of evidence that they do anything good, and they’re quite likely to do something bad, such as drying out the vaginal mucosa and causing an infection.

One of the most notorious vaginal quackeries is Gwyneth Paltrow’s jade eggs.

Paltrow also warns against toxins in tampons. There are no toxins in tampons. One quack alternative to tampons is sanitary napkins embedded with anion strips. The enhanced embedded anion-chip and far infrared ray function inhibits bacteria, increases the growth of bioenzyme, and regulates acidic secretions in the vagina. It emits biological magnetic waves and activates water molecules in the cells. This is just meaningless pseudoscientific blather, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it twa(t)ddle.

[...] Vaginas needn’t be fed with garlic or yogurt or jade eggs or anything else. They don’t need cleansing with douches or anything else. Any advice to the contrary is quackery until proven otherwise....

MORE: https://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_care_...the_vagina
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#2
Secular Sanity Offline
OMG, a $66 rock up your hoo-ha. What the hell?

I used to work in the emergency room. You wouldn't believe some of the shit that we saw e.g., ice pick (wood end, of course) and a potato. The potato really sparked my curiosity but you can't really ask someone why they stuck a potato up their va jay jay. Trying to make french fries, perhaps. Big Grin
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#3
C C Offline
(Oct 13, 2018 11:30 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [...] I used to work in the emergency room. You wouldn't believe some of the shit that we saw e.g., ice pick (wood end, of course) and a potato. The potato really sparked my curiosity but you can't really ask someone why they stuck a potato up their va jay jay. Trying to make french fries, perhaps. Big Grin


Geez, the Big Tater excuse is probably still a'rockin out there: "My boyfriend wanted me to carry contraband for him, and being a noob at it, I was just testing out with a large potato how much the *pouch* could hold, when things suddenly went wrong."

The Lost Cucumber excuse: "No, just personal research. I wanted to see if it really could turn into a pickle over time."

~
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#4
Secular Sanity Offline
(Oct 14, 2018 05:14 AM)C C Wrote: "My boyfriend wanted me to carry contraband for him, and being a noob at it, I was just testing out with a large potato how much the *pouch* could hold, when things suddenly went wrong."

I would have never came up with that one. It is a possibility, though.

What do you think about that whole revitalizing gig? This tightness crap is fraught with mythology from virginity to child birth. Did you know that the vagical wand, ThermiVa, cost between three and four thousand dollars. Whatever happened to good ole kegels? Is that female empowerment, shoving radiofrequencies up your vagoogle?<--Heard that term the other day.  Big Grin
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
"Put your finger in.
Put two fingers in
Put your whole hand in
Put your other hand in
Now clap your hands?"

"I can't"

"Tight, eh?"
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#6
Secular Sanity Offline
I think you’ve got hanky panky confused with the hokey pokey.

Poor Mrs. Z.
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#7
C C Offline
(Oct 14, 2018 02:51 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: What do you think about that whole revitalizing gig? This tightness crap is fraught with mythology from virginity to child birth. Did you know that the vagical wand, ThermiVa, cost between three and four thousand dollars. Whatever happened to good ole kegels? Is that female empowerment, shoving radiofrequencies up your vagoogle?<--Heard that term the other day.  Big Grin


Yah, laser vaginal rejuvenation would at best only work only for light or non-severe cases of diminished muscle tone. Vaginoplasty is the most effective route as far as circularly receiving such a stamp of approval from the medical / surgery establishment itself.

Those kegel exercises are good (but this from a yours truly who doesn't herself engage in them earnestly yet). The varied devices over the decades that claim to facilitate, augment or enhance such... Everytime I try to survey that landscape I get mentally afflicted with a video "earworm" of that commercially paraded around clip from "Designing Women" (the Annie Potts character?). Where she talks about exercising in public with the kind of late '80s or '90s gizmo which apparently targets external physiological affairs as much as internal ones: "Those people asked me to leave!"

The yearning for some supposed loss of a virginal-like fitness or grappling constriction -- that goes beyond just the medical concerns and problems of that general territory in old age or after multiple childbirths -- reminds me of the "dry sex" practices in Africa. Which seem to revolve around a similar quest (for the men anyway, and the women who try to accommodate their tastes).

"Many women practice so-called *dry sex* usually by instilling vaginally various astringent substances to dry up the normal lubrication fluid created by sexual arousal and give the impression the vagina is still virginal tight and *hot*." --Wet and dry sex—the impact of cultural influence in modifying vaginal function (Roy J Levin)

I didn't realize dry sex was practiced to some extent in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. That's "close" enough to be a tad scary, since there seems to be no limit to the crazy fads that the educated population of North America will perversely pick-up despite our supposed level of rationality.

~
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#8
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Oct 14, 2018 05:15 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: I think you’ve got hanky panky confused with the hokey pokey.

Poor, Mrs. Z.

Hokey pokey uses legs & feet, and eventually the whole body goes in... your poor partner Wink Mrs. Z doing fine.
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#9
confused2 Offline
I'm hoping Z. is something like a scuba diver or maybe a surfer. He calls his wet-suit 'vagina' (and why not?). I'm clutching at straws here. That smell of vaseline - I just don't what that's about.
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#10
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Oct 18, 2018 10:56 PM)confused2 Wrote: I'm hoping Z. is something like a scuba diver or maybe a surfer. He calls his wet-suit 'vagina' (and why not?). I'm clutching at straws here. That smell of vaseline - I just don't what that's about.

I did some scuba before my health got in the way. However all, or should I say most of us have made the slippery journey just to get into the world. 

Personally I have no idea if women talk about their panty hamster more flippantly than guys do about their love rocket. Regardless, whenever people do, it's done with the clothes on. No one that I know of drops trou just to explain what they meant.  Smile
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