367. The Vagina Bible, Shoes, and Other Essentials: A Conversation with Dr. Jen Gunter

[music]

Sarah Wendell: Hello there, and welcome to episode number 367 of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. With me today is Dr. Jen Gunter. Dr. Gunter is the author of The Vagina Bible, which came out this week, and is the host of a new CBC show called Jensplaining. Yes, the CBC is Canadian, and yes, I’m super jealous. Hi, Canada. Please export this; I cannot wait to watch it. We are going to talk about debunking junk science and how pervasive bad information is about vaginas and vulvas. We talk about vaginal pain, caring for trans patients, and sources for good information, and then we take a long detour through shoes because we have priorities. The key point of this episode: misinformation and disinformation about your body is the opposite of feminism.

I do want to give you two time warnings for topics. At about twelve minutes [12:00] we discussed a child death, and about twenty-seven minutes [27:00] we have a detailed discussion of fat-shaming, mental health shaming, and junk science messaging in Marianne Williamson’s books.

If you enjoy this episode, and I hope that you do, I will have links to where you can find Dr. Gunter, and of course find copies of The Vagina Bible, in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast, including all of her social media. She’s amazing on Twitter.

This episode is brought to you by The Scotsman Who Swept Me Away by Hannah Howell. New York Times bestselling author Hannah Howell brings the proud heart of Scottish spirit to life in her magnificent Seven Brides for Seven Scotsmen series set during the American Civil War. Another MacEnroy brother has come to the heroic aid of a young woman on the coast of New England to help protect her land and legacy, and perhaps her heart as well. Geordie MacEnroy envisions a beautiful life for himself beside her, but a woman who has fought so fearlessly for her home may not willingly surrender for his love. The Scotsman Who Swept Me Away is on sale now wherever books are sold, and for more information you can visit kensingtonbooks.com.

Every episode receives a transcript, and this episode’s transcript is brought to you by our Patreon community. If you have supported the show with a monthly pledge of any amount, thank you so very much. You are making sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, and that’s very important to me and to the people who read and listen each week, so thank you very much. If you would like to join the Patreon community and help support the show, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

And I have a compliment! I love this part.

To Christina B.: A new adaptation of As You Like It has been set in a replica of your daily world because everyone likes you a lot.

And if you would like a compliment of your very own, handcrafted by me, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches.

I will have information at the end of the episode about the music you are listening to, I will have a preview of what is coming up on Smart Bitches, and I will have an absolutely dreadful joke that I am really excited about. And there are a ton of links in the show notes for this episode, because Dr. Gunter writes amazing things, and I want to share as many of them with you as possible. And of course I’ll have links to all of the books we talk about; there are many.

I am really excited about this episode. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did in the recording and the editing. So let’s do this thing: on with the podcast with Dr. Jen Gunter, author of The Vagina Bible.

[music]

Sarah: Thank you so much for doing this. I am trying to keep my inner thirteen-year-old under control –

Dr. Jen Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: – but I have followed you on Twitter, and I am, like, totally in awe of what a complete Twitter badass you are when you sort of log on and are like, all right, what do I have to tell people not to stick in their vaginas today?

Dr. Gunter: I know. Yeah, when, what, what has the patriarchy done today?

Sarah: Yeah, what, what terrible advice have people received in the last twenty minutes? So if you are okay to get started, the only awkward part is for you to introduce yourself and tell the people who will be listening who you are and what you do.

Dr. Gunter: Sure. I’m Dr. Jen Gunter. I’m an OB/GYN and a writer. I have a couple columns with the New York Times. I also write for Dame magazine. I have a new book coming out, The Vagina Bible, and a TV show in Canada called Jensplaining.

Sarah: I love the title of the show. Do you know if it’s going to be available in the United States at all?

Dr. Gunter: All I know is it’s, you know, I – [laughs] – you’re, I’m the talent. I learn everything at the end.

Sarah: Of course, right, absolutely. I’m going to start, like, emailing Hulu: you picked up Letterkenny; can you pick up this too?

Dr. Gunter: Exactly! So it comes from – I mean it, like, the production company and the CBC are pitching it to the States, and you know, they just haven’t had any, any big bites yet, but –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – hopefully after it comes out in Canada and is hopefully well reviewed and people start emailing Hulu and HBO and start saying, hey, we need cool vagina content and other things here too, it’ll happen.

Sarah: Uh, yeah! Hi, we need cool vagina content.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: That, that seems like an ideal subject line.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, I know! I mean, I show people how to build a, a model of the clitoris in 3D with modeling clay! I mean, how cool is that?

Sarah: Is it the, like, the, the, the long model with the two legs that go down, and it kind of looks like a –

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, yeah!

Sarah: – like a spindly kind of dinosaur-looking thing?

Dr. Gunter: Absolutely! You know, someone once said, I read online a few months ago that someone said, every woman should have a 3D model printed version. I’m like, well, one, like, that’s kind of expensive, and, like, what, are we all going to, like, get MRI scans? And so I’m like, hey, I have modeling clay; I’m good at crafting. Let’s see what we can do!

Sarah: I feel like this is a whole new opportunity in terms of crafting as a hobby. Like, I know there’s so many craft blogs. I think we need more vagina crafting.

Dr. Gunter: Oh, there’s some, there’s some awesome vagina/vulva/female anatomy crafting out there, and then I, an incredible woman who, you know, I love, like, resistance by needlepoint, you know.

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Gunter: Like – [laughs].

Sarah: I love craftivism. I love subversive stitching. I love all of the women who protest by sewing or making something massive and then marching with it. I follow all those people on Instagram; they are so inspiring.

Dr. Gunter: They are! And this woman on Instagram contacted me, and I have a saying that I say on, you know, Twitter when I’m fighting trolls, and I’m like, I’m the fucking expert! That’s why I get to say that. That’s how it works. She made that into a needlepoint pillow and sent it to me!

Sarah: [Gasps] Oh my gosh!

Dr. Gunter: It’s, like, the best gift I’ve ever received in my entire life.

Sarah: That’s –

Dr. Gunter: I’m not kidding.

Sarah: – so cool.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah.

Sarah: So cool!

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] So yeah, I, I’m here for, I, I would love to go to a craft show where all these women have all their craftivism – I love that word! I never heard it – and we could have all these cool anatomy talks. I just think that would be the most amazing experience.

Sarah: Oh, I, I love it. There was a whole movement recently of people sewing onto the back of their, back pocket of their jeans feminist sayings, and people teaching other people through Instagram how to needlepoint and cross-stitch and embroider the back pocket of their jeans so they could pretty much say anything? It was so great. I want, like, big ol’ vaginas and clitorises on the back of my jeans now. I think I need to make this happen.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! [Laughs] I’m so there for it. I’m so there.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So I know that you are Canadian and you are currently in the States. Do you practice in both countries, or do you practice in the, in the States?

Dr. Gunter: Just in the States. Been in the States for about twenty-five years, but I go back and forth to Canada a lot, and so I really feel like I’m almost a partial resident at this point, and so, yeah, so I’m, I’m kind of a citizen of both places.

Sarah: Very cool! I have so many questions. The first of which, let’s talk about your book. The Vagina Bible has the greatest title ever.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: Thank you. I mean, I’ve, I’ve read so many different books about my own sexual parts. I went through infertility, and so I got to know all the chemistry! I got like a –

Dr. Gunter: Right.

Sarah: – maybe a Master’s in chemistry at this point, with all the things that I did to myself to achieve pregnancy, and I had, I had, I had learned so much from literally knowing very little about how I worked, and I love this book so much, so thank you so much for The Vagina Bible. What led you to writing it, and what will readers find in it?

Dr. Gunter: Well, I, you know, I’ve been debunking, you know, lower reproductive tract and upper reproductive tract myths for some time now online, and that’s how a lot of people find me. I’m sort of the Don’t Put That in There person, and, and also, you know, for the New York Times and other places, and it amazes me how, how these myths are so pervasive, and you know, women get this information, this bad information about their bodies from sources that they often think are accurate, like Instagram influencers, or Our Bodies, Ourselves has, has some misinformation in it, and, or, you know, some naturopath or even a board-certified OB/GYN telling people to put yogurt in their vagina.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: And I just thought, you know, it’s not that women, you know, randomly stick vegetable matter in their vaginas. They are doing this because they, they are in good faith looking for information, and they’re being sold bad stuff, basically, bad information. So I had this day in clinic where I, I run a, you know, clinic designed specifically for vaginal and vulvar health problems, and I probably told five or six women in a row things that to me were, I thought should be, like, basic knowledge, right, but obviously when you’re a doctor, your definition of basic knowledge is different. You obviously have a biased take on that, right, because this is all I’ve been doing. I mean, I’ve been in medicine since I was nineteen, so, you know, I mean, I don’t, you know, I don’t have, like, a frame of reference of not being medical, you know.

Sarah: Of course!

Dr. Gunter: And, and so five or six women in a row after me telling them said, how did I not know that? How did I not know that? I heard that like five times in a row, and I was like, God damn it! Women need a textbook! And then I just, like, perseverated on that for a day or two, and I was like, God damn it, women need a textbook, and I’m going to write it for them! And, and so that’s how it came about!

Sarah: That’s fantastic! Did you, did you come up with the title?

Dr. Gunter: Well, yeah, I did!

Sarah: Yes! Awesome job!

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] I did. Yeah, I was, you know, pitching it to my, my agent, my literary agent. I went through all these titles, and she’s like, eh, eh, and I was sort of making, like, textbook-y titles, like, you know, like The Compendium of Vulvar and Vaginal Health, which is like – [snoring noise] – you know, snooze fest?

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: And so I, I, I, in medicine, what, when we have textbooks that we use all the time, like, in whatever field, we often call it our bible.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: Like, you know, oh, this is my bible! This is my pathology bible. And I thought, well, why not vagina bible? And she was like, I love it! I was like, okay! That was it!

Sarah: It’s a brilliant title, and it says exactly what it does. It’s going to tell you, chapter and verse, everything you need to know about your vagina. Like –

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: – pretty great! Do you practice in gynecology and obstetrics currently?

Dr. Gunter: I don’t do obstetrics anymore. I stopped delivering babies about thirteen years ago. When my kids were born, they had so many health problems that, you know, going back to a life of doing call wasn’t really possible, and also, you know, one of my sons, you know, died in a labor and delivery room, and the idea at the, at the time of delivering, you know, babies in the same room where that happened to my son, I just, I just couldn’t do it.

Sarah: No.

Dr. Gunter: So I gave up obstetrics, and, and then I just, I just practice gynecology. Part of the deal where I work is I don’t say where I work, so I can’t – [laughs] –

Sarah: Of course.

Dr. Gunter: – but, but yeah, so I, I, I’m a, because I’ve done a fellowship in infectious diseases, that got me into the world of vaginal discharge and vaginal infections, and so I really exclusively just look after women who have vaginal discharge, vulvar problems, pain with sex, and pelvic pain, and I’m also board-certified in pain medicine too.

Sarah: Oh, that is a lot!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: And, and women and pain and vulva pain are really deeply undeveloped fields, right? Am I, am I mistaken in that?

Dr. Gunter: Well, I think that pain in general is poorly understood, and I would say that if you asked any pain specialists in their field, they would probably say, we need more funding, we need more research, but I think that the further away you get from the brain, I’m sure probably migraines has the most data, and the further away you get from the brain, probably the less information we have, and so I would say that we probably know, you know, some about vulvar pain and pelvic pain, but we certainly could know a lot more.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: And, yeah.

Sarah: I had a, a reader of my site email me about vaginismus.

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: Am I saying that right? Vaginismus?

Dr. Gunter: Yep, vagini-, vaginismus, you got it.

Sarah: And she was anonymous about it, didn’t want to reveal her identity, but was like, this is how it is for me, and I wanted to tell people because it’s hard for me to find information about how incredibly painful it is for me to have anything anywhere near my vaginal open-, opening, let alone a tampon –

Dr. Gunter: Right.

Sarah: – or anything else. I had never heard of this before – I’m sure that is a refrain for, like, ninety percent of your life – and I was, I was astonished. I had no idea, but I have received so many messages since then just saying, thank you for publishing that. I didn’t even know it had a name; I just thought something was wrong with me.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, that really breaks my heart, because –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Gunter: – vaginismus would be one of my bread-and-butter diagnoses. You know, I probably diagnose, you know, when I’m in clinic, in a week maybe I diagnose six or seven women with it –

Sarah: Wow!

Dr. Gunter: – so this is really bread and butter for me. Yeah.

Sarah: Oh!

Dr. Gunter: I even wrote, I wrote about it last year for the New York Times, you know? Like, I’ve, I really, you know, there’s a whole chapter on, you know, there’s a chapter on pain with sex and then also on pelvic floor disorders in the book, which covers a lot of vaginismus, so it’s covered kind of in both, you know, both ways in the book on how to advocate for yourself. Yeah, I mean, if you, if sex is painful, that’s certainly one of the more common diagnoses. If the idea of putting something in, even, like, the act of insertion is, feels like you’re hitting a roadblock, that’s almost always vaginismus. So yeah, and there are treatments. It would be incredibly rare for us not to be able to help somebody with, with, with the medical therapies that we have.

Sarah: That’s, that’s actually reassuring. One of the questions that one of my writers asked me to, to ask you was that, she says that she has very, a difficulty articulating urogynecological problems to doctors, especially if it’s a walk-in clinic and someone she doesn’t know very well, and she also feels like there’s a general concern that she has internalized about being believed, that, that women aren’t often taken seriously, or that we don’t have the language or confidence to talk about what it is that we’re trying to talk about, thanks to, you know, all of the stigma and the patriarchy and all those terrible things.

Dr. Gunter: Right.

Sarah: How do you recommend that women go about having conversations when we’re uncomfortable, and what do you recommend that we do if we don’t feel like we’re being heard?

Dr. Gunter: Well, I would preface it with an urgent care clinic’s not the place to go for a, a chronic problem, because they’re not designed for it. They’re not going to be able to hear you appropriately. They’re not going to know. Now, obviously, if you’re having an acute flare of that problem and that’s the only place to go, then that might be, but, but so I think that it’s super important to think about, like, the, the person in urgent care is really, is really not someone who’s going to know about a chronic problem.

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: I mean, there might be a few who do, but that’s not the place. You know, I would say that – and that’s why I actually have a whole chapter in the book on how to sort of communicate with healthcare professionals.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: I, I think the most important phrase that I, I ask my patients and that we discuss about is, what’s your bother factor? What’s bothering you? And I would say for, you know, so, and the bothering might be, I’m leaking urine; I’m worried I have cancer; pain, sex hurts. The one thing is, sadly quite true, is many doctors can’t talk about sex, like, at all. Which, even OB/GYNs, and you’d think, how is that possible? But, you know, people are prudes, even in OB/GYN, some of them. Certainly not me.

Sarah: Wow!

Dr. Gunter: And so, or they dismiss it, or they have a fifteen-minute appointment, and you know, getting, getting some of these problems addressed in fifteen minutes is, you know, not possible. So –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: – I, I think when doctors hear – and this is no excuse; I’m just explaining it. I’m not saying this is okay in any way –

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: – so I think when a doctor hears a complex problem, they sometimes just, like, freeze up and sort of dismiss it, which is the wrong thing to do! I mean, you can acknowledge that to the patient, and the other thing you can say is, you know, I’m not an expert in that, but let me find you one. Right? Like, you can always –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: – phone a friend! That’s, you know, in medicine, that’s why we have consultants and experts. So the one piece, if, if women only took, like, one thing away from my body of work would be, if sex is painful and you are being ignored, go to someone else. Don’t keep going back to that same person. If they’ve ignored it once, they are unlikely to be able to help you. And you shouldn’t have to advocate for yourself that way, but practically, right now, that’s probably what you have to do. You know, in the same way that if my car is making a noise and I go to my mechanic and he says he fixes it and it still makes the same noise, how many times am I going to go back to that same mechanic?

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: So find someone who will listen, and even having, so even just them being able to have a name for diagnosis means you can start looking it up and trying to find, you know, providers who hopefully will be able to help you, because we’re out there. We definitely are –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and I’m hoping to raise, you know, that awareness.

Sarah: One of the chapters of your book that really struck me was the chapter of how often trans individuals are loo-, overlooked by health professionals, how difficult it can be to find a gynecologist who is conversant in trans people’s medical needs, and I had no idea that the rates of cancer among trans men are higher. I, I had no idea. How has the – I’m, like, this is going to be the refrain: I had no idea!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! [Laughs]

Sarah: How has the medical field addressed the needs of the trans community, and what more can be done in that particular area?

Dr. Gunter: Well, I think definitely many medical professional societies have taken this very seriously. Like, for example, recent, just last week, the Department of Health and Human Services has, is, has mentioned that they’re going to change the way sex is defined by Health and Human Services that actually is going to further marginalize trans people –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and, you know, for the first, you know, the American Medical Association stood up and said, that’s wrong, and ACOG said, that’s wrong, and so – the American College of OB/GYN – so we’re finally getting, you know, medical professional societies saying these things are wrong, and if you go to, you know, the American College of OB/GYN website, for example, there is good information on trans care. So I, I – there could be more. Abs-, I will always admit there can always be more. The problem is, is, I think, many doctors, I don’t know, don’t take it seriously. I, I don’t really have a good explanation for it, because I was always just taught that people are people –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and you just do, you care for them by the medical standards, and certainly when I first started practice in Kansas in the 1990s, because I was a vaginal expert, I once got a call from this clinic that, you know, the kind of clinic that exists on grants and public funding, and they had a trans woman who’d had her vaginal reconstruction in another country because in the 1990s that was sadly common – I mean, imagine having to fly to another country where you don’t speak the language to get this, the care that you need – and she was having a problem, and they had called around to a bunch of different doctors, and they’d all said no, and they asked me if I would see her, and I was like, well, of course! Like, why wouldn’t I? She’s got a vagina and a problem, and I’m a vagina expert! I, like, I, I, like, I just, I don’t see –

Sarah: [Laughs] I can solve that problem, yeah!

Dr. Gunter: – I don’t see the issue, so I think that in the United States, maybe more than some other countries, there is this erosion of sort of religion in – specific kinds of religious beliefs – into medicine, and, and I am very strongly opposed to that, and I think that –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – it has no place.

Sarah: Yeah. Have you noticed or heard of any additional education in medical school and in residencies to address the medical needs of trans people? Or is that sort of being marginalized as well as so many other things on the federal level at this point, damn it?

Dr. Gunter: I, I, I don’t work with any medical schools, so I actually wouldn’t be able to answer that question. I just –

Sarah: Okay.

Dr. Gunter: – I wouldn’t know. But certainly, for example, where I train, our, we have a, we have a trans health clinic. Our residents rotate through it. They get exposure to, to doctors who are experts in gender-affirming surgery and hormonal management, and so – but, you know, I’m, I’m also in San Francisco and, you know, we, we also, you know, make sure our residents have access to learning about abortions and learning about, you know, everything that’s the full scope of reproductive healthcare.

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: So I think that it may be, unfortunately, region-dependent, and again, that’s why I think professional organizations have to stand up and say, you know, you can’t be accredited to teach OB/GYN if you’re going to pick and choose what you think is care.

Sarah: Yes! Very true. So you do a lot of addressing stigma and addressing myth about vaginas and sexual health, and I know you tackle a lot of junk science. What are some of the more frustrating parts of dealing with junk science about vaginas and vulvas?

Dr. Gunter: I think it’s this, the thing that frustrates me the most is that with all the, the new sort of way it’s been – so the Instagram influencers and sites like Goop and all these other sort of “wellness” sites, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: So a lot of, a lot of them are pushing these sort of vaginal products, and all these products are, almost all of them are useless. Almost all of them are actually born from patriarchal myths, and they use the language of the patriarchy to sell all these products to women. They say “pure;” they say “clean;” they say “natural.” You know, those could also be the three words I would use to describe a television show called, like, The Next Virgin Bride or something, right? So, so they, they are actually using the patriarchy to sell something, but presenting it as feminism, so it’s this faux feminism, and it’s, it’s amazing to me that, that people accept it as empowerment, when it is exactly the opposite. Misinformation and disinformation about your body is the opposite of feminism.

Sarah: Yes. Very true. And all of, all of the things that you constantly have to debunk, some of them can be really, really harmful!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! I mean, there really, I mean, I just heard one last week that, it’s a new one. Like, there’s always a new one, and I’m like – [gasps] – whaat?! Like, I –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: – sometimes I’m just like, what?! I mean, some – and this is a person who’s a doctor! – is telling people to put colloidal silver in their vagina.

Sarah: Ahh!

Dr. Gunter: Don’t do that! Don’t! Under any circumstances!

Sarah: Oh!

Dr. Gunter: You know, and so, but people are so – the other thing that really frustrates me – really – is this idea that Big Pharma is bad and Big Wellness is good.

Sarah: No, God.

Dr. Gunter: So Wellness is a more than three-trillion-dollar business. Three trillion, right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: And at least – and I’m no fan of Big Pharma – but at least the products that they put out have some testing. Now, it is true that Pharma keeps back the studies that aren’t good –

Sarah: Yep.

Dr. Gunter: – but at least there’s some. Some testing’s better than none, and if I walked into any pro-, any, you know, factory where a prescription pharmaceutical is made and they stopped the line and we pulled product off the end, it would have what they claim.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: So Pharma is better than Wellness. They are. They have a long way to go – don’t kid yourself – but think about Wellness where, like, there’s no need to sort of – you could put whatever you want in there.

Sarah: No! [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: You can do, like, it’s totally, and, you know, like, you might be selling dirt from your backyard for $69.95 a month! [Laughs] I mean, it, it’s really amazing to me how people think that the profits from Wellness are people doing good, and the profits from Pharma are people doing bad. It’s an amazing rebranding. It’s quite brilliant, but, I mean, like, there’s problems with both, and Wellness has more problems.

Sarah: I am trying to remember where I read this, and I don’t know if it was Anne Helen Petersen or Linda Holmes or Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Somebody I read in the last year, which is a lot of words in my brain. Basically, the idea is that Wellness only exists to make you feel unwell. Like –

Dr. Gunter: I totally believe that.

Sarah: – the whole purpose is to make you feel like you are inherently dirty, unclean, and unhealthy –

Dr. Gunter: Right?

Sarah: – and it’s like –

Dr. Gunter: Absolutely.

Sarah: – no! My body cleans itself really well!

Dr. Gunter: And you know what’s really funny then: Wellness also accuses mainstream medicine – people like me – of, you know, not promoting wellness. I’m like, well, no, actually, I promote all the wellness that costs nothing! I tell people to exercise. I tell people to eat twenty-five grams of fiber a day. I tell people to go for a walk. I tell people that fellowship is probably good for you, as long as you’re not someone who, you know, is really uncomfortable around people. You know, that, in general, you know, that there are some things – I, I tell people not to smoke. I tell people to wear sunscreen! Like, we know what wellness actually is. None of it’s profitable.

Sarah: No. Sunscreen is, is not always profitable unless you’ve got your name on, on the bottle.

Dr. Gunter: Right, right. Like, I use the cheap stuff. I, like, my whole – somebody once asked me if I would, you know, if I ever would have a store, and I was like, sure, because everything I use to keep my body healthy is basically under ten dollars.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Gunter: So I would have, like – [laughs] – I would have a Jen Gunter Ten Dollar Health Store.

Sarah: [Laughs] Now, you recently did an absolutely majestic Twitter thread on Marianne Williamson’s fat-shaming and junk science, and it was a thing of damn beauty, so thank you for that! I think I’ve read it three or four times, ‘cause it was, like, savory. What was the response like to that thread? Have you had any follow-up from any department in that one? Or are you just sort of like, nope! Still, still fat-shaming, still junk science. The record stands.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! It’s really interesting: she’s been able to pivot, I think, from that by saying that was, like, you know, nine years ago, and you know, like, well –

Sarah: Still in print; has your name on it.

Dr. Gunter: It’s, yeah, exactly, still in print. Like, where’s your updated edition where you take out, like, all the parts where you say to visualize your ugly fat body, basically? I mean, it’s really fat-shaming, and it doesn’t make any sense; it’s all mysticism. But I will have you know, I’m almost finished reading her 2016 book on anxiety and depression!

Sarah: Uh-oh.

Dr. Gunter: And – oh, I know – and it’s, I’m going to actually write a full blog post on it with huge block quotes so every media outlet can draw from it for free offline; just get the word out there. It’s a pretty horrific book, and harmful –

Sarah: Oh no.

Dr. Gunter: – and, and it’s illiterate in so many ways, and I just don’t understand somebody who’s that functionally medical, medically illiterate promoting mysticism. I mean, I, I don’t want a mystic running my country. I mean, like –

Sarah: No.

Dr. Gunter: – I want somebody who wants facts, please. And everything, the answer for everything with her is love, you know, and you just didn’t love enough –

Sarah: [Growls]

Dr. Gunter: – and I think, oh, really? So is that why my kid died? ‘Cause I didn’t love enough?

Sarah: [Groans]

Dr. Gunter: Like, you know, and that’s really in the book; there’s a lot of that. Like, you just need to buck up! Like, it’s the worst thing in the world to say to somebody who’s depressed: you should just be thankful that everything’s – like, this is literally in the book – you should be thankful that everything has been taken away from you and stripped from you so you can see, you know, wow, how much God’s love is still there. Like, that’s the book.

Sarah: I can’t pound my head on my desk ‘cause I’m recording, but no! For God’s sake!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! And, you know, she doesn’t clearly understand the difference between sadness and depression. She clearly doesn’t understand that people who are wealthy and have all of the things in life can be depressed and that people – you know, like, it’s, it is the worst, worst pop psychology, the worst thing you could say, and she’s clearly against antidepressants. She doesn’t understand what depression is –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and that was, you know, that’s from 2016, so it’s pretty hard to, to back away from those words not being yours.

Sarah: Ugh!

Dr. Gunter: So yeah.

Sarah: One of the things that – so the field that I am in is mostly romance fiction, although with my podcast I’ll talk about whatever I want, including vulvas and vaginas, which are very relevant to romance fiction, I might add.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] They are! Yes.

Sarah: Very relevant. One of the things that has happened to me and to reviewers when we criticize a book that is much loved is the, oh, you’re just mean and jealous and bitter. Has anyone accused you of being mean and jealous and bitter since you’ve been addressing her, her, her fake science and her fat-shaming?

Dr. Gunter: Not with her. People certainly have accused me of that with Gwyneth Paltrow. That –

Sarah: Oh, of course!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, that I’m mean and jealous, and I’m like, oh, there is no way I, yeah, there’s no jealousy there at all. But, and that’s such a, like a, a catty thing, and I think actually it’s a very patriarchal thing too, in a –

Sarah: Very patriarchal.

Dr. Gunter: – you know. Which is actually what Goop did, right? When they, they wrote their only ever response to critics, they addressed me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: And they tone-policed me, they called me strangely confident –

Sarah: [Gasps]

Dr. Gunter: – and they said basically that I was trying to leverage their platform for success. I’m like, wait a minute, you’re the only person who gets to speak publicly here? So it was the most anti-feminist response! They are not feminism at all. They are the exact opposite.

Sarah: Oooh!

Dr. Gunter: But yeah, so yeah, Goop themselves accused me, basically, of being jealous and trying to leverage, you know, them, and I’m like, no, really, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to have people not get, you know, burns from steaming themselves and not to take your supplements, which are useless, and, you know, not to waste their time on sacred sex ceremonies with snakes, and that’s not a euphemism!

Sarah: [Laughs] That is both entirely expected and utterly discouraging, because of course that’s going to keep the, the, that’s going to keep the attention on them. That’s going to –

Dr. Gunter: Right.

Sarah: It, it just, there are some times when I, when I read something that’s terribly problematic, and it’s on the border of ignominy and infamy, and I’m like, do I just have to –

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: – let this sink down into ignominy, because that is exactly where this should go, or do I want to elevate this into conversation by talking about how utter crap it is? And sometimes that’s a hard choice. With Goop, it’s not a, a, a hard choice. I just can’t believe that their response was, you’re just jealous! Geeze Louise!

Dr. Gunter: Well yeah, that I’m, that I’m jealous and that I’m ignorant. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, oh yeah, because, you know, practicing medicine is – and yeah, that’s, that’s definitely the path of ignorance. Geeze, come on!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty amazing, and then, yeah, and then people do, like, some Instagrammer challenged me to a vagina-off.

Sarah: What?!

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: What, like you take it off? That, wait, they don’t detach. I know that this is a thing.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah. You’re like, no, wait a minute, that’s not in your book. There’s, yeah. No, so she does vaginal kung fu, and let’s, cultural appropriation of that word aside –

Sarah: Oh dear God!

Dr. Gunter: So what she does, she claims – I’m, I actually – it’s so funny  – so she apparently has some kind of device she puts in her vagina that she uses with her pelvic floor muscles then to lift heavy objects. I’m not –

Sarah: Oh!

Dr. Gunter: – kidding you. Like surfboards and ten-pound weights. Now, so she, I wrote about how that is stupid and unnecessary, and sort of like, you know, you can stare into the sun too, but that’s not good for your eyes. Extremism isn’t always right, and you don’t need to crack a walnut with your pelvic floor.

Sarah: Oh!

Dr. Gunter: So – I know, you’re like – [gasps]! That’s what everybody’s response is. So I wrote about how that’s like, you know, useless, and you know, she got picked up in People magazine, Allure, like, Self. All these places covered her – that’s what happens when you have a publicist, probably – and so I wrote about it, and then I guess she challenged me to some kind of vagina competition? I’m like, like where she’s got my vaginas and her vaginas are going to compete? I’m like, wait, do you mean, like, I’m going to bring my patients? Like, that’s not really actually how it works at all. That’s not how a lot of things work. But it’s really interesting, so, so many people on Twitter helped me out in so many ways, I feel like I have a, an army, and so when this was happening, somebody who teaches, you know, art or, like, photography at, at a, you know, big art school contacted me and said, those images look digitally manipulated to me. I mean, I can’t prove it, but, you know, she showed it around the faculty, and they said, like, 99.9% chance that all those heavy objects in there don’t quite seem to be what they are, so whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but, but yeah, so, so, you know, this – but this also is a great segue into how dangerous these influencers are, because this woman has a hundred thousand followers on Instagram –

Sarah: Ye gods.

Dr. Gunter: – right? And, and one of her posts talks about how women should never get Pap smears because you know your own body, and your body will tell you when there’s something wrong. I’m not kidding.

Sarah: What?!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah. Uh-huh!

Sarah: Oh no!

Dr. Gunter: I know, right? Which is absolutely the worst – we know Pap cervical cancer screening saves lives. Like, this is, we know this. And so yeah, so that’s the, you know, you can laugh about oh, vaginal kung fu and how ridiculous that is, but this woman has a huge following, and she’s told people that Pap smears are bad! I mean – [scoffs] – you know?

Sarah: No. Those are, those are, those are pretty important. Good God.

Dr. Gunter: So yeah. And then when you think about, so you have women who are scared of doctors, and many of them with great reason; you have women who have pain with, with pelvic exams, often for very good reasons – well, every reason is good, but sometimes it’s because the doctor’s not a well trained doctor, and sometimes it’s because of other issues – and so if you’re already scared about going in to have an invasive exam and you read that, that might tip you into not going! Like, that’s horrible!

Sarah: It reminds me of the photos I saw at one point when I was doing research in college of, because women were taught that they should never show anyone their breasts, they had incredibly horrible breast cancer that was, like, visible and horrible, and it would kill them, because they couldn’t show anyone this visible lesion that was killing them, and, and –

Dr. Gunter: Oh yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Sarah: Oh God!

Dr. Gunter: I’ve totally seen that in training, and women show up to the emergency department because they had, like, a stain on their shirt, and it’s an invasive just, you know, cancer at that point.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: We see it with the vagina and vulva too, you know. Women just, you know, because it’s scary, and fear immobilizes us. It really does.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Gunter: And –

Sarah: To say nothing of the fear being expensive when you have an expensive co-pay to go with that visit –

Dr. Gunter: Oh, right.

Sarah: – or just paying for it outright.

Dr. Gunter: Right, or if you’re worried about being marginalized or you’re worried about being treated poorly, you’re – you know, so there’s, you had all those other layers on top of just the fear that you have something wrong with you –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and you can see how people don’t come in, so –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – so yeah, it’s very, messaging like that about, you know, trying to make women more afraid of cancer screening is just disgusting to me. Imagine having the privilege of a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, and that’s how you’re using it.

Sarah: Yeah. That’s fucking ghastly. And then of course to have the absolute hubris to challenge you, to what she’s doing. Like, no! No. No! Oh for God’s sake.

Dr. Gunter: Like – [laughs] – I know. Like, that’s not how it works. But on a better note –

Sarah: I have many better things to do with all of my internal organs, none of them involving surfboards, unless it’s my feet and the ocean.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, exactly. No, I mean, and obviously, and what’s really funny is, she never tagged me in the posts. Someone else showed it to me, so obviously she wasn’t interested in my response anyway. She just somehow thought she was dunking on me. It was pretty weird. ‘Cause those, sometimes people, sometimes weird things happen when you’re Jen Gunter. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, no kidding! You also recently wrote in the Times about the stigma of STIs and that gonorrhea and syphilis rates are rising!

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: What –

Dr. Gunter: They are.

Sarah: Good gravy! What, what led you to write that article, other than the fact that gonorrhea and syphilis rates are rising, and what has the reaction to that article been?

Dr. Gunter: So it’s been really interesting. So I, you know, STI, you know HIV is stable; it shouldn’t be. We should basically have no new cases. I mean, we have the technology for that. And I hadn’t really written about STIs publicly in that way for the Times, and I really, I feel I have a great privilege that people are listening to me –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: – and if I write in the Times, I’m, I have a great privilege there, and I want to use that in a good way, and I, I know there’s a lot of STI stigma out there, and just as I wrote in the Times, you know, we live in a world where women can talk about putting colloidal silver in their vagina, but we don’t talk about rising rates of syphilis. So I really thought I need to try to help change that conversation. So on Twitter the response was amazing, and all these medical professionals were like, thank you, thank you, thank you. We just need to start talking about it. Like, you can’t –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – you can’t solve the stigma of STIs with one column, but seeing it in a paper of record like that is a big deal, right? So, so that was great. I noticed very interestingly that it had a lot of likes and a lot of retweets; very low actual engagement rate. People are nervous about talking about STIs. But that’s okay! The, the first step is to raise awareness, right?

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: You have to think about that. But the comments section! Oh my God. Like, I, I don’t usually read the comments, right, because that –

Sarah: Yeah, that’s not always good.

Dr. Gunter: But I checked it out, and it was, the comments, they are, versus the comments on Twitter. So the comments on Twitter were all people like, oh my God, thank you, thank you. I mean, obviously I have all the trolls blocked too, so it was –

Sarah: Right, of course.

Dr. Gunter: – you know, all these people going, oh, well, you’re dirty if you have an STI. Maybe you just shouldn’t, like, let him stick it in. Like, all, all the reasons why the column was needed.

Sarah: [Sighs] Oh –

Dr. Gunter: All the reasons.

Sarah: – God.

Dr. Gunter: So, you know, and, and yeah, so, and, and some people hunted me down on Facebook and sent me nasty messages as well. That happens –

Sarah: Oh for God’s sake!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah. And so, and yeah! So, but that’s okay! I’m, I’m very committed to this idea of, I have this privilege of people listening to me –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and so I have a privilege, I, I need to do, do right by that.

Sarah: Yes. I, I know, I know exactly how you feel. So with that ability to speak to so many different people at the same time, what do you see are, as the essential things that we can do to care for our vaginas and our vulvas?

Dr. Gunter: Well, don’t listen to influencers. [Laughs] That would be my first take.

Sarah: Yeah, I, I don’t want any influencer telling me how to do anything. Actually, there was, I don’t remember who coined this. It’s going to make me mad, but the, the influence whose, influencers who are anti-vaxxers are, are, should be rebranded Influenzers?

Dr. Gunter: Oh, that’s a great one!

Sarah: Isn’t it brilliant?!

Dr. Gunter: Oh my God!

Sarah: Like, nothing, nothing makes my blood pressure go absolutely nuclear than the idea of not vaccinating.

Dr. Gunter: Influenzers and craftivism: I’ve learnt two great new words today. I love it.

Sarah: I’m here for you. I’m here for you.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] Oh yeah!

Sarah: I’ve got lots of book recommendations too, if you want ‘em! [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: Oh yeah! Yeah, I, I want a couple of good, really – I, I’m going on book tour! I want something, like, super hot and heavy to read.

Sarah: Oh –

Dr. Gunter: I want, like, something really erotic.

Sarah: Yeah, I can help you with that; no problem.

[Laughter]

Dr. Gunter: So where do I – I’m sorry, I’ve lost –

Sarah: It’s okay! What –

Dr. Gunter: I got, I got sidetracked by erotica. I started thinking, ooh, look!

Sarah: Yeah! Oh yeah. So what are essential things that we can do to care for our vaginas and our vulvas?

Dr. Gunter: So I think the most important thing is to really believe that your vagina is a self-cleaning oven. That you don’t need to put anything inside to clean it. You don’t need to put wipes inside; you don’t need to put douches inside; you don’t need to put sprays inside. All of that stuff is bad for you; The End. For a vulva, you need to do very little! Some women get by just with water, but many people really need a cleanser, and that a cleanser externally is the best with, than, better than soap; soap tends to be drying. I use, you know, a four-dollar facial cleanser all over my body. I use CeraVe.

Sarah: I love CeraVe!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, it’s great! And I use that all over my whole body. Soap is the enemy of the skin. And that if something’s not working, if something’s painful or doesn’t feel right, talk to a doctor, and if they don’t listen to you, look through my book and find a, and then get some words and find another doctor.

Sarah: I love that, I love that advice: find some words and find another doctor. That’s really good default advice and for many problems, and I don’t know if you can hear, but my dog totally backs you up there, by the way.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] Excellent! I’m all about the dogs and the cats contributing. My dog’s actually been uncharacteristically quiet. I have a large Chocolate Lab. So I think she’s given up. She’s like, oh, I guess I’m not going out.

Sarah: [Laughs] So Vida at Kensington, who is amazing, suggested this question, and I think it’s such a good question, and I’m so glad I asked her. What experts and outlets do you trust for information, yourself, obviously, as the first one?

Dr. Gunter: So yes, I trust myself. But like everything else, if the content is two or three years old, look elsewhere. Like, I have stuff on my blog from six or seven years ago that, you know, the research may have changed.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: The best place for information – and this is a very unsexy answer – is a medical professional organization. So for example, for women’s health I – in fact, sometimes when I’m starting my research on a topic, like I’m going to write about, you know, STIs for the Times, I’m going to write about something, I will go to the American College of OB/GYN, ACOG, their website, and I’ll search internally. They have tons of patient resources there, and tons of free information. So they have wonderful handouts, and so the, I would always encourage people to start their search with the medical professional organization. Another good one is the North American Menopause Society for any menopause-related concern. And then, and those are the two great places to start. The CDC is another great place for, you know, for STI-related information, and then the American Sexual Health Association as well, ASHA.

And so if you search internally on one of those sites, you’re not going to get sucked down a rabbit hole. You know, they don’t have ads on them, first of all. Secondly, these, this is information that’s been curated by professionals. They often have, you know, the conflicts of interest are, like, for example with ACOG and the North American Medical Society, are displayed, and I would start there. The advantage of starting there is they’re not really selling you anything.

Sarah: No.

Dr. Gunter: It’s just information.

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: The other thing is, they actually have clear guidelines for many different things, and that will give you the language to use then for search, because if you go and search and say, you know, if you use a different term, you’re going to actually get a different answer, so I highly recommend there, and then the National Library of Medicine, and so those are places I would recommend.

I always say, too, never ever get information from someone selling you the product. So, for example, you know, if you go to Goop, you know, they’ll have, ooh, how to make your hair better, and then there’s a link to a hair supplement, so you can’t trust that information. And the problem with so many sites is it’s so hard to tell, so you just have to be really careful, so I would tell people to stay away from any site with a store.

Sarah: Interesting! That makes sense –

Dr. Gunter: Yeah.

Sarah: – when it comes to health matters.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, I mean, would you get your information about depression from, from Merck? Or from, like, you know, Big Pharma? No, you wouldn’t! But if you go to a place selling products, that’s exactly what you’re doing. So don’t ever get your information from a place that has a store. I mean, if they have a bookstore, that’s different, but, you know. You know, but if they’re selling products specifically, don’t get your information from there. Don’t even look, because the problem is we all, I believe, are primed to believe the first thing we read –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and so that’s why it’s super important to start your search in the best place –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – so then you’re not, like, starting with innuendo or bias or lies.

Sarah: Yes, and Dr. Google is always going to tell you that you have lupus or meningitis or both.

Dr. Gunter: Exactly. Or they’re going to, you know, tell you that, you know, for three easy payments of $69.95 a month –

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: – they, they can balance your hormones.

Sarah: It is, it is astonishing to me that the good side of having so much information available to you privately and the bad side of having so much information available –

Dr. Gunter: So I’m very proactive with that. So first of all, when everyone tells me their, you know, they come in with information from Google and it’s clearly bad, you know, I’ll, first of all, I tell people I’m really glad that they are interested in their health, that they’re looking things up –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Gunter: – because I am! That’s true! And going to Google is like going to a library, and I would never ever tell anyone not to go to a library, right?

Sarah: [Laughs] No!

Dr. Gunter: Like, for books, go to libraries! Libraries are awesome. So, but I would say that, just like if you go to a library, if you sort of – like, they have People magazine, and they have InStyle, and those, those magazines have their place. Don’t get me wrong: I love to know which is the best pair of denims for my body too. But that’s not where you get the health information.

Sarah: No.

Dr. Gunter: Right. So you need a librarian to help you! And that’s how I’m going to help you, and so I have, you know, sites, you know, just like I mentioned, with, you know, links to give to everybody for –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – you know, kind of the top fifteen or twenty medical conditions that I see, and people are very grateful. The, I, the look of relief on people’s face when I listen to their, what they looked up and give them information, almost always heads off these sort of difficult, well, Dr. Google said this conversation.

Sarah: Wow.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, and so people, because you have to honor that they searched. They did! That’s great!

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: I would never tell someone not to go to the library, but let me help you how to use the library! Most people actually are like, oh my God, thank you. A small percentage, probably about five or ten percent, are very married to the information that they found, and so then I say to those people, well, show me the site you got it from. You give me the information. Half the time they can’t, and so it’s probably just general information from headlines, and I say, I, I can’t, you know, you, you, bring me in the information. And then maybe half of those people – so five percent – actually show me the site where they got the information, and every single one to date has been what I would consider predatory. You know, doctors selling hormone fixes or, you know, places like that.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: And I explain to them, and then if, if that’s what they want to believe I’ll say, well, I can’t, I can’t do that for you. This is what I can do! And I’m a big believer in your body, your choice, and I’m very obsessed with the concept of informed consent, and so it’s not informed consent when you’re on a site that has that bad information. It can’t possibly be, because they’re presenting lies as truth, and so I’ll give people what I truly believe is informed consent, and, and then they can make the decision if that’s, they, if they want to work with me or if, if what I have to offer them doesn’t work for them.

Sarah: That is probably the most generous use of your time, too, to, to work so much to address something that is starting so clearly in a, in a, in a territory that is not helpful.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, I mean, I don’t want people to suffer; I really don’t!

Sarah: No, no.

Dr. Gunter: And, and if I can get people on the right track of searching medically upfront, then I’m helping them for every other health condition they have. I’m helping every one of my colleagues who’s going to look after them for their heart problems or their lung problems or whatever. Like, it’s, it’s sort of like I view that as a fork in the road where I can really, again, extend my privilege of knowing how to research information online better than probably most doctors –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and, you know, hopefully push that patient in the right direction.

Sarah: So I understand that you, like me, have a Fluevog problem.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: I’m, I’m with you here. How, how bad is yours, and what, what is your latest pair? [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: Well, I have, I do have a cabinet specifically for displaying Fluevogs –

Sarah: See, that’s how you ought to live, right?

Dr. Gunter: – and I have sixteen pairs in there, and I think I might have more that don’t fit.

Sarah: Oh my, oh – isn’t it so not fair that your shoe sizes change? Like, that shouldn’t happen.

Dr. Gunter: Actually, well, I bought all of my Fluevogs after, in the last sort of ten years, so I’m pretty good with that. My, that has not happened to me, but it does happen for some people. I totally know that, but I, you know, I didn’t buy my Fluevogs until after I’d had triplets, so maybe I’ve had all of –

Sarah: That will, that will adjust things a little bit, yeah.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah. So yeah, I don’t know the names of their shoes, unfortunately, sadly, but my latest pair, believe it or not, are total flat slip-on sandals that have this gorgeous leather flower that just is, like, so impossibly large, and they’re so comfortable. But, you know, I, I’m dating again, and, you know, I’m super tall, and I’m mindful of the fact that, you know, I don’t want to, like, show up and be, like, ginormic on the first date, so I thought –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: – well, I should, I shouldn’t, you know – and you know, obviously, I find out the guy is six foot four, then bring it on, baby. I’m bringing, like, wearing the four-inch heels.

Sarah: Of course.

Dr. Gunter: But you know, think about going out with a guy who’s five eleven, you know, just sort of my height, or maybe I’m a little bit short than that, then yeah, then I, I realized I had to invest in, in flats now. You know, ‘cause my boyfriend I was with for a long time was six three, so I could wear, you know, whatever heels I wanted, and so I thought, well, here’s an opportunity to buy all new Fluevogs –

Sarah: [Gasps]

Dr. Gunter: – that I’d never really thought I needed before. [Laughs]

Sarah: Well, I mean, that’s a really good reason to, to buy new shoes, right?

Dr. Gunter: Isn’t it?

Sarah: I mean, that seems to make perfect sense to me!

Dr. Gunter: I know; I need to have the range so I can have a range of dating experiences.

Sarah: [Laughs] So do you have a favorite color or color scheme with your Fluevogs? I, I find myself very drawn to burgundy and coral and had to tell myself, no more burgundy and coral shoes; you have enough.

Dr. Gunter: I mean, I always do kind of tend more to, I guess, neutrals or things, right, like, you know, and burgundy goes with so many things, and black and tan, but I do have a few crazy colors too, and greens and things and –

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: – yeah! I, you know, I just, their shoes are works of art, and I just, I’m so proud to represent a Canadian brand. Those are, like, my power shoes, and they’re so comfortable!

Sarah: They are so comfortable, and everyone’s always like, oh my God, those shoes! Where did you get those? Like, they’re so unique, you, and I can spot other people’s Fluevogs at this point.

Dr. Gunter: Oh, you know what? I honestly think another woman wearing a pair of Fluevogs meet, ‘cause you never know when you meet someone if you’re going to be, like, friend, friends with them or not –

Sarah: Right.

Dr. Gunter: – but I swear to God, there’s like a ninety-nine percent chance that I’m going to hit it off if she wears Fluevogs.

Sarah: Yes! It’s so, it’s like, okay, yes, we are unafraid to go big or go home with our footwear here. Let’s do this thing.

Dr. Gunter: Exactly, and my favorite thing is to take Fluevog virgins to the store, to Fluevog.

Sarah: [Gasps] Ohhh.

Dr. Gunter: I love that. So my dream, my absolute dream, I mean, with, with the small amount of fame I have is that I would get to, like, sort of have, like, a Jen Gunter Fluevog shoe.

Sarah: [Gasps] Fluevog: we have put this into the universe. This needs to happen.

Dr. Gunter: That’s, that’s the only, that, that would be like, I would –

Sarah: Oh my God!

Dr. Gunter: I know, right?

Sarah: It could be like all intricate folds of pink and rose leather?

Dr. Gunter: I’ve got a couple of ideas for them!

Sarah: Yes!

Dr. Gunter: And so that would be, like, my absolute dream, to have a Jen Gunter, like, you know, Fluevog.

Sarah: [Gasps] Oh my gosh. That, I, I, I hope that saying this aloud makes it happen, because that would be exquisite. Oh my gosh.

Dr. Gunter: I know, right? I mean, it’s sort of like, you know, people are like, really? That’s your dream? I’m like –

Together: Yes!

Dr. Gunter: Yes, it is!

Sarah: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I, I support this dream. I am completely in favor of this dream; I think is a great dream. Let’s, I’m thrilled to be a part of it. Let’s make this happen. [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, exactly! I mean, and you know, when I shot the show Jensplaining, I mean, I, I wore a different pair of Fluevogs each episode. I have, like a lot of shoes. [Laughs]

Sarah: Of course! That makes total sense!

Dr. Gunter: You know, and, and so I had the shoes for the vaccine episode and the shoes for the vagina episode and the shoes for the, you know, the sex episode, and, you know.

Sarah: Oh my gosh.

Dr. Gunter: I put so much thought into which shoes I was – [laughs].

Sarah: Fluevog needs to call you and be like, Jen, we need to, we need to work together. I mean, come on! You have done so much to elevate their brand just on, on, on this show alone. Amazing! Oh my gosh!

Dr. Gunter: Sadly, you don’t see much of my shoes in, in, in the show, but, but I know, ‘cause I have to – you know how when you put on your Fluevogs, like, this pair makes you feel this way, and this pair –

Sarah: Oh yeah!

Dr. Gunter: – makes you feel this way.

Sarah: Oh yeah.

Dr. Gunter: So, you know, they, they carried through, like, the vibe of the sh-, of that episode for me.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Any time I want to feel like I am particularly ready to kick ass, take names, and looks, look good, I know exactly which shoes I’m going for.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] So do you ever wear Irregular Choice shoes?

Sarah: A regular choice shoe?

Dr. Gunter: Irregular Choice. Yeah, they’re a British brand –

Sarah: [Gasps] No! Oh my gosh!

Dr. Gunter: – and they are works of fancy and whimsy, and they’re less expensive than Fluevogs.

Sarah: [Gasps] Oh my gosh!

Dr. Gunter: And some of them are so, the soles are often printed with totally different unique patterns, the inside are, and they are just out of this world, so.

Sarah: I am not okay right now. Oh. My. Gosh.

Dr. Gunter: Irregular Choice: check it out. Yeah.

Sarah: My children are never going to go out in public with me; it’s going to be amazing.

Dr. Gunter: I know. I’m like, yeah, my kids, my kids are like, isn’t that out of our college education? I’m like, shut up.

Sarah: No, it’s fine. You, you don’t, you, you, you don’t understand. Oh, oh my God. This is incredible! All right, well, I have to do an interview, so I’m going to close that tab real quick, but I will share a link; do not worry, anyone who will be listening. I’ll share.

[Laughter]

Sarah: So you mentioned dating, and I also hear from Vida that you love to talk about the adventures of dating, which is something I talk about on my show often with writers, despite, despite being married. I have a question, though: will the publication of The Vagina Bible make dating more or less easy? Like, are you just going to roll up with a copy, put it down on the table, and be like, here you go! There’s me! And then see what happens?

Dr. Gunter: Well, you know, I’m of the –

[Laughter]

Dr. Gunter: You know, if a guy’s intimidated by that, then he’s probably not the guy for me.

Sarah: Nope.

Dr. Gunter: So I would say that. And I want a partner who can talk about sex openly, because I really think that that’s, you know, you end up with someone and you’re two to three months in, and then they aren’t really a match sexually, and then, what, you’re like, oh, but I like you otherwise, but – [sighs]. I mean, I, you know, I don’t want to have to ask to have certain things, or I don’t want you to get all, like, weird if I’m touching myself or if I want to use a vibrator or whatever –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: – and so I think that having those conversations out front is super important. So you can talk about, like, people talk about if they’re vegetarian or if they’re, you know, like, if you’re – that, I think that’s really a good analogy. Like, if you, one person’s a vegetarian and the other person is a committed omnivore, and you don’t actually discuss that, there could be issues down the road.

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Gunter: Maybe there wouldn’t be. Maybe you would be like – but the problem is, is the vegetarian’s never going to eat what the omnivore wants to eat, ever, but the omnivore would eat what the vegetarian – maybe, on some meals. So then you have this, always, like, this power dynamic where one person’s never getting what they want, and so I’m, I’m just, I don’t want to be in that situation, and I, I know, like, what’s the point? Otherwise, I don’t want, if I just want companionship and, and not having good sex, I mean, I have a lot of girlfriends for that, so.

Sarah: Right, yeah.

Dr. Gunter: So I think that, yeah, so I’m just, I’m just really committed to having, like, open conversations, and it’s okay for a guy to tell me what he likes, I mean, and sometimes you’d be really amazed what happens, and then it’s great because I know, like, I, I sometimes, on my profile, I think I mention that I write about sex, but I don’t actually say anything, and you know, sometimes, like, I’ll get guys who lead with emails like, oh, I like anal. I’m like, well, okay. If that was the first thing you said to me in a bar I would walk away, so I’m, thank you for telling me that in that way. I hope you find someone who thinks that’s a great opening text! It’s not me!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: And that’s exactly what I say. I say it, ‘cause, like, you know, yeah!

Sarah: That – I’m glad that you are open with that, but that is not a good opening line.

Dr. Gunter: That’s not an opening line for me. That’s not courtship to me. That might be for someone else, and I hope you find the person it is.

Sarah: Do you get a lot of dick pics?

Dr. Gunter: I used to when I first started online, but not now, and if a guy, I mean, I, I’m, if a guy sent me a dick pic on a dating platform I would, you know, just block him. I, I just, I personally, I love the penis I’m with. I don’t personally think penises otherwise are beautiful.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: And, you know –

Sarah: I don’t need them showing up randomly!

Dr. Gunter: I really don’t. I feel we live in a penis-centric society, so I don’t really, like, need that in my life, but the, the penis that I’m with I think is glorious. That’s this, that’s how I want to be. But everybody’s different, and some people love it. I mean, I know someone who won’t go out with a guy unless she gets a dick pic first.

Sarah: No kidding!

Dr. Gunter: Yes, and she’s very upfront about that, and you would not – the roll of dick pics on her phone, I’m just like, oh my God!

Sarah: [Laughs] That’s a very special album.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah. I’m like, I just don’t want that. I, I don’t, I, I don’t want that cluttering up my memory, man. You know, because I want to like the whole person, and the penis is attached to the whole person, and I want to like the way someone smells or the way someone tastes, and I want to like how I feel sitting next to them, so I, I want the whole package. I’m at heart a hopeless romantic.

Sarah: Oh yeah. Yeah, me too. It’s part of why I made romance my whole, like, job.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: So are there any books that you would like to tell readers about? And I have a list of erotic romances and recommendations for you.

Dr. Gunter: Any books that I would like to tell people about. One of the best books that I would recommend for people who are interested in learning about libido would be Better Sex Through Mindfulness by Dr. Lori Brotto, B-R-O-T-T-O. She’s a Ph.D. sex researcher at the University of British Columbia, and the majority of low libido actually can be really well treated with mindfulness; it’s very effective. And so for people wanting, people who find that maybe their libido is flagging with their current partner, that might be a great book for them. That would be my recommendation.

Sarah: That’s an excellent recommendation!

Dr. Gunter: Yeah!

Sarah: I was reading a book on, I think it was something tantric, and I had to stop reading it because it was so extremely patriarchal, assigning very specific gender norms, and also really heteronormative, to a point where I was like, I’m, I am in a heterosexual relationship, and this is bothering me.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] Right!

Sarah: So, yeah, I’ve got to tap out here. I, this, this sounds, like, so interesting. Thank you for the recommendation! Oh, I’m very excited.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! And I think another, a good book for women who partner with men, who maybe aren’t getting the sexual experience that they want –

Sarah: Yeah!

Dr. Gunter: – a good book is She Comes First.

Sarah: Oh! Awesome!

Dr. Gunter: And I, unfortunately, I don’t, I don’t know the author’s name off the top of my head.

Sarah: That’s all right; I can look it up. It’s part of my job.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah.

Sarah: No worries. Have you –

Dr. Gunter: But yes –

Sarah: – have you read Come As You Are?

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! It, it’s a great book! I read it when it came out, and yeah! It’s also a great book, so yeah!

Sarah: ‘Cause one of the things I love about Emily Nagoski is that she also wrote romance fiction very heavily focused on consent, and one of the things she talks about in, in Come, in Come As You Are, which I had never read about before was arousal nonconcordance, where there’s physical signs of arousal, but you’re not actually aroused, and her –

Dr. Gunter: Yeah!

Sarah: – and her romance novels, written as Emily Foster, address all of these elements of repeated active consent, and it’s super hot! All right.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah! No, I think it’s really good. I mean, we, we are, we are also learning so many things about the female response cycle that, you know, we have forever, and the Masters and Johnson view of the female sex response cycle was really quite patriarchal, was that, this idea that women have, always have a high spontaneous libido like men, and I would actually say that that kind of toxic masculine thinking also affects men negatively.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: And so that women can come to sex for many different reasons, and sometimes they initiate sex because of libido, and sometimes they initiate sex ‘cause they want to feel close or they want to feel comforted, so there are going to be many different ways. And the also thing is that when you focus on orgasm, which is sort of like, everybody’s always, like, interested in the money shot, right?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Gunter: Like, if you, and if you look at even just – and I’m not talking about porn – if you look at, like, any show that has sex in it, it’s basically, the implication is penetration, and like four seconds later she’s arched her back and coming, right?

Sarah: Ka-boom! Yeah.

Dr. Gunter: Like, as if! And, and so it’s this idea when you focus on the money shot, you take out the pleasure, and so I always tell people you need to focus on pleasure.

Sarah: Yes.

Dr. Gunter: What feels good.

Sarah: Very true. All right, can I give you some recommendations?

Dr. Gunter: Yes! I’m all ears!

Sarah: Okay, so one book that just came out that does, that talks about dating and ghosting and is actually about a person who runs a dating app is called The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai, R-A-I. I am friends with Alisha. I thought this book was just truly amazing.

Dr. Gunter: Wonderful!

Sarah: And it’s not super erotic, but it has wonderful, emotional sex scenes, and it deals with mental health and emotional health, and the hero is a former football player who’s dealing with concussive in-, injuries in his family and is taking a lot of heat from his family and his community for speaking up against football and concussive injuries.

Dr. Gunter: Oh.

Sarah: It’s got a lot, it’s a lot of, of layers that are going to bring the two characters together? But if you are looking for extremely hot –

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – some of these have some BDSM, if that is not your thing –

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – but this, these recommendations come from Amanda Diehl, who is the co-pilot of the SS Smart Bitches and really good at making recommendations, so these are her suggestions for you.

Dr. Gunter: Okay.

Sarah: Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren.

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: And then, in terms of BDSM, Toxic Desire by Robin Lovett, L-O-V-E-T-T.

Dr. Gunter: Mm-hmm?

Sarah: The Rough Riders series by Lorelei James, which is erotic cowboy romances, and there’s hetero –

Dr. Gunter: Oh my God.

Sarah: – homosexual, polyamorous, triads. There is so much kinky sex. There are ropes, there’s hay bales, there’s – it’s, it’s pretty amazing.

Dr. Gunter: Oh my God, but also, though, too, so there are two football teams in Canada called the Rough Riders.

Sarah: Yes! Oh yes.

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs] So –

Sarah: Oh yes.

Dr. Gunter: – so I love that as well. Oh my God, that’s awesome, and, and, yeah, I have a particular fondness for cowboys, I do.

Sarah: Well, there you go. And the Loving on the Edge series by Roni Loren, L-O-R-E-N.

Dr. Gunter: Okay!

Sarah: And if you ever need more recommendations, please always feel free to email me, because that’s literally what we do.

Dr. Gunter: So you know what book also I found very erotic was The Song of Achilles.

Sarah: Really? Ah, you are not the first person to tell me that, that that is some hot, hot history right there.

Dr. Gunter: That was, every word, it was so erotic and so – yeah. I, I, I was going through a period of time where I was sort of having a long-distance relationship with someone, and we, we read it over the phone to each other.

Sarah: Oh, geeze Louise! [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: How hot is that, right?

Sarah: That is seriously smoking. My gosh.

Dr. Gunter: Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, we read, we took turns reading different chap-, you know, we went, you know, we went back and forth and back and forth, and I, I had no idea what to expect from the book, and I didn’t know, you know, about, that there were these sex scenes. I had no idea, and so, yeah, so we read Song of Achilles back and forth to each other.

Sarah: Okay, that’s seriously hot.

Dr. Gunter: Isn’t it?

Sarah: That’s –

Dr. Gunter: And sadly it never really worked out otherwise, but I still have that memory, and it’s really fucking hot.

Sarah: Uh yeah, and –

Dr. Gunter: [Laughs]

Sarah: – I mean, the, the hot memory is worth, worth it alone, right? [Laughs]

Dr. Gunter: A hot memory is worth it, so find, find you a partner who’ll read Song of Achilles to you over the phone.

Sarah: Okay!

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of the episode. I want to thank Dr. Gunter for hanging out with me as she got ready to go on book tour. She is on tour now, and I will link to the locations where she will be promoting The Vagina Bible, and of course you can get your own copy of The Vagina Bible wherever books are sold. It is on sale now. You can also find Dr. Jen Gunter on her website, drjengunter.com, and on Twitter and Instagram, she’s also @DrJenGunter – incredibly easy to find.

And if you would like to reach out to me or you have suggestions or ideas or comments or questions, or you just want to tell me a bad joke, ‘cause you know I love them, you can email me at [email protected], or you can leave me a message at 1-201-371-3272.

This podcast episode was brought to you by The Scotsman Who Swept Me Away by Hannah Howell. New York Times bestselling author Hannah Howell brings the proud heart of the Scottish spirit to life in her magnificent Seven Brides for Seven Scotsmen series set during the American Civil War. Another MacEnroy brother has come to the heroic aid of a young woman on the coast of New England to help protect her land and legacy, and perhaps her heart as well. Geordie MacEnroy envisions a beautiful life for himself beside her, but a woman who has fought so fearlessly for her home may not willingly surrender all for his love. The Scotsman Who Swept Me Away is on sale now wherever books are sold. For more information, visit kensingtonbooks.com.

The podcast transcript this week is brought to you by our Patreon community. If you would have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches, monthly pledges start at one dollar, and each and every pledge keeps the show going and makes every episode accessible to everyone! Thank you to our Patreon supporters for providing the transcript for this episode, and thank you to garlicknitter for compiling this week’s transcript as well. [You’re welcome! – gk]

The music you are listening to is provided by Sassy Outwater. You can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater. This is “Mackerel & Tatties” by Michael McGoldrick from his album Aurora. You can find the album and the song wherever you buy your funky, funky music.

I have a preview of what’s coming up on Smart Bitches, because holy cow, the season of excellent books continues. Seriously, September is something else if you like reading, which I assume you do because you’re listening to this show. We have reviews coming up for The Magnolia Sword, which is the new Sherry Thomas YA about Mulan, plus we have reviews for Gideon the Ninth, which Amanda could not be more excited about, and she in fact talked about it on this here show. We have so many great releases this week, plus we have Books on Sale, Help a Bitch Out, and Cover Snark on Monday, so I hope you will stop by and hang out with us at smartbitchestrashybooks.com.

I will have links to all of the things that we talked about. So, so many things. I’m looking at my link list right now like, wow! I got a lot of things. It’s so – I love a good episode with lots of links. And, of course, I will link to all the books we mentioned as well.

As always, I close with a terrible joke, and this one is so bad! I’m so excited about this joke ‘cause it’s so bad. Okay. [Clears throat] Serious podcaster voice:

What is the fastest growing city on Earth?

Give up? What’s the fastest growing city on Earth?

The capital of Ireland. It’s Dublin every day.

[Laughs] It’s doubling every day! I hope that if you are Irish you just groaned really loudly. That joke is from Reddit from /Newbosterone, and I – [laughs more] – it’s Dublin every day!

On behalf of everyone here and myself, we wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend. We will see you back here next week.

[charming music]