The Vagina Bible Quotes

“It’s a vagina, not a piña colada.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Vaginal cleaning will damage the good bacteria and mucus, increasing a woman’s chance of odor, bacterial vaginosis, and sexually transmitted infections.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Does your doctor get money from Big Pharma? You can look them up on Dollars for Docs, a service from ProPublica”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“I call these types of interventions, like wearing cotton underwear or emptying your bladder after sex, the burden of “well, it can’t hurt”. But they truly are a burden. Every time we make a woman jump through a useless hoop to get better, we add a burden, be it financial, or emotional, or the exasperation of doing so many things and yet realizing that you are running very hard but not getting anywhere.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Of all genital injuries in the emergency department, 3 percent are due to pubic hair removal.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“We don’t shake hands, eat, or cut raw chicken with our vulvas.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“The clitoris, when it was considered by ancient physicians at all, was believed to be the female version of the penis. But lesser. (I’m sorry, but the organ, capable of multiple orgasms, that only exists for pleasure is not lesser. It is the gold standard”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“There is a culture of silence about aging vulvas and vaginas.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“The first depiction of female pubic hair in Western art wasn’t until Goya’s The Naked Maja in the late 19th century, and this was apparently outrageous even though just a few wisps are barely visible.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“That, and the patriarchy is a relentless foe.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Instead of intimate wipes, they should be called irritant wipes.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Don’t choose Goop’s infamous jade egg, touted as a secret sexual practice of ancient Chinese empresses and concubines. There is no evidence they were anything of the sort, and the idea that these jade eggs are somehow known to a for-profit business in California yet unknown to scholars is, shall we say, somewhat suspect.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“There is a strong mind-body connection so depression and anxiety are important cofactors for pain. They don't cause it but they are accelerants. Think of whatever causes your pain as the match that started a fire. Depression and anxiety are fuel on that fire. It is hard to put out a fire when someone is dousing it with gasoline.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina—Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Sourdough starters scavenge wild yeasts like Saccharomyces exiguus, Candida milleri, and Candida humilis from the environment, which do not cause vaginal yeast infections (they also scavenge S. cerevisiae). If”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“The women’s bladders filled remarkably fast during sexual stimulation. There was urine before orgasm and their bladders were empty after squirting. The squirted fluid was identified in the lab as urine. Why does this happen? It is possible when women report squirting that they are simply having an orgasm strong enough for the pelvic floor muscles to empty their bladder, which is why it is associated with heightened pleasure. It is also possible that a more intense sexual response could result in a faster filling of the bladder. It is also possible that some women have a lot of transudate—meaning they get very wet—during sex. When they orgasm, that fluid could come out all at once.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“We are also going to invite the anus to the vulva’s party, even though technically it is part of the gastrointestinal tract and not the reproductive tract.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“melanin absorbs and reflects ultraviolet light and provides protection from the sun, melanocytes also respond to biological, physical, and chemical stimuli and are part of the immune system.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“The clitoris has one purpose: sexual pleasure. It is the only structure in the human body solely designed for pleasure.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“general anatomy book (1984) devoted three pages of illustrations (two in color) to the penis, with the clitoris relegated to an inset image in an upper outer corner—and the entire structure is the worst shade of puce. It’s also called a “miniature penis.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“penis-centric view of female sexuality, and the belief propagated by Freud’s work that the clitoris was unimportant are a lot of obstacles to overcome. The clitoris, being largely internal, is practically also harder to study than the penis. Eventually, anatomic studies using female cadavers to dissect the clitoris were allowed, but it is important to note the limitations of the work. Most cadaveric studies involve a few bodies; seven is considered a”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“For many years, discussing female sexuality in the doctor’s office was taboo, but that oppression is not a failing unique to medicine. In 1938, a Los Angeles teacher, Helen Hulick, was held in contempt of court for daring to show up in pants to testify as a witness and for refusing to change into a dress when the male judge insisted. She was given a five-day jail sentence. Much of women’s health, especially sexual health, was deemed unimportant or irrelevant because that is how women were viewed.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“By 1844, the anatomist Georg Ludwig Kobelt published such detailed work that his anatomic descriptions of the clitoris rival those we have today. However, his work was essentially ignored (as was almost everything that had led up to it), likely due to a combination of the expansion of Victorian beliefs (essentially the dangers of female sexuality) and Freud popularizing the false belief that the clitoris produced an “immature” orgasm.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“advancements are memorialized in the names of the structures they accurately described—Gabriele Fallopio (fallopian tubes; also invented the first condom and studied it in a clinical trial!) and Caspar Bartholin (Bartholin’s glands).”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“wasn’t confined to medicine. Think about all those ancient Greek statues with defined scrotum and penises (although the penises are on the small side because sexuality was apparently at odds with intellectual pursuits and so a big brain, not a big penis, was the ideal). The vulvas of the time were but mysterious mounds concealed by crossed legs.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“not really a small point; it is a wonderful (in a tragicomic kind of way) encapsulation of how society, including medicine, is obsessed with erections, while the clitoris barely registers as a footnote. The clitoris, when it was considered by ancient physicians at all, was believed to be the female version of the penis. But lesser. (I’m sorry, but the organ, capable of multiple orgasms, that only exists for pleasure is not lesser. It is the gold standard.)”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“there is a belief among many academics that Hippocrates wasn’t even a real person)”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“In addition, many things that women have been taught about their bodies and medical conditions that affect the vulva and vagina are incorrect.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Emptying your bladder after sex does not reduce infections.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Cranberry juice, widely touted for its ability to prevent UTIs, seems to be ineffective. Whether cranberry tablets and capsules are also as ineffective is not clear, but the studies are low quality.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine

“Stress is bad for every medical condition—many of the chemical changes in the nervous system with stress can lower the threshold for pain conditions.”
― Jennifer Gunter, The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine