Vagina A Re-Education - Lynn Enright

This post is probably going to send the spam I get about gynaecology clinics in Hanoi into overdrive. So be it.

I've more or less read this book twice now, it's looking distinctly battered after weeks of being carted around, and the margins are full of notes. It's a long time since I read something that felt so important and life changing. Better yet, it looks like there are a few nooks about vaginas and vulvas in the offing.

I'm in my mid 40's,  have had pcos and period related issues since my late teens, and thought I was reasonably knowledgeable - turns out there's a lot I didn't know I didn't know. I really wish a book like this had been available 30 years ago, not even for the questions it answers, but for the ones it asks, the language it gives you, and the conversations it encourages.

The language is the first, and maybe most important, thing here. My family isn't noticibly prudish, neither are my friends but vagina or vulva are seldom used words - it's always euphemisms. But if you're not comfortable using the correct terms it makes it so much harder to have a conversation with your GP if something seems off, and so much easier to have concerns brushed aside. Enright normalises the vocabulary and that alone is a gift.

So is her repeated, and very sensible, advice to see a doctor if you have concerns about periods, pain, or changes - my experience is that women are not told this enough or generally given much idea of what might be a cause for concern. I had 20 years of being brushed off by GP's before being lucky enough to get an appointment with a gynaecologist who was so indignant on my behalf that thinking about it still makes me cry (mostly with gratitude, a bit of anger). I hope that things are getting better, but chances are they're not changing that quickly, and we need all the information we can get.

I also really appreciate how open Enright has been about her own experiences. There's a lot of personal information in here of the sort that people don't generally share even with the closest of friends, again maybe because we don't always have the language to do it. Not particularly wanting to talk about something is okay, but not knowing how to, or feeling you can't is another thing altogether. The discussions I've had about this book with friends have led to a ridiculous amount of penny dropping moments (a lot of people are going to get a copy as a present this year).

The amount of discussion reading this has sparked has been enlightening as well. The chapters cover biology and geography (for want of a better word), orgasms, appearances, periods, fertility,
menopause, pregnancy, and more. Feminism is central, but it's not an easily definable book. It's more or less an overview of a whole lot of things, and if it's specifically pitched at anyone I'd guess it's girls in their teens - who in many ways would be the demographic most in need of a lot of this information.

Really though a book like this should be a household staple, if you have a vagina, or know someone who does there's going to be useful stuff for you in here. It's not a perfect book - I think the chapter on fertility or the lack of it could have had something about women who choose not to have, or accept that they cannot have children, and how society views that. But then each chapter could be expanded into a book of its own, and at least this book is a conversation opener.

What it does brilliantly is underline the range of experience that falls under normal. Again, when I was hitting puberty the books available described periods as something easy that you would sail through (descriptions like The Curse, or A Woman's Monthly Duty, suggested differently) with no real acknowledgment of how painful or limiting they can be. It's the same when we talk about pregnancy, we don't talk about miscarriage much at all for something so common. It's only because I have a friend who has been vocal about it that I now know ante natal depression is a thing.

Menopause isn't mentioned much either apart from not very funny jokes. Maybe because to acknowledge it would be to admit that we ought to be making more effort, especially in the workplace, to accommodate women going through it. To be able to read about all of these things in a way that feels honest, and points you in the direction of more information, is huge.