"I have listened to women with completely normal exams weep that they have been told that they do not smell or taste correctly."
She’s passionately advised against sticking jade eggs up your vagina, addressed abortion fallacies, and has even argued against why your partner should not use tape on the tip of his penis as birth control.
It’s no surprise therefore that her new op-ed in the New York Times, titled “My Vagina Is Terrific. Your Opinion About It Is Not” is full of her unique brand of outspoken wisdom. It begins with this: “There is a rash of men explaining vaginas to me.” That’s interesting considering, again, she’s a gyno, and oh, she has a vagina of her own and is obviously well-acquainted with the female anatomy.
“I know that many other women have had their vaginas explained to them, because for the past 25 years my career has been dedicated to treating vaginal and vulvar problems," she writes. "I have listened to women with completely normal exams weep that they have been told that they do not smell or taste correctly. That they are too wet, or too loose, or too gross.”
Gunter discusses how when she recently wrote a blog post about how she dumped a man for trying to "shame me about my healthy vagina," the post got picked up by the New York Post with the title: "My boyfriend dumped me because of my vagina smell." That’s when, she says, men starting trolling her on her blog and social media and giving her advice about how to prep hers properly for the enjoyment of men. "The state of my healthy vagina brought more scorn from men than anything I have ever written about—and I write about second-trimester abortions, so that is saying something," she writes.
“To the women who have been told they were too wet, too dry, too messy, too smelly, too gross, too saggy or too bloody, I have heard you,” she writes. And then she comes back with this beautiful bit of body positivity: “If someone speaks to you about your body with anything but kindness and concern, it is he who has a problem.”
She urges the mansplainers to either "listen and learn" or keep their shaming to themselves, adding, "The era in which men can shame women for their perfectly healthy vaginas is now coming to an end,” Gunter says. We sure hope so.