Response to Dr. Jen Gunter Regarding "My Vagina Is Terrific. Your Opinion About It Is Not."

by David Balashinsky

Last fall, Dr. Jen Gunter published this powerful and, I would argue, long-overdue essay in the New York Times.  It is no secret that women have been subjected to body-shaming and genital-shaming for a long time and it is no secret that women's insecurities about their bodies and vulvas have also been exploited for financial gain for a long time.  Dr. Gunter was properly fed up and so decided that the time had come to speak up.  I am glad she did, not only because I agree with most of what she has written here but also because I fervently believe that the culture of contempt for female bodies and genitalia needs to be combated and combated vociferously and publicly.  There are probably few as well qualified to do so as Dr. Gunter.

But I see another value in Dr. Gunter's essay in that it can serve as a conversation-starter on the obverse question: What about women's attitudes toward men's genitals?  That question is, not unreasonably, entirely omitted from Gunter's essay but this, I fear, can leave the reader with the erroneous impression that the intricately related phenomena of ignorance about the genitalia of the opposite sex, revulsion for the genitalia of the opposite sex and genital-shaming that Gunter criticizes is entirely unilateral: that men have disdain for women's genitalia but the feeling is not mutual.  (Or that, if it is, at least women are discreet enough to keep their opinions to themselves.)  This seems to be the central premise of Gunter's essay.  As 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.

These women all shared something: They were told these things by men.  While I admit this is anecdotal data, my years of listening to secret shame about healthy vaginas and vulvas seems to suggest it is largely, if not entirely, male partners who exploit vaginal and vulvar insecurities as a weapon of emotional abuse and control.

Gunter is arguing here, as she does throughout her essay, not only that men are wont to criticize and "mansplain" women's genitalia but that this unfortunate tendency is a one-way street: that men feel entitled to opine and do opine about women's genitalia whereas women feel no such entitlement and seldom take such liberties.  Moreover, that women suffer some pretty horrendous consequences as a result of the genital-shaming to which they are subjected by men, whereas men do not suffer the same (let alone worse) consequences as a result of the genital-shaming to which they are subjected by women.  Gunter's twin hypotheses, then, are that a distaste for the genitalia of the opposite sex is entirely one-sided as is the sense of entitlement that men have to express that distaste.  I dispute both of these hypotheses.

While I do not dispute Dr. Gunter's criticism of men who express revulsion or contempt for the natural female vulva (their loss, I say), nor of her criticism of the expression of their opinions, uninvited, on the topic of women's genitalia, I do dispute the notion that ignorance, fear and loathing of the genitalia of the opposite sex are uniquely male attributes.  While Gunter is certainly justified in criticizing men in her essay, she treats it as a foregone conclusion that women themselves are never guilty of exactly the same sort of genital-shaming of men.

Yet as anyone active on social media nowadays can attest, whenever the subject of penises comes up, and particularly in the context of the movement to end male genital mutilation (or "circumcision"), there is never any dearth of women offering innumerable comments on the topic of the male prepuce with just as much ignorance about and contempt for that natural and functional part of male anatomy as Gunter rightfully complains men demonstrate with respect to the female vulva. Women routinely make comments to the effect that the male prepuce is disgusting, that it smells bad, that it's ugly, that it's weird, that it just doesn't belong there and that, because men are such pigs by nature and incapable of performing even the most rudimentary sort of personal hygiene, their prepuces ought to be surgically removed at birth.

For example, responding to a posted story on Facebook about the decreased incidence of non-therapeutic infant circumcision, one woman had this to say:

A sad piece of news for women who are afraid of, or grossed out by, uncircumcised penises.  Also a sad piece of news for uncircumcised American boys who hope to have any kind of sex life with American women. 

All health  concerns aside, I just can't sleep with an uncircumcised man.  It's like an alien penis to me.  And I know I'm not alone in my fear and revulsion.

Here are some other random examples - all comments made by women:

Well we all know who the uncircumcised people are on this post!  Nobody wants a pig in the blanket peepee that's prone to getting infections!

They're are ugly.

I was called nasty as fuck because I equated an uncircumcised penis to an elephant trunk!

Prob cuz hes gonna be sending dick pics in 15 years and aint no one wanna see a pic of an uncircumcised pic

Give it up, turtleneck.

If your bf won't circumcise himself for you he don't love you

That had to be a butcher not a Dr circumcision is the best for a male it is cleaner

OMG they are now on the corner near the mall protesting circumcision   I can only imagine what fighting for the extra skin is all about! smdh

Men have a hard enough time changing there underwear non the left cleaning under foreskin.  Saves you an extra step in the shower with it gone.  Why are they complaining?

really of all the things I the world to stand for your foreskin?  Let the babies be aborted the flag stomped on and the innocent shot but omg don't let them take my foreskin for the love of God save my dick skin

But it's sooooooo ugly!  I say continue to remove it!  Who wants to be with an ant eater!  Lol

OMG GET A LIFE ITS NOT HEALTHY!!!!!!! and it looks gross

(By the way, consider this a general sic for all of the above.)
  
I think it worth pointing out here that these women are not just shaming individual men's penises "as a weapon of abuse or control" but are doing so specifically in support of a non-consensual and irreversible surgical modification of infants' genitals as a matter of general practice. 

Criticizing a woman's genitalia is, as far as I'm concerned, boorish, ungallant and unmanly.  And criticizing a woman's genitalia specifically "as a weapon of abuse or control" is abusive.  Such behavior is contemptible and I am ashamed of any man (or woman, for that matter) who would stoop so low.

Yet I wonder how Gunter would feel if men in our society argued for female genital mutilation in accordance with their own peculiar tastes in vulvas as often as women in our society argue - openly and without a trace of compunction - for male genital mutilation in accordance with their own peculiar tastes in penises.  I wonder how Gunter would feel if the vile comments directed at her and her vulva did not stop at mere criticism but actually endorsed her or her daughters' or her sisters' or her patients' actually being subjected against their will to genital cutting.

How often are intact men subjected to genital shaming in our society - in movies, on television, in stand-up comedy, and now on social media?  And how often are male victims of forced genital cutting told by women - whose genital integrity is protected by federal and state statutes - that the prepuce is "just extra skin," that "your parents did you a favor by having it cut off," that "it has no sensation, anyway" and to "stop whining"?  Could a man (or woman, for that matter) publish a column in a nationally recognized media platform suggesting that those who oppose female circumcision do so largely because they have psychological problems?   Could a man publish a piece in the New York Post (the same publication that Gunter criticized for its erroneous headline about her) belittling women who object to having been subjected to forced genital cutting and suggesting that they "find new hobbies," rather than spending their time protesting in order to bring about an end to this quintessential human rights violation?  I don't think so.  Insofar as ignorance, unbidden and derogatory comments about genitalia are concerned, everything that Gunter criticizes men for saying about women's vulvas are things that women themselves say about men's prepuces.  It's no worse when men do it and it's no better when women do it.  Both are wrong. 

The sense of outrage with which Dr. Gunter receives unsolicited and derogatory comments by men about her or other women's vulvas is perfectly understandable.  I share that outrage.  My question for Dr. Gunter is, Do you share mine?  If these men were openly justifying non-consensual labiaplasty or other forms of female genital surgery as a prophylaxis against the accumulation of smegma and its associated odors within the skin-folds of the vulva, I can only imagine that Gunter's outrage would be commensurately greater.  Yet having to listen to advocacy on behalf of precisely this sort of genital surgery and for precisely this reason (as well as numerous other equally specious reasons) is what men in our society are subjected to routinely.  Worse, as infants, they are subjected, routinely, to the surgery itself.

Gunter writes, "The era in which men can shame women for their perfectly healthy vaginas is now coming to an end."  One can only hope so.  I, for one, would equally welcome an end to the era in which women can shame men for their perfectly healthy intact penises.

 

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David Balashinsky is originally from New York City and now lives near the Finger Lakes region of New York. He is a licensed physical therapist and writes about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.
 

 

The Kavanaugh Travesty: What It Reveals About and What It Portends for America

by David Balashinsky

The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as the 114th associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States reveals several demoralizing truths about democracy in the United States of America.  Chief among these is that we are not, in fact, living in a democracy.  As Michael Tomasky has explained, we now have "two Supreme Court justices who deserve to be called 'minority-majority': justices who are part of a five-vote majority on the bench but who were nominated and confirmed by a president and Senate [respectively] who represent the will of a minority of the American people."  This is, in part, due to the existence of the electoral college which installed Donald J. Trump as president of the United States despite his having lost the popular vote to his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who beat Trump by several million votes.  A majority of Americans who voted in 2016 chose Clinton as our next president.  Thanks to the electoral college, the losing side won.  That's not democracy.

It's also due to the constitutionally-established structure of congress which was created, in part, to guarantee a disproportionate amount of power to low-population states, which is why each state, irrespective of the size of its population, gets two senators.  At about the time the constitution was ratified (1788), the population of the fledgling United States was about 4 million.  By way of comparison, the population of Great Britain at the time was about twice that and the population of France about six times that.  In 1790, the population of free white males 16 or older in Pennsylvania was 110,788 while that of Delaware was 11,783, a ratio of almost 10 to one.  The total population of Virginia (the most populous state) in the 1790 census was 747,610 while the total population of Delaware (the least populous) was 59,094, a ratio of 12.7 to one.  It's impossible not to conclude that what might have been palatable to the delegates to the Constitutional Convention as a compromise between large-population states and small-population states in a nation of 4 million with disparities in populations between the states of no more than twelve-fold at the most (depending upon how - and who - one counts) is a gross perversion of democracy in a nation of 325 million.  (Of course, the failure of the original constitution to do away with slavery was an even greater perversion of democracy, and its accommodation by means of the Three-Fifths Compromise was intrinsic to the apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives and to the number of electors in the Electoral College.) 

Few political events illustrate this better than the Senate's confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as an associate justice of the Supreme Court.  Consider this: Only the Senate - not the House of Representatives - gets to confirm or reject a nominee to the Supreme Court.  That means that Wyoming, for example, with a population of about 573,000 people, gets as many votes for Kavanaugh (or any other nominee) as California, with its population of 39 million people.  Here's some simple math:  Thirty-nine million divided by 573 thousand equals 68.  That means that each resident of Wyoming has 68 times as much clout in determining the ideological make-up of the Supreme Court as each resident of California.  Not only is that disparity multiplied across the United States but the political repercussions of these disparities are magnified also, since these disparities in proportional representation (by population) in the Senate give much more power to Republican and conservative voters relative to Democrat and progressive voters.  That is because low-population states (like Wyoming) tend to be Republican and conservative while high-population states, like California, tend to be Democrat and progressive.   Whatever the authors of the constitution intended in the 18th century, the result in the 21st is de facto affirmative action for Republicans and conservatives.  (This built-in advantage for Republicans and conservatives has been enhanced, unconscionably, still further by aggressive Republican political gerrymandering and Republican voter-suppression laws.)  That's not democracy either.

Now that the Supreme Court of the United States has a solid right-wing majority (which is being called, charitably, the most conservative court in close to a century) it's almost impossible to conceive of the amount of damage that can and will be done to the nation, to the principle and practice of democracy in the United States and to its citizens, particularly to women, LGBTQ citizens, ethnic and religious minorities, workers, consumers, borrowers, students, people who need affordable health-care or will need it at some point in the future, non-Republican voters and people who breathe air and drink water.  There is virtually no law or regulation that has been passed or promulgated to protect the interests, rights and well-being of the aforementioned that the masterminds behind Kavanaugh's installation on the Supreme Court will not now in all probability seek to have overturned.

Perhaps none of these rights is more important - and now more threatened - than the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy.  Despite Kavanaugh's assurances to Senator Collins that he had not "made commitments or pledges to anyone at the White House, to [the] Federalist Society, or any outside group on how he would decide cases," (and we know, from his testimony before the Senate,  to what extent Kavanaugh's veracity may be relied upon), it remains an incontrovertible part of the public record that, during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to nominate to the Supreme Court only judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade.

It is exquisitely perverse that the man now empowered to cast the deciding vote to do just that should be a man who, in his youth, may very well have committed a sexual assault and, thus, this nomination and confirmation also reveal a great deal about the state of women's rights and victims' rights in the United States.  Installing such a man - even one with only unproved allegations of sexual assault against him - on the Supreme Court constitutes an affront of monumental proportions to women and to women's bodily autonomy.  Kavanaugh will now, and for the remainder of his life, have the power to make decisions about the most intimate aspects of women's sexual lives and about their bodies up to and including decisions that will determine whether they live or die. 

In reference to the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party sometime around 1982, Kavanaugh's defenders have lamented the lack of a presumption of innocence to which they claim he was entitled.  But, leaving aside the numerous ways in which Kavanaugh has proved himself to be wholly unfit for a seat on the Supreme Court, the fact remains that Kavanaugh was not charged with a crime and that is why the notion of a presumption of innocence is a red herring.  That principle applies in criminal proceedings, as it should, because state power should be limited at least to the extent that the state must meet the burden of proof in order to obtain a conviction.  If the state is purposing to deprive a citizen of life or liberty, its justification for doing so - hence its right to do so - had better reach a pretty high bar.  That's the burden of proof along with the presumption of innocence that are, together, the bedrock of western jurisprudence.  But those principles do not apply when someone is applying for a job, whether as a cashier or as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Even if one feels obliged, in the absence of absolute proof one way or the other, to give equal weight to Blasey's allegations and Kavenaugh's denials, the fact remains that, if Blasey were lying but the Senate believed her and, as a result, denied Kavenaugh a seat on the Supreme Court, the only injustice that would have been done would be to have wrongly denied Kavenaugh the seat.  On the other hand, if Kavenaugh were lying (or merely mistakenly believed himself to be innocent of the allegations because he committed the assault in a blacked-out state of drunkenness), the Senate's believing him and granting him a seat on the Court compounds the original injustice of his alleged sexual assault of Blasey.  In this case, not only would a sexual-assault victim be denied the dignity and justice of being believed but her attacker would be rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.  On balance, and faced with the prospect of not knowing with absolute certainty whom to believe and thus having to risk doing an injustice to one of the parties - Blasey or Kavanaugh - the Senate was left in the unenviable position of having to choose between two possible injustices.  But given that choice, ought the Senate not to have chosen the lesser of those two possible injustices?   And which is the lesser and which the greater of these two injustices?  That of an innocent man wrongly denied a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court?  Or that of a guilty man wrongly granted a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court?  To me, the answer is obvious. 

It has been argued that if Kavanaugh is, indeed, innocent, then the harm that may have been done to him transcends the harm (if one may call it that) of not getting a seat on the Court.  After all, it is difficult to wipe away the stain on one's personal and professional reputation of an allegation of sexual assault.  (Unless, of course, one happens to be Donald Trump, for whom committing sexual assault is something to boast about.)  Obviously, a false allegation of sexual assault can take an enormous toll on one's personal and professional life.  But an actual sexual assault will, even more obviously, take an even greater toll on one's personal and professional life.  That is the context in which Blasey's allegations and the shameful way in which the Senate responded to them must be viewed.  The manner in which Kavanaugh's defenders have sought to dismiss and delegitimize Blasey's allegations are of a piece with the manner in which victims of sexual assault have historically and routinely been silenced and their claims dismissed.  It is the rape victims, themselves, who are typically, in effect, put on trial: "What were you wearing?"  "What were you doing at his house without a chaperone?"  "Had you been drinking?"  "Did you lead him on?"  "Why didn't you fight back harder?"  "Why didn't you report this to the authorities when it happened?"  "Why didn't you tell your parents?"  The societal practice of blaming the victims of sexual assault is only one of many reasons why they are reluctant to come forward and report the crime.  

Here, too, then, society must choose between two competing but grossly unequal injustices.  If sexual-assault victims are made to feel that it is they who are the ones on trial, they will seldom report their assaults and they will even more rarely get justice.  Conversely, if we presume in all cases that someone alleging a sexual assault is telling the truth, then it's certainly possible that some innocent persons' reputations will be wrongly tarnished (and even some innocent persons falsely convicted, as has occurred in rare cases) with false allegations.  Studies, however, have demonstrated that this rarely occurs.  The reality is that the number of sexual assaults that go unreported and unpunished dwarf, by orders of magnitude, the number of confirmed cases of false sexual-assault allegations.  That being the case, while it is unfair to those rare victims of false sexual-assault allegations to be personally or professionally harmed by them, I believe that society has a much greater and more urgent interest in protecting actual sexual-assault victims who are much greater in number and much more egregiously harmed.  (And, of course, in criminal law, the accused enjoys the presumption of innocence and convictions for sexual assault remain notoriously difficult to obtain.)  After all - and let's not lose sight of the big picture here - I think we can agree that it's much, much worse to be actually raped than to be falsely accused of rape.  And it's certainly much, much worse to be sexually assaulted than not to get a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States.