Her contribution
Jennifer Block explained the other day why she wrote that hit piece about Jen Gunter at the Scientific American blog:
I’ve been mulling this one for a while, about a troubling authoritarian streak in one prominent OB/GYN in particular. Then she went after Our Bodies Ourselves, as well as the fantastic Cosmopolitan Magazine piece on LEEPs, and Jennifer Lang wrote an open letter. So here’s my contribution.
There is no “troubling authoritarian streak.” It’s not “authoritarian” to say bullshit is bullshit; the reality is it helps people resist being conned and fleeced by people who sell quack “remedies” for big bucks. Gwyneth Paltrow is not being a friend to the downtrodden by peddling jade eggs and herbal miracle drinks. And as for Jennifer Lang’s open letter – Gunter points out that Lang is on the board of an anti-vaccine group.
Jennifer Block posted an hour ago to complain of being “trolled” on Twitter. What I’ve seen has been not trolling but reasoned criticism.
Thankfully I have a lot of support (and this Daily Beast piece calls my piece “the longest and most in-depth critique of Gunter’s work, drawing on the history of groups like Our Bodies Ourselves to explain how women taking control of their own health—and occasionally rebuffing their doctors—can be a feminist act.”) But damn, this is my first experience being trolled on Twitter. Wow what a cesspool. Thanks in advance for any supportive tweets/replies, but what a bad place for any meaningful discourse.
Meaningful discourse about the value of jade eggs and vaginal steaming, and the wickedness of saying they’re both useless and dangerous?
A doctor with a specialisation, talking about medical fact and fiction within her own specialisation… yup, authoritarian.
I’m always appalled when people think that “taking control” of personal choices means that any factual assumptions involved are now in personal territory. Or, at least, they become “personal” as soon as somebody criticizes them.
“X really works!”
“No, X doesn’t work.”
“X isn’t right for you, but it’s right for me.”
Were there errors in the original Our Bodies, Ourselves?
Authority is different from authoritarianism. I know In our anti-intellectual culture, expertise and authority are bad words. But one benefit of civilization is that we don’t have learn everything ourselves, from our own personal experience.
A great many women have faced doctors downplaying or ignoring their reported symptoms, gaslighting them, refusing utterly to conceive of sterilizing them before they’d already had children (or, on the contrary, sterilizing them without their knowledge or consent, depending on the era and the socio-ethnic background of the woman), misdiagnosing them for years, and generally treating them like breeding stock whose own experiences counted for very little.
In light of that (and more), there is an understandable urge for a different experience. And when you have a large body of underserved people who know they should expect better, you have a magnet for charismatic grifters and fools who are all too happy to sell the illusion of autonomy and empowerment. When these people set up industries and cultures catering to those illusions, eventually they seek to sustain themselves by aggravating the root of the problem.
It’s a damned shame that so many women have been harmed by the medical field, and a damned shame that so many are being harmed by hucksters promising liberation from it.
It sounds like Our Bodies, Ourselves served a purpose back when the medical community and studies were almost completely male dominated, but it doesn’t sound like it’s adapted sufficiently since then, accepting some medical advise but still prioritizing “lived experience” nonsense.
I have fond memories of Our Bodies, Ourselves. I had a copy of the original edition. I wish I’d held onto it!
Of course, after forty-odd years I can’t tell you if there was any woo in it (I was all of fifteen and likely wouldn’t have noticed). What I do remember is the extraordinary fact that there was this book that talked about women’s (and girls’) bodies, about sex and sexual pleasure, about periods and childbirth–a wealth of subversive knowledge, written entirely by women, for women! I felt quite daring and grown up, owning a copy.
And I learned a lot. I don’t recall having to unlearn any myths, so that’s good. But, forty-odd years.
At the time, myths about female sexuality were still common, and childbirth was still dominated by male physicians who routinely performed episiotomies (stitched up extra tight afterwards for daddy) and induced labor for their own convenience. It hadn’t been that long since women gave birth in Twilight Sleep, flat on their backs and strapped down on the table, while doctors dragged babied into the world with forceps.
I suspect Skeletor is right. It’s disgusting to think that Our Bodies, Ourselves is promoting woo in the name of women’s “lived experience” or Special Womanly/non-Western Ways of Knowing or whatever the popular babble for collaboration of wishful thinking and charlatanry. Once upon a time, it meant a lot to young women like me.
Yes, the answer to male ignorance and condescension to women isn’t exploitation of the ignorance of women about their own bodies, it’s to do the things that Jen Gunter is doing – women becoming medical practitioners, focusing on women, giving women their voice within the community of expertise that deals with their most intimate needs.
To trash a woman who is trying to help other women with genuine, evidence-based knowledge in favor of “I feel” nonsense is to play into the worst sort of stereotypes of mushy headed women unable to approach the world through logic; that plays into the idea that women need to be taken care of by the very men we are trying to free ourselves from.
I cannot comment on the article which has been censored. Let me decide what I think, if you don’t mind. Female doctors are often even more dictatorial and unsympathetic than males. Dr. Gunter may very well be authoritarian. I never pay much attention to doctors, myself. At 77 I have had so many doctors tell me so many things that turned out to wrong, sometimes dangerously wrong, it has made me skeptical.
Where is the banned article? I want to read it for myself.
What article which has been censored? Who is trying to prevent you from deciding what you think? What is the banned article you’re talking about? If you mean the blog post at SciAm online it’s right here, where it’s always been:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/doctors-are-not-gods/
And as for “Dr. Gunter may very well be authoritarian” – well anybody may well be anything, but it you’re going to announce in writing in public that specific person X is authoritarian, you ought to be able to back it up, which Block didn’t do.
Oh, I see it has been taken down; my mistake. I opened it and saw the title and illustration and didn’t bother to scroll down. Sorry.
It wasn’t “censored” though. It should never have been posted at SciAm in the first place.
It’s one thing to decide what you think; it’s another to decide what is real. Yes, doctors can be wrong. They are human. But so can auto mechanics, and I don’t wave woo sticks over my car to cure it, and I imagine almost all the people insisting they want to make their own health decisions would take their car to an auto mechanic, and would not be happy if said mechanic stuck jade eggs up the tailpipe to fix the car, or rubbed the car with essential oils.
I can decide what to think, but I will make better decisions if I have the information I need. I am a trained, working scientist, and I still go to the doctor when I am ill, because he knows things I do not know (I am an ecologist, and my specialty is plants; if your poison ivy is doing badly, i might be able to help). I am free to accept or reject his/her recommendations, but I would like to do so with the full evidence-based information available to me.
I go to an eye doctor for my glasses, not to a person who wants me to put leaves on my eyes or stick needles in my eyes to improve my eyesight. I go to a dentist for my teeth, not to someone who rubs herbs on my gums. I go to an editor when I want information on whether my sentences are accurately structured, and to a philosopher when I want to understand what the hell Kant was talking about, anyway. I go to a historian about historical questions. I go to a banker for my banking.
Most people I know do all of the above – until you get to the part about doctor. Then it’s all bets off. Oh, homeopathy! Herbals! Keto diets! Anything but evidence-based medicine. Why are we so sensible about so many of our gadgets, but so stupid about our body? If my car goes bad, I can buy another (at great expense, yes, but it can be done). If my body goes bad, I am stuck with it. I will not be able to buy another.
So, yeah, make your own decisions. But do it with full information and complete evidence, not based on some idea that whatever your doctor says, you’re going to ignore.
That’s why I waited until my doctor told me to go on a keto diet.