In short
A science-and-stories episode about vaginas and related pelvic organs, highlighting what researchers know, what they don’t, and how misinformation has shaped medical care and sexual pleasure.
Guest backgrounds
Rachel Gross is a science writer focused on sex and reproductive anatomy. She wrote Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. She reports on scientists and patients and emphasizes gaps in female-anatomy research.
Key claims
The clitoris is a complex, internal “connector” structure (not just a small nub) whose sole function is pleasure; Freud’s “vaginal orgasm” idea is biologically unsupported. Female anatomy has been studied far less than male anatomy, leaving major gaps (including vaginal microbiome and the biology of endometriosis). Misguided advice has led to harmful “nuclear option” treatments.
Notable examples
Dr. Blair Peters and Dr. Maria Oloko used tissue from trans men’s bottom surgeries to estimate clitoral nerve counts. Marie Bonaparte followed Freud by attempting clitoral repositioning surgery. Patti Brennan makes “vagina lollipops” using dental-latex molds (including on snakes). Endometriosis is described as “new hysteria,” and Rachel recounts being prescribed boric acid suppositories after a prolonged infection.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOExploring Vaginas with Rachel Gross
0:04 to 0:26
Hilary Frank interviews Rachel Gross about her book on vaginas and the gaps in scientific knowledge.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
Exploring Vaginas with Rachel Gross
0:57 to 4:04
Hilary Frank interviews Rachel Gross about her book on vaginas and the gaps in scientific knowledge.
“Today, we have an episode from our friends at the podcast, The Longest Shortest Time.”
The Anatomy of the Clitoris
4:04 to 6:44
Discussion on the structure and function of the clitoris, its sensitivity, and historical misconceptions.
“So your book, Vagina Obscura, walks us through female reproductive anatomy from the outside in.”
Historical Perspectives on the Clitoris
6:44 to 11:22
Rachel and Hilary discuss historical misconceptions about the clitoris and the contributions of Marie Bonaparte.
“And I basically kind of think of the penis and a clitoris as like exact same ingredients, different configuration.”
Marie Bonaparte's Research
11:22 to 14:00
The story of Marie Bonaparte's research on women's sexual health and orgasms.
“them exactly how they should experience pleasure.”
Marie Bonaparte's Research Journey
14:00 to 16:36
Learn about Marie Bonaparte's groundbreaking research on women's sexual health.
“and that she's kind of like envious for the rest of her life.”
Marie Bonaparte's Research Journey
17:23 to 18:20
Learn about Marie Bonaparte's groundbreaking research on women's sexual health.
“You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time.”
Exploring Vaginas and Their Complexity
18:57 to 28:00
Dive into the anatomy of vaginas and the lack of research compared to penises.
“Okay, let's move on in our journey and our voyage and talk about the vagina.”
Vaginal Health and Research Gaps
28:00 to 29:28
Discusses the lack of research on the vagina and its microbiome, revealing significant gaps in understanding.
“and for having reference models for vaginal reconstructive surgery, which we still don't really have.”
Understanding the Uterus and Ovaries
29:37 to 36:36
Explores the anatomy and functions of the uterus and ovaries, including myths and historical misconceptions.
“First, can you just remind us what these organs are?”
Show all 12 chapters
The Need for Comprehensive Research
36:37 to 38:14
Highlights the necessity for more research on female anatomy to improve healthcare outcomes.
“And I mean, look at our maternal death rate.”
Promoting Rachel's Book
38:15 to 38:46
Introduces Rachel's book 'Vagina Obscura' and provides resources related to female anatomy.
“Rachel's book about the vagina and friends is called Vagina Obscura.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Rachel E. Gross:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it.
0:17Hillary Frank:Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+.
0:25Rachel E. Gross:Amazon Health AI presents Painful Thoughts I, um, I can't stop scratching my downtown Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown Some things you'd rather type than say out loud There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7 Healthcare just got less painful
0:57Hillary Frank:This is Unexplainable.
0:58Rachel E. Gross:I'm Julia Longoria. Today, we have an episode from our friends at the podcast, The Longest Shortest Time.
1:06Hillary Frank:I've been a longtime listener of the show. Host Hilary Frank tells fascinating and heartbreaking stories about parenthood and reproductive health, but you definitely don't need to be a parent to listen. In the episode we'll share with you today, Hillary talks to science writer Rachel Gross about vaginas. Scientists know shockingly little about this part of the body, so Rachel went on a mission to find out why. Here's the host, Hillary Frank.
1:36Rachel E. Gross:Rachel Gross has a vivid memory of sex ed in fourth grade.
1:41Hillary Frank:Being in a dark room with all the other fourth grade girls and their moms learning about periods. And my mom was not there because she was like a doctor on call. But I remember like trying to understand and having never heard about a period and like asking a question. And I asked, so is it like peeing where you can control it and like hold it in? And they all laughed at me. Oh, that's such a good question. Thank you. All the moms laughed at me. But I, like, never, ever wanted to ask a question again after that. And I was left with this impression that, like, sex stuff was something you should already know.
2:21Hillary Frank:And if not, you shouldn't ask about it.
2:23Rachel E. Gross:But Rachel's need to ask about it could not be suppressed. In fact, she's made a career of asking about it. She's a science writer. And a lot of her work is about sex stuff, specifically the vagina. Rachel wrote a whole book about vaginas. It's called vagina obscura, an anatomical voyage. That's right, a voyage.
2:45Hillary Frank:I was really thinking about, like, Miss Frizzle and her magic school bus and kind of taking this deep dive into the human body as if it was, like, the core of the Earth or a planet out in space.
2:59Rachel E. Gross:This is The Longest Shortest Time. I'm Hilary Frank, and today you're in for a treat because Rachel Gross is here to take us on a vaginal voyage. You're going to learn things you didn't know, things I didn't know, things Rachel didn't know before writing this book. Here at The Longest Shortest Time, we love telling stories about stuff that's hard to understand. For example, our episode, Mama Don't Understand, about a mixed-race kid who tries to communicate to her white mom what it means to be Black through a freestyle rap. You can find it in your podcast feed. It's the episode right before this one.
3:36Now, when Rachel set out to write her book, her mission was to understand the vagina.
3:41Rachel E. Gross:And she did learn lots of cool stuff.
3:44Hillary Frank:But as I started to do the actual reporting and research, I realized that it was also a book about these, like, gaps in our knowledge and why there was so much that we didn't know about half the bodies on Earth.
3:57Rachel E. Gross:So we'll also talk about those gaps and the questions Rachel still has about vaginas.
4:23Rachel E. Gross:So your book, Vagina Obscura, walks us through female reproductive anatomy from the outside in. And I thought we could do something similar here. Ooh. So let's start with the outside, the stuff we can see. Let's start with the clitoris.
4:38Hillary Frank:My favorite.
4:38Rachel E. Gross:Before I read your book, I thought the clitoris was the little nub above the opening of the vagina. Me too. And I've like, I have gone and asked like my male editor, my husband, what do you think the clitoris is? Amazing. And they both were like, oh, it's the little nub, right? So can you describe what the clitoris actually is?
5:02Hillary Frank:Yeah. And I love that you just went and like asked them that. And that's something I really admire actually. Yeah. So the actual clitoris, let's start with, you know, I don't love calling it like that nub, but because we all know where that is, we all can like see or touch it. We'll just start with that. That's kind of like the beak of the clitoris. It's kind of the tip of the iceberg. The beak. Yeah. Well, I think of the clitoris often as sort of a like bird-like or alien-like structure. So if you think of that as a beak, there's also a shaft that's internal. And then from there, it kind of splits off.
5:46Hillary Frank:So there are these two arms that kind of arc out into the pelvis, and they have a wingspan of about nine centimeters on average. And there's two bulbs, like teardrop-shaped bulbs, that hug the vagina underneath that. And the bulbs in the arms are both made of erectile tissue, exactly the same as the columns of erectile tissue in the penis, which just means that they can also fill with blood and grow erect when you're aroused. And that whole structure is really connected to a lot of parts of the pelvis, including the vagina and the labia, the inner and outer labia. And it all works together. And I think often we're kind of made to fragment the parts of the female genitals and think of them as separate.
6:39Hillary Frank:So the clitoris to me is like this great connector that is this like majestic structure that's just like entwined and like can't be like separated from all the parts around it. And I basically kind of think of the penis and a clitoris as like exact same ingredients, different configuration. So like taco burrito.
7:05Rachel E. Gross:So we now know the general bird-like shape of the clitoris, right? Kakao! Sorry. I can't help myself. What did science know about the clitoris before that was all revealed?
7:27Hillary Frank:for centuries actually millennia if medicine had anything to say about the clitoris it was that it was like this small pea-sized structure the nub idea and that it was like inappropriate to talk about so the first word I could find for the clitoris was like a Greek word that Hippocrates that I will butcher that's like to adion. It means the shame part. And anatomists following that would continue to give names basically like that. So there was a French name that meant the shameful member. And today in like Dutch and German, you still have sham lippen, which is the shame lips that refers to the labia.
8:12Hillary Frank:So as you look at like the 1700s and 1800s, you actually find that anatomists come very close to describing the full clitoris, so like the internal structure that we talked about. But either their discoveries are like lost or no one pays attention or scientists criticize them and say like, well, these bulbs can't possibly be part of the clitoris because the clitoris is something like tiny and diminutive.
8:38Rachel E. Gross:Well, maybe we should talk about function also. What is the function of the clitoris?
8:43Hillary Frank:Yeah, right. Great point. The function of the clitoris is to experience pleasure. I guess it's the only organ in the human body whose sole function is pleasure. And it is very good at that. Have you ever seen that tweet that's like, the clitoris has 8 ,000 nerves and still isn't as sensitive as a white man on the internet? But classic tweet. So yeah, the clitoris is very nerve dense. However, fun fact, actually, there's more like 10 ,280 nerves, which is something we learned in 2022. Until then, we were relying on studies from the 70s on cows, possibly just one cow. So that to me is a quite revealing kind of backstory of like, wow, it really took that long to decide that it was worth doing this research on human women and people with clitorises to understand that.
9:42Hillary Frank:How do they do that research? Actually, I'm glad you asked. It's kind of amazing. It was a gender affirmation surgeon named Dr. Blair Peters and a vulva specialist named Dr. Maria Oloko. And they actually used extraclitoral tissue from bottom surgeries done on trans men, which does mean the clitorises were treated with testosterone. But it was still human clitorises. So the exact number of nerve fibers, is it that important? Maybe not so much. What's important is that this is an incredibly sensitive and dense organ that experiences a great amount of pleasure. And what's kind of crazy is that throughout history, a lot of thinkers, but particularly Freud, have been convinced that people with aginists and clitorises should only feel one kind of orgasm.
10:37Hillary Frank:And it was the vaginal orgasm, which he basically coined. and is biologically not really a thing. Like every orgasm comes in some way from the clitoris, whether it's like internally or externally stimulated. And for most people with clitorises, it doesn't happen magically for a missionary. So there's a lot of misinformation about, I guess, the science of sexual pleasure. And it made me pretty enraged, I guess, writing this book to realize how many generations were given the impression that their bodies were uniquely broken and they couldn't conform to social pressures telling them exactly how they should experience pleasure.
11:30Rachel E. Gross:There's this fascinating story you tell in the book about a woman named Marie Bonaparte, who plays a big role in our understanding of the clitoris. Can you tell us who Marie Bonaparte was and why was she obsessed with the clitoris and what did she learn? Yeah.
11:54Hillary Frank:So Marie Bonaparte was a princess and a noblewoman, and she was the great grandniece of Napoleon. And she, in her 40s, became a patient of Freud and then a bestie of Freud, which is important to the story. She actually ended up helping smuggle him out of France when the Nazis invaded, and he was buried in a Grecian urn that she gave him as a gift. Oh, wow. So, like, there was just, like, a fascinating kind of connection that I was never aware of. And just, like, the kind of the mythology of Freud often doesn't mention this, like, pretty important connection relationship in his life. And so Marie always wanted to be a doctor, but her father basically forbade that because he needed her to focus on marrying Rich because the family inheritance was not doing so well.
12:49Hillary Frank:but she was always very sexually adventurous, actually, especially after she got married. She described her affairs pretty openly, including one with the French prime minister. She wrote a lot about them in her journals and in letters that I was able to read at the Library of Congress. So she basically rarely, possibly never had an orgasm when she was having these sexual encounters, and she really, really wanted to. and as she started reading Freud she thought she figured out her problem and she basically said like that her clitoris seemed to be this like center of her power and pleasure but also it was like inappropriately masculine and Freud had written that at some point like a woman needs to give up her clitoris as um as her source of pleasure and transfer her orgasm to the vagina which like again is scientifically impossible and makes no sense.
13:48Hillary Frank:Why did he say that? This is kind of the root of penis envy. So yeah, the idea of penis envy was like at some point a little girl realizes that she doesn't have what a little boy has and that she's kind of like envious for the rest of her life. Okay, so back to Marie Bonaparte. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So she felt like she was too masculine and this made her frigid in the parlance of the time. And she wanted to know how other women were handling the situation. So she actually ended up like fulfilling her lifelong dream of being a researcher, a medical researcher. And she started doing research.
14:33Hillary Frank:She followed around like hundreds of women to their gynecology appointments. And she would ask them very intimate sexual questions. I would love to know how she did this, but she did it. And what she concluded was that women who were having regular orgasms during intercourse had clitorises that were closer to their vagina. Was she measuring? Yes. Sorry. She was also taking measurements of the distance between the clitoris and the urethra or clitoris and vagina. Like at their gynecology appointments? Dude, there are not details in the methodology on this paper, but I would love to see. I don't know if she asked the gynecologist, but she does have diagrams.
15:18Hillary Frank:Yeah, incredible. And she published these in a medical journal under a pen name. A male pen name? A male pen name, yes. So she basically did this research and then she decided, like, you know, Freud had famously said anatomy is destiny. And she was like, well, I disagree. I'm not okay with this situation. What if I just change my anatomy and therefore change my destiny? So she decided to get genital surgery to move her clitoris closer to her vagina.
15:49Rachel E. Gross:Wow, because of her hypothesis that the shorter distance meant you were more likely to have an orgasm.
15:59Hillary Frank:Exactly. So, spoiler, that did not turn out well for her. She had it done a few times, and it was not good. I mean, this was the 1920s. Any sort of surgery is not going to be fun, let alone that one. But it didn't give her the outcome that she wanted.
16:19Rachel E. Gross:It seems so obvious that surgically cutting and moving the most nerve-dense part of your body would not result in pleasurable feelings. Yet another example of how following misguided medical advice can lead to a terrible outcome. More on that later. But when we come back, Rachel will share some amazing research being done on vaginas and what she says we still need to understand.
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17:30Rachel E. Gross:Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema, so I get how it can steal your time.
Read the full transcript
17:36Hillary Frank:But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about ebglyss?
17:41Rachel E. Gross:Ebglyss, Lubrikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies, ebglyss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if If you're allergic to EpGliss, allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems.
18:11Rachel E. Gross:You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.com. Or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. That refresh you've been putting off until the right deal came along? It's here! Wayfair's Black Friday in July sale is happening now, so you can finally get the style you've been waiting for for less. Get up to 80 % off area rugs and up to 60 % off outdoor and bedroom furniture. Shop Wayfair's huge selection of styles and find the piece to fit your style, budget, and space.
18:50Rachel E. Gross:Plus, free shipping. Black Friday in July ends July 27th. Shop today at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Okay, let's move on in our journey and our voyage and talk about the vagina. First, let's define what that is.
19:09Hillary Frank:Yeah, the vagina is like the muscular tube that connects the vulva, which is like the outside genitalia, the stuff that you can see and touch with the uterus and the cervix. And the cervix is, people hate when I say this, but it's like the muscular donut that like keeps the uterus closed, I guess. So it's the connecting tube.
19:37Rachel E. Gross:It's a stretchy tube. So you found that the penis has been studied far more than the vagina, which sadly is not surprising. No. But there's an amazing passage from your book about this, and I'd like to have you read it. Okay. So can you open your book to page 63? Yeah. And then this is the paragraph starting with, biologists love penises. Great. Right.
20:06Hillary Frank:Biologists love penises, and with good reason. They're some of the most wildly varying organs in the animal kingdom. There are penises that can taste, smell, and sing, ones that look like corkscrews, crowbars, and glowing blue lightsabers. A penis can stretch up to nine times your body length, if you're a barnacle, be a detachable tentacle covered in suckers, if you're an argonaut octopus, or even sea, using light-sensing cells that guide it to its destination, if you're a Japanese yellow swallowtail butterfly. They're also easy to study. Penises kind of just hang out, in contrast to the more internal female apparatus.
20:48Rachel E. Gross:So that is like beautiful writing. It's very poetic. It's clear that penises are fascinating. but it seems like vaginas would be too. So why haven't they been studied as much?
21:01Hillary Frank:Great question. Side note, it took my fact checker and I like two hours to confirm the glowing blue lightsabers. Description, it's a form of like tropical slug, but she was like, that can't be true. So we were like sending Google images back and forth and they do exist. So happily that statement could remain. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, that is the question. And if you talk to biologists, many male biologists, they will often say that the female genitals are internal and that makes them harder to study. And I don't know, I just wasn't buying that. We put a rover on Mars, like you're telling me, we really can't study vaginas.
21:48Hillary Frank:So I ended up talking to the vagina biologist, I guess. Her name is Patti Brennan, and she's a Colombian biologist at Mount Holyoke University in Massachusetts. And she was, I guess, the first person to really dissect a duck vagina. And she had been looking actually at penises in birds, which are only in like one to 2 % of birds. and they get a lot of attention because there are these really crazy structures that are like corkscrew shaped like torture devices that just like spring out of the mail. Ouch. Yeah I mean both ouch and also like I guess they deserve a lot of attention because they're wild but until her basically no one had said like okay so that penis is not like just for show, it's interacting with the vagina.
22:44Hillary Frank:So what is the vagina doing? And when she started looking, she found that the vagina was like equally complex and crazy and kind of was like this like roller coaster that had all these curves and turns and even like blind alleys where sperm went to die. So it was very complex and it was like in conversation with that penis.
23:07Rachel E. Gross:So this researcher, Patti Brennan, who you've been talking about, she told you that she makes vaginal lollipops for a living. Can you explain what that means? Yes.
23:20Hillary Frank:So I just want to mention that the technique itself is kind of amazing. She wanted to make molds of vaginas, which are internal structures. So you would have to put something up there and take it out, like a cast. And so she talked to a dentist about how to use dental latex. So the same way they might make a mold of your teeth to make a retainer. And so she invited me to make vagina lollipops with her on snakes. And so snakes have two vaginas because the males have kind of this forked penis, the hemipene. So we were putting the dental latex up there, letting it harden, and then like gently removing it with a toothpick.
24:06Hillary Frank:And the result was this like two-headed lollipop. On a live snake or? Oh, no. Very dead snake. Yeah, it was pretty gross. To me, like, actually, I was really amazed because I was, like, kind of gagging a little bit. And there were all these, like, parasites. And they were, like, getting on her iPhone. But she was so excited. She was, like, taking all these photos. And she wasn't, like, noticing because she was just, like, so engaged. And I was like, damn. I also found out then that snakes have clitorises. They have clitorises, which she wrote a paper about later. Oh, haha. Sorry. So sorry. So like in addition to making a lot of vaginal molds, she was kind of trying to find clitorises in almost every type of animal.
24:58Hillary Frank:So she was kind of like remapping the genital landscape of life on Earth.
25:05Rachel E. Gross:Earlier, you read your list of the variations in penises across different species. After meeting Dr. Brennan, do you have a vagina equivalent list? That's great.
25:20Hillary Frank:Yes. She had looked at dolphin clitorises, which are like the size of a AA battery. And bonobos have massive clitorises that can have erections up to 2.5 inches long. But I'm pretty sure that my favorite is the kangaroo vagina. Because kangaroos actually have three vaginas. So they have like, I know, I just love this fact. And I love that if you look it up, like there are a lot of diagrams online because people were just like, what? So yeah, I don't know. I think about this at least like once a week. There's like one common portal and then it splits off. There's like one middle vagina and two side vaginas.
26:00Hillary Frank:And the side ones are for sperm uptake. And the middle one is for joey ejection.
26:06Rachel E. Gross:Joey ejection where the baby is born?
26:08Hillary Frank:Yeah, for delivering the baby. But that basically means that a kangaroo can be pregnant at all times because she has two uteruses. So I feel really bad for those kangaroos.
26:21Rachel E. Gross:So all of this research that Dr. Brennan has done, it's really cool and interesting. Does it apply to humans?
26:33Hillary Frank:What Dr. Brennan told me was that when she was looking into, I think, dolphin vaginas and having this idea of making the kind of lollipops or latex casts, she was looking at what we know about the anatomy of human vaginas and realized that we actually know a lot less than we know about even some animal vaginas. Like, I think there was one like tampon company that had started to kind of measure vaginal sizes and shapes, but then I think ran out of funding. So there's kind of been this assumption in gynecology that if a vagina can like stretch and like incorporate a penis and deliver a baby, that's like good enough.
27:17Hillary Frank:We don't like really need to know the exact anatomy. so we don't have a good understanding of the diversity of human vaginas.
27:26Rachel E. Gross:This tampon study by a now-defunct company called Tam Brands was supposed to determine whether they should modify their tampon design to better fit most vaginas. This study actually used the dental latex technique 10 years before Patty Brennan. It's where she got the idea to make vagina lollipops in the first place. It turned out that vagina shape didn't matter for something like a tampon, because a tampon can expand to fit any vagina. But Rachel says the same kind of research would have been helpful for tailoring vaginal devices and medications and for having reference models for vaginal reconstructive surgery, which we still don't really have.
28:07Hillary Frank:And, like, I've talked to doctors who say that, like, in their field, The vulva is basically like a small city in the Midwest. And OBGYNs, like, they drive through it to get to their real destination, which is the uterus, where, like, real medicine happens. Because that's where you do, like, pap smears and IUDs and childbirth.
28:30Rachel E. Gross:Rachel also wishes we knew more about the vaginal microbiome, which would teach us about how to prevent and battle long-term vaginal infections and STIs and pregnancy problems like preterm birth. She says she's hopeful because there are some studies in progress that could help with these kinds of issues. But for now, like an OBGYN on a mission, we're going to head to the uterus, which, and this will shock you, has been understudied as well.
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29:46For sure.
29:47Hillary Frank:So the ovaries are the two like kind of almond-sized glands on either side of the uterus. And they do produce eggs. But I think like almost more importantly, they're these hormone powerhouses that help power almost like every organ in the body for most of your life. So like your bone health, your blood, your brain health, like ovaries are supporting all of those by producing estrogen, some testosterone, and other hormones as well. And even after menopause, they may be producing some. And the uterus is a very muscular organ that's like the size of a fist. And it's most famous for creating and delivering babies, but it also is really dynamic throughout a person's life.
30:43Hillary Frank:It is creating a new lining every month and then shedding it and then starting over, which is menstruation.
30:53Rachel E. Gross:So there are some really wild myths about the uterus that doctors and scientists used to believe. Can you name what some of those are?
31:01Hillary Frank:Yeah, I think the most well-known myth is that of the wandering womb. And that was an idea in ancient Greece that the uterus was kind of an animal that wandered throughout the body in search of sex and blood. And if he wasn't getting those things, then it would wreak havoc and cause health issues and asphyxiation and fainting, which got tied in with this idea of hysteria. So hysteria, the idea that women are uniquely neurotic and prone to nervous breakdown, was often connected with their reproductive organs, either the uterus or the ovaries. So very common surgery in the late 1800s was the removal of healthy ovaries in the thought that it would cure forms of insanity, as it was thought of at the time, including hysteria.
32:03Hillary Frank:and I write a lot in the book about endometriosis which is a disorder in which like bits of tissue start growing throughout the pelvis usually that are very similar to the lining of the uterus and they try to grow and then shed in a way that can be immensely painful and like harmful to your other organs and like very little was known about this disorder for centuries even though about one in 10 people with uteruses have it. And it was sometimes described as like the new hysteria. And part of the reason was that doctors were just kind of like, huh, happens to women, a lady thing, like mysterious pain that they thought kind of made them look crazy or emotional because they hadn't looked at the biological basis of it.
33:01Hillary Frank:And I talked to women who were told that they should just get pregnant in order to fix their endometriosis.
33:08Rachel E. Gross:Pregnancy is a bonkers prescription for any disease, but especially for endometriosis, where infertility is a known complication. And to make things even more confusing, another common remedy doctors have prescribed for endometriosis is hysterectomy, removing the uterus, a surgery that leaves you incapable of becoming pregnant. These approaches are opposite and extreme.
33:33Hillary Frank:And it's kind of like, what's that phrase about, like, just using a hammer to do some, like, tiny job?
33:41Rachel E. Gross:It's kind of like the nuclear option. In her reporting, Rachel found plenty of examples of doctors taking extreme actions for all sorts of issues surrounding the vagina. If you've got a vagina, chances are you've got your own version of this story. I've got mine. Like when a doctor suggested that in order to cure my pain from my episiotomy scar, she would just graft skin from inside my vagina and pull it to the outside. Or when another told me the answer was to have a second baby so my scar would blow open and heal better. Rachel has her own nuclear option story.
34:17Hillary Frank:Well, I often tell this story about how when I was 29, I was once prescribed rat poison for my own vagina. Like literal rat poison. Like literal rat poison. Like the gynecologist told me that if I looked it up on the internet, it was going to say this is rat poison. It's called boric acid. So this was like a last resort prescription after I'd had this like months long bacterial infection. And they tried like antifungals, antibacterials, and nothing had worked. So my gynecologist told me go to the pharmacy and get boric acid. And it came in these like big plastic capsules that look basically like antibiotics.
35:09Hillary Frank:and they were actually suppositories. So you had to put them up in your vagina every night and then like lay on your back. But one night I was like very exhausted and I woke up in the middle of the night and I was in the bathroom and like remembered that I had to take this pill and I got confused and I swallowed it. So I swallowed my vagina poison and I ended up in the ER. and at that point I have to tell the doctors that I have swallowed rat poison that was supposed to go in my vagina.
35:43Rachel E. Gross:Rachel wound up being fine. She hadn't swallowed enough boric acid for it to be lethal or even that harmful. And the infection eventually went away, though she's not sure the rat poison helped. But after her long vaginal voyage, talking to doctors and patients and scientists, one thing is clear. We need more research on female anatomy. We still are not capable of seeing sperm enter the uterus and unite with an egg, or the fertilized egg's journey down the fallopian tube to the uterus. We haven't seen what it looks like when endometriosis legions take root. All we have are fuzzy snapshots from ultrasounds or views of cells outside the body under a microscope.
36:27Hillary Frank:Not doing these studies means that we continue to have worse healthcare and shitty solutions like boric acid. And I mean, look at our maternal death rate. We clearly need more studies, even infertility. And we just don't fully understand how all these parts work together and the vast variation of anatomies. There are myths like the idea that the G-spot is this magic button that you can just press and we know where it is. And really, everyone's anatomy is different in a beautiful way. How is it different? Nobody knows. We haven't done those studies. What we do know is that we've been studying female anatomy in a really narrow way that I would argue mostly has to do with disease and reproduction.
37:24Hillary Frank:And that leaves so much by the wayside that has to do with quality of life and pleasure and pain. And a theme of a lot of what I write is that really warps the kind of scientific knowledge you're going to get and has actually resulted in worse health care for millions of people.
37:45Rachel E. Gross:Rachel says things are improving slowly, especially with treatment around endometriosis. And she kind of wishes we didn't call reproductive organs reproductive organs, because then we're not recognizing that creating babies is only one function of these organs. They also provide pleasure, and they play an active role in overall health, including the brain and moods and neurological conditions.
38:09Hillary Frank:So sometimes I say like the vagina at all or the vagina and friends. Um, the pelvic organs is a super clinical way of looking at it.
38:20Rachel E. Gross:Rachel's book about the vagina and friends is called Vagina Obscura. You can find a link to it in the show notes or at our website, longestshortesttime.com. We've also got links to other incredible writing she's done and depictions of the vagina and friends that are better than any images you saw in sex ed, including 3D models of the clitoris and its bird-like structure.
38:42Hillary Frank:Cuckoo!
38:46Rachel E. Gross:This episode was produced by me, Hillary Frank, with support from Elizabeth Nakano. Our technical director is Michael Raphael. Music composed by Alison Leighton Brown and performed by HotMoms.gov. Follow The Longest Shortest Time on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now. Please do this for us. It is so super simple. Just the click of a button and it helps us to rise in the charts so other people can find the show. And if you want to suggest story ideas to us, be a part of our community, and generally support our work, join us at LST+. It's easy. Just go to longestshortesttime.com slash club.
39:41Rachel E. Gross:running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project one app for accounting another for inventory another for sales and somehow none of them talk to each other that's where odoo comes in an all-in-one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs, and best of all, no spreadsheets. Stop managing software and start managing your business with one unified system. Try for free today at odoo.com slash vox. That's odoo.com slash vox.
From the publisher
Join our friends at The Longest Shortest Time for a deep dive into the misunderstood world of vaginas. We’ll learn about orgasm-chasing royalty, clitoral wingspans, vagina lollipops, wandering wombs, and why we still know so little about the anatomy of half the people on Earth.
Guests: Hillary Frank, host, The Longest Shortest Time; Rachel E. Gross, science writer
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