One of the questions I found myself asking scientists most often as I reported on this book was: why has it taken until now for science to investigate [insert obvious thing]? For example: What makes a healthy vaginal ecosystem? How does the menstrual cycle actually work? What is the G-spot, really? . . . and the list goes on. In response, I always heard some version of the phrase: You can’t see what you aren’t looking for. Or: you see what you expect to see. In many ways, this book is about different ways of looking.
Vagina Obscura is a fascinating look at the history, science, and politics of female sexual and reproductive anatomy (as the terms may be used to describe a variety of cis-gendered, trans-gendered, and non-binary bodies), tracing what we have learned about these body parts from the time of Hippocrates (who called them “the shame parts”), through Darwin and Freud (who both dismissed the “passive” vagina as less important to reproduction than the “dynamic” penis), to modern researchers (whose work was most surprising to me by virtue of its very recentness). This is a highly readable book — author Rachel E. Gross writes about the maddeningly long history of the dismissal of female intimate health concerns without anger or stridency (or any of the other words used to dismiss women’s writing about “women’s issues”) — and whether or not one is looking to learn something about the science of female anatomy, the research, interviews, and history all make for a captivating reading experience. I learned much and thoroughly enjoyed the writing; I can’t ask for more. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
There are parts of your own body less known than the bottom of the ocean, or the surface of Mars. Most researchers I talked to blamed this dearth of knowledge on the black-box problem: the female body is more complex, more obscure, with much of its plumbing tucked up inside. To get inside it, we’ve needed high-tech imaging tools, tools that have only come around in the past decade or so. When I heard these answers, I couldn’t help thinking of what science has done in the twenty-first century: put a rover on Mars, made a three-parent baby, built an artificial uterus. And we couldn’t figure out the composition of vaginal mucus?
I can’t go over everything I learned in Vagina Obscura, but I will note that women’s anatomy doesn’t seem to have become a priority to scientists until women themselves became scientists: From Princess Marie Bonaparte (a relative of Napoleon and an acolyte of Freud, she did important early research on the clitoris [in conflict with Freud’s theories on female psychosexual development]) to Linda Griffith (one of the genetic engineers behind the “earmouse”, she never wanted to be stuck in the “pink ghetto” of women’s health research until her own breast cancer scare prompted her to use her MacArthur “genius” grant to investigate endometriosis) and Dr. Marci Bowers (a transwoman who is currently one of the leading gender affirmation surgeons in the US), women lead the field in moving thie science forward. I was fascinated by the reconstructive work that is done for both transwomen and those who have been affected by FGM; I was interested to learn that endometriosis is pretty much the new “hysteria” (often dismissed as “all in a woman’s head” — and curable with pregnancy! — unless one is a woman of colour who can be branded a “drug-seeker” for showing up at an emergency room monthly with crippling pain); and I was stunned to consider that it used to be “normal” for a woman to have about forty periods in her lifetime (between pregnancies and nursing) compared to four hundred today. After a section on the long list of systems that ovulation supports throughout the female body, Gross writes about the researchers currently looking for a way to prevent menopause (in an effort to fend off the ensuing risk of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, etc.), but also asks if this is something women would actually sign on for. Dr. Jen Gunter (author of The Menopause Manifesto) is quoted as saying about this research, “If you’re looking at restoring ovarian function for women who are fifty-one, what’s the endgame? What’s the actual problem you’re trying to solve? And if you tell me the problem is menopause, I’m going to tell you you’re a misogynist.” And to those who would ask what’s so important about studying female anatomy, Gross would reply:
Our bodies can blind us. But they can also free us to see differently. They can help us bear witness to how a multitude of people, bodies, and perspectives have fallen through the cracks. Only by seeing connections instead of siloes, sameness instead of difference, and the universal inside the particular can we move the science of the female body forward and point the way to a truer, fuller understanding of all bodies.
From ducks with corkscrew-shaped penises (and the female ducks whose corkscrew-shaped vaginas twist in the opposite direction to prevent unwanted insemination from frequent duck rape) to a description of the human egg releasing granules of calcium to harden its “zona” after a sperm breaches it (leading to the sentence: On the fifth day following conception, the embryo hatches from its shell and implants into the tissues of the uterus. How had I never heard of this before??), Vagina Obscura contains a wealth of fascinating facts that support thought-provoking commentary on history and science and the history of science. Compelling, beginning to end.
