The Guardian: "All women have a DIY vagina-vulva-wash of mucus"

[SPOFS]

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/04/the-vagina-is-self-cleaning-so-why-does-the-feminine-hygiene-industry-exist

The first sentence of the seventh paragraph...

I am most surprised! I thought that not all women had vaginas?

I am also surprised that they have actually used the correct anatomical terms, rather than 'front hole' and the like.

Is the Guardian waking up? It's actually a decent article!

Well done Guardian!

I'm sad that I'm happy about this article. Rose George had better brace herself....

Nah, it's just a momentary lapse in the propoganda machine. People forget that twaw is meant to be ON 24/7. They slip into factual statements occasionally when not paying attention. Normal service will be resumed soon

I follow Rose George on twitter and she has already posted some GC stuff in the past, so I am sure she was well aware of what terminology she was/wasn't using.

The Indie (Indie!! Lover of all things trans!) was at something similar just earlier too. I was reading it thinking that their woke team won't like it at all.

(Unfortunately I now can't recall what it was and it's not leaping out at me from the main page...)

Great article. If we could all just stop buying this shite then the companies would leave us alone

Yeah, Rose George has written on gender neutral toilets/lack of toilets for women and smear tests in the Guardian before. As exexpat says, I think she is treading a careful line terminology-wise and seems sensibly GC to me. Thankfully there are still a few of them lurking at the G.

Amazing! Waking up rather than woking up!

Great piece! I hate the subtle shaming of that 'freshness' crap. I am a complete 'self-cleaning vagina' bore, and often find that people don't believe me.

How weird. I was just explaining this to DD yesterday.

No idea how it came up though but I'm always surprised women don't know this.

I think with the Guardian a lot depends on the commissioning editor - the Comment pages seem to be particularly TRA-dominated. Other sections less so.

Rose George is always very good - she's done great stuff on the menopause too. I do feel dispirited that she even had to write this article. I remember as far back as the 70s and 80s you'd get articles in women's mags and mags for teenage girls telling you not to use vaginal douches.

This is a really great article and even half way through I recalled many situations directly relating to this topic.

First was how there is simply no awareness or open discussion of cervical fluid, I was "shamed" by a boyfriend in my early 20's who saw the white stain in my knickers in the laundry basket and he linked it to my being sexually aroused in the day. I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to explain "it's cervical fluid which keeps everything clean" I could only say
"It's only natural. I wasn't aroused!" I mean I'm nearly 40 now and I still remember his insistence that any leakage relates to a state of "feeling horny"

Another, do some women actually put soap UP inside themselves?

Then, wasn't the vagina monologues banned? Something to do with imagined transphobia?

This article raised so many thoughts, so I thank you Rose George for writing it.

Elen
My mum (I was born early 80's she was born late 40's) never explained any of this stuff. Not sure if it was down to her strict Catholic upbringing or if this is common in all females of this generation.

Absolutely fantastic article.

As a lover of accurate language, I love this sentence:

The vagina is a tube of muscle that joins the cervix and the vaginal opening; the vulva is the exterior genitalia.