A recent study showed that one in 53 Indian women is diagnosed with cervical cancer and Indian women contribute to one-fourth of the of cervical cancer patients in the world.

The major reason found behind the increasing rate of cervical cancer patients was the unease women feel while visiting gynecologists due to the stigma related to it. The stigma and taboo surrounding the whole matter is directly proportional to the lack of awareness and education of an essential part of the body – the vagina.

Seeing this around the world, sex educators and authors Dr. Nina Brochmann and Ellen Stokken wrote a book The Wonder Down Under, solely based on facts, trivia, and information about vaginas. The book is a user guide to the vagina that talks about the female sexual organ and sexual health (from the clitoris to contraception to cervical cancer).

Sex educators Nina and Ellen have been writing articles breaking myths around a woman’s sexual health in their blog The Genital Area since 2015. With time and more interaction with women around the world, they saw a growing demand for more information about the female body and wanted to clear medical misconceptions and shame around female sexuality. The duo is based in Oslo, Norway, wherein Nina is a qualified doctor and Ellen is currently a final-year medical student.

The book explains everything about the vagina, from a clitoris’ inner life to menstrual hormone change to vaginal orgasm. There’s also extra focus on the understanding of different types of contraceptives.

“We need to discuss female desire. We don’t learn enough about that in high school. If you don’t write about female desire then women don’t know the size of their own clitoris,” says a frustrated Ellen to Refinery 29. She explained the reason for including more information on the clitoris and said, “People just don’t find it very important. But it’s empowering for women.”

Not only is there shame around the genitalia, but there also is incomplete sex education which is creating the knowledge gap. Ellen exclaims, “All of my girlfriends are trying to get pregnant. And I can’t tell you how many calls I get asking ‘How do I get pregnant?’” she says in disbelief. She exclaims, “We spend all of our youth trying not to get pregnant, and then suddenly we’re like – how does this even work?!”

The religion involved in the sacredness of sex is also one of the reasons women shy away from talking openly about genital health and sex, says Nina. She says, “It’s very hard to be open about who you are in more conservative cultures.”

“We have met women who were scared of using contraception because they were scared people in their family would find out and think they were having sex. But they weren’t, they were just having really painful or problematic periods, and they needed contraception for that but they were scared to use it because of the social repercussions,” Nina adds.

The duo is also trying to break the myth of virginity test, or as they call “the vagina fraud”. “There’s absolutely no medical test that can prove if a woman is a virgin or not. There are so many examples in popular culture, where people talk about the hymen and virginity as if you are totally different before and after,” says Nina. She added that even practiced doctors have absolutely no way of telling whether a woman is a virgin. “This holiness about the vagina is unhealthy. You wouldn’t call a lesbian grown woman with lots of sexual experience a virgin, it’s absurd,” states Nina.

Nina adds that the culture of “virginity test” of a woman is basically for men to know if they’re actually bringing up their own children. She explains, “Every culture has been spending so much attention on female virginity and not male virginity. It has a lot to do with men wanting to make sure they were bringing up their own children. Women know their baby is theirs; they live with it for nine months. Men don’t. It comes down to men trying to control a woman.”

H/T: Refinery 29

Image used for representational purpose