Thanks, I will insert my own speculum
/This is my promise to the Universe. As sterile stirrups glean in harsh fluorescent lights, that is my statement. If they can’t take 30 extra seconds to show me how to put a medical instrument into my own body - then no.
No.
NO. I am walking out and finding someone else.
I did not go through the insanity of a bone marrow transplant to keep my mouth shut in this precious life. I promised my donors to live my life fully to repay their gift. Next time I have a pelvic exam I will say, “thanks, I would like to insert my own speculum. Could you show me what to do?” and I will do a happy dance inside.*
Until our recent Wise Bodies class it did not even occur to me that this was something I could do, something I could contemplate, something I could express, something that is important. Something that mattered to me.
Isa Coffey, our WiseBodies teacher, several times repeated that doctors inserting speculums instead of the women as “a criminal act”. I thought she was being hyperbolic, until I started digging. And wow - what a rank, gruesome, gory tale this is.
Instead of my first time in the stirrups being this monologue as I gritted my teeth. “Just try to relax. Look at the ceiling. I will be as fast as I can. I am so glad that you are not a virgin. It is so much better that you have already been opened by a penis. When I use this on virgins it can be quite unpleasant. I will be as fast as I can. Deep breath.”
The conversation could have gone like this. “Hey, I need to use a speculum to check for XX. Would you like to put it in your body so I can do the examination?”
“What? I don’t know how?”
“I can show you. It is your body.”
“I guess so.”
“If you want, I have a mirror here and I can show you what I am looking for and tell you what I see.”
Bean, if you are reading this, I know it will be better for you. This will be you, my glorious daughter.
“Hey, I need to use a speculum to check for XX.”
…and you interrupt, “Oh cool, I know all about speculums. I will put it in to help you. Where is your mirror so I can see what you are doing?”
THAT is what I want for you.
Yes please.
Turns out there are many rethinking the speculum. The designers at Yona have been working for several years to improve upon a tool designed by a man. A man who remarked in his autobiography 150 years ago that “if there was anything I hated, it was investigating the organs of the female pelvis.” This man was James Marion Sims.**
The speculum was invented by Sims, the “father of gynecology”, in order to repair fistulas on enslaved women. Tears (fistulas) between the vagina and the bladder/urinary tract are caused by either childbirth or violent rape. As the article, “The Speculum Finally Gets a Modern Redesign”, states: “his experiments were often conducted on slave women, without the use of anesthesia. So to say that the speculum was not designed with patient comfort in mind would be an egregious understatement.”
If you dig deeper into the life of Sims (e.g., in Public Privates: Performing Gynecology from Both Ends of the Speculum by Terri Kapsalis) you will learn that Anarcha Westcott was operated on 30 times to fix her fistula, over a 4 year period.
30 times
Without anesthesia
That is why in April 2018, Sim’s statue was removed from NYC Central Park. That is why there is a Mothers of Gynecology Movement - to commemorate the women whose bodies he used.
Anarcha Westcott, Lucy, and Betsey, the Mothers of Gynecology, were born into a chain of women whose bodies absorbed such fury and sorrow it defies contemplation. Since 1662, the colonial law of partus sequitur ventrem, (“That which is born follows the womb”) meant that all children inherited the legal status of their mothers. The Virginian lawyers had to go all the way back to Roman law to justify this egregious decision - upending the British law where children inherited the father’s legal status.
White owners could now rape their enslaved women with impunity as a sound capitalist investment to expand their work-force. A fistula was a wrench in this process that needed to be addressed - and such, enter Sims.
It is beyond the beyond.***
As the rabbit hole continues, you read the defenses of Sims. You read that he was a product of the time. You read that he wasn’t the only one who medically experimented on enslaved individuals. You read that he was controversial in his lifetime.
This is where Resmaa Menakem’s somatic abolition overlaps with Eckhart Tolle’s pain body. His actions are indefensible - that drum vibrates today. His actions reverberate throughout the collective pain bodies of Black women. The energy of those historical moments courses through the collective pain bodies of all women.
Every time a nervous woman balances her feet in the stirrups, takes a deep breath, clenches her fists, and looks at the ceiling while a doctor inserts a speculum she is playing a role in a script where she is abused, powerless, and traumatized.
She is enacting a scene where the first players were forcibly held down as they howled, begged, wailed for respite (in their souls if not out loud). In this play the leading actor shoved speculums into unwilling bodies. Disgusted by what he saw, Sims pried these women open, twisted tender tissue into place, and stabbed them with sutures - all without anesthesia.
No.
NO.
NO. “Thanks, I will insert my own speculum.”
As of 2022, nearly 85% of ob-gyn doctors joining the profession are female.
Come on ladies, join me here. Let us edit this script together.
*My life vision is to be curious, work to identify my Cranky Monster, and be brave enough to speak from and for The Good. Turns out when I broadcast my curiosity about learning the truth of our societal history to the Universe - I get nuggets back.
Like this nugget. Woof. More like a boulder.
**Thank you Baba for teaching me to dig into footnotes.
***Learning the truth of our societal and cultural history feels important and it feels awful to grok the full extent of awfulness. It is nice to know the truth AND it sucks to learn the horrors of our history. Both And.
I am also furious, embarrassed, and sad I am only learning about this now, at age 46, and super grateful I can change this script for my daughter. Both And.
