Ladies, we need to talk.

About feminism. AND VAGINAS.

It has come to my attention that there are some of you out there who are LITERALLY pulling some nasty junk our of your vaginas in the name of feminism. And while I am usually not one to tell anyone how to DO feminism. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS.

We have enough problems as it is trying constantly to remove the F-WORD status from feminism and getting people to truly understand what feminism is, to accept it as a movement and as something worthwhile to identify with and work towards as a common goal. You know, all that equality for all human beings, regardless of gender, race, sexuality and such.

But when you start pulling yeast out of your vagina to make sourdough bread rolls and doing so in the name of feminism, WE HAVE A PROBLEM.

This is the kind of shit that confuses people. That steers them FAR, FAR away from feminism. That makes us all look like radical, man-hating, "HAHA! Look what I made you eat from my VAGINA", weirdos! These kind of shenanigans are not winning anyone over! And like it or not, we are not done with this fight, and alienating folks with some experimental vaginal yeast baking is not how we recruit more to OUR MOST RIGHTEOUS CAUSE! And here is a little PSA - just because it comes from your vagina, doesn't automatically mean it has to be some grand feminist THING and you need to write an essay about it (you are NOT Naomi Wolfe FFS!).  

Can we PLEASE focus for a bit and get back to the BASICS? You know, like closing the wage gap between men and women, and white women and WOC. Oh and maybe we could all do better learning about and actively incorporating intersectionality in our feminism and checking ourselves when our white feminist fragility overshadows the lived experiences of our brown and black and asian sisters. Or how about we deal with the hate and misogyny that women have to content with daily in the online world, and then there's also that pesky human right of ensuring access to all forms of reproductive health care for women. I mean, COME ON!! We have some bigger issues to deal with here. THESE ARE THE REASONS WHY WE NEED FEMINISM, NOT vagina bread! 

Seriously, someone needs to just go get herself some Canestan. I know, I know, that shit is expensive. Twenty bucks for one little ovule and a tiny tube of cream? What kind of misogynist asshole runs THAT pharma company? (Oops, my angry, man-hater is showing!) Here is a little frugal feminist trick I just learned - GARLIC. A tiny clove of garlic up in the lady bits will clear up that yeast infection, and you can still feel all radical about using food to cure what ails you and YOU DON'T NEED TO BAKE ANY DAMN BREAD! {I mean you totally could if that is really what you want to do, just use REGULAR yeast, mmkay?}

Don't get me wrong, I am very much for everyone being more vagina-positive. I am a big fan of the new vagina emojis that have recently come out. They make texting my husband WAY more interesting. I am a fan of the words, VAGINA, VULVA, LABIA. These are the proper words for our body parts and we should use them more often. What I don't want, is for us to equate feminism with vaginas all the time. That in and of itself is alienating as well, because, HELLO, there are women who don't have vaginas and there are men who have vaginas and having or not having one doesn't = feminism.   

And this isn't NEW. People have been doing all kinds of vagina-related art and making vagina-related political statements for a long time. We have the vagina-knitter, the menstrual blood Trump portrait painter, the vagina kayak maker who is actually on trial for her art, Georgia O'Keefe. It's true, VAGINAS ARE EVERYWHERE! 

My issue is not with the vagina. Vaginas are awesome! And we should all take the time to appreciate them and TAKE CARE OF THEM properly! My issue is with making feminism look bad and confusing people and turning folks further away from anything related to the word feminist or feminism. And no matter how you butter your toast, THIS MAKES FEMINISM LOOK BAD.

There is no heroism here. Sure she's gone viral with her recipe and many people are genuinely and not surprising TOTALLY ICKED OUT BY WHAT SHE'S DONE, but this woman does not speak for me or for the feminism that I want more people to embrace. 

Now, thanks to her, I'm going to be off all kinds of bread for the time being - and I really like sourdough. And unfortunately, many more people are going to be off all kinds of feminism too.

THANKS A LOT! 

N~