This piece is part of an ongoing series exploring what it means to bea woman on the internet.

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"How did I not know that?"

These were the words uttered by five women in a row who came into the office of gynaecologist Dr. Jen Gunter with "misinformation about their bodies or about treatment."

This false or inaccurate information had come from a variety of sources, Gunter tells me, from the likes of "their mom, brother ... their own doctor," and of course, online. "After I corrected things and explained what was going on, or why that wasn't the right treatment," she says. "I was sitting in my office at the end of the day just thinking, how didthey not know that?"

That question is one that I'd hazard most women have silently asked inside their own head after learning that something they'd been told or read online about their health was objectively and scientifically untrue.

SEE ALSO:How the internet gave me a vagina complex

Gunter — who's been dubbed "Twitter’s resident gynaecologist" — had been debunking myths about women's health on the internet for around six years at this point. You may well be familiar with some of her biggest hits, like "Dear Gwyneth Paltrow, I’m a GYN and your vaginal jade eggs are a bad idea" and "Don’t put ground up wasp nest in your vagina."

Seeing this many women visit her office, armed with false facts about their own bodies, was a trend that troubled Gunter.

"How are we, in this time where almost every single one of my patients will literally have a pocket computer — she has a library of all things with her — and yet, we can't get people to the information," she says. "I just thought, women need a textbook, and I'm going to write it. So I did."

When the internet is riddled with fake news and snake oil salespeople peddling their "wellness" agenda, heuristically learning about your own body with accurate information is tough. Gunter's book The Vagina Bible identifies the myths and misinformation that shroud the vulva and vagina, and replaces them with science and facts. It is every inch the textbook, complete with anatomical diagrams and a useful index that allows you to find answers to questions with ease.

Dr. Jen Gunter, vagina myth debunker.Credit: jason lecras

The dedication inside the first page reads as follows:

For every woman who has ever been told — usually by some dude — that she is too wet, too dry, too gross, too loose, too tight, too bloody, or too smelly. This book is for you.

A statement that many of us will likely see ourselves us in.

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In the book, Gunter outlines what she's termed her "vagenda," which is "for every woman to be empowered with accurate information about the vagina and vulva." She notes in her introduction that, while snake oil has been around for a long time, we are now living in an age where "sorting myth from medicine" is getting more difficult.

"In addition to social media feeds that constantly display medical messaging of variable quality, there are the demands of a headline-driven news cycle that constantly requires new content — even when it doesn't exist," Gunter wrote in The Vagina Bible. "With women's bodies. there are even more forces of misdirection at work. Pseudoscience and those who peddle it are invested in misinformation, but so is the patriarchy."

"People like Paltrow, they're writing content and they're creating confusion."

One major issue Gunter highlights regarding health misinformation could be a lack of digital literacy skills for many when searching the internet — especially if you're searching for answers that should, in an ideal world, be answered by a medical professional.

"People don't know how to search the internet for information. They don't know what they're getting is valid to begin with. We all do this — we see the first three results in a search and that's what we click on," Gunter tells me. "We don't teach people how to have health literacy."

But, when companies try to profit from that misinformation and further contribute to it by publishing false claims that lack any scientific or medical foundation, women's health is placed at risk. The so-called "wellness" industry — an industry worth $4.2 trillion, per a 2017 report from the Global Wellness Institute — both pedals and profits from misinformation about women's health. You know where we're going here. Gunter's written at length about it it. We're talking about sites like Goop.

Gunter takes on age-old myths about vaginas with The Vagina Bible.Credit: little brown / jason lecras / composite

Asked about the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow's lifestyle enterprise Goop, Gunter described them as "the Chief Content Officer for misinformation."

"First of all, if you're selling a product, you're biased," she says. "We would never tell people to get their information about depression from the pharmaceutical company that sells an antidepressant, right?"

"That's the same thing as getting your information from wellness," she adds. "It's so funny to me that everybody thinks that wellness is benign. It's a $4 trillion a year industry. I'm just like, wow, what if we put all that money in fixing medicine? It just amazes me how people give wellness that pass and people like Paltrow, they're writing content and they're creating confusion," she added.

The purity myth

Scratch the surface of wellness claims and you'll find worrying ideas that stem from patriarchal ideas about women — and the value that is placed on "purity" and virginity.

"When did a virginal vagina become this standard that women should be aspiring to achieve?"

Asked whether companies are exploiting cultural shame about vaginas for profit, Gunter says they "absolutely" are. Take the cultural obsession with vaginal tightness, for example. An archaic idea that has no scientific or medical basis, which is currently being propped up by companies which use the idea to make money from harmful "tightening products".

"It's always the vagina's fault, right?" says Gunter.

If you search the words "vaginal tightening" on e-commerce retailers you'll find a slew of sprays, gels, creams, sticks and even bags of herbs that claim to hold vaginal tightening products. Gunter discusses these products and the risk that comes with them in the book.

"What are you saying when you keep pushing this idea? That a dry, tight vagina is the achievable goal, right? What, because that's the only way some dude can get off?" she added. "When did a virginal vagina become this standard that women should be aspiring to achieve? It's a fucked up purity culture thing."

SEE ALSO:Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is a hazard to your mental health

"Vaginas are built to stretch, they're built to be wet. This is how sex is enjoyable. This is how we evolved to reproduce (when you're sexually active, it doesn't have to be for reproduction obviously)," Gunter continued. "There are cultures that you know that that douche vaginally with bleach to dry the vagina, we see bags of herbs, we see these in many cultures And, now we're seeing that with [vaginal] rejuvenation stuff in medicine as well."

Gunter's book answers all the questions you've been too embarrassed to ask or too scared to google. But, importantly, it dispels many of the myths and legends that women and girls grow up reading on the internet. I for one wish this book had existed when I was a teenage girl.

The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine, published by Little Brown, is out now and costs £14.99.

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