Scan barcode
A review by knit_the_resistance
Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage by Rachel E. Gross
challenging
dark
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
Vagina Obscura is Not Fun. It starts with a graphic surgery and ends with a graphic surgery with lots of graphic surgery and misogyny in between. There's not a lot of room for celebrating the really bad-ass work the vagina does, it really emphasizes what the medical community has perpetrated on people with vaginas.
I did very much appreciate the chapter about gender affirming surgery.
The narrator was never anything less than jarring. She's apparently from Australia but lived in NYC and can't decide which accent to commit to. It felt like she didn't make an effort to figure out how to pronounce words, maybe she was using Australian pronunciation or maybe she just didn't look things up? Either way, no fun.
I did very much appreciate the chapter about gender affirming surgery.
The narrator was never anything less than jarring. She's apparently from Australia but lived in NYC and can't decide which accent to commit to. It felt like she didn't make an effort to figure out how to pronounce words, maybe she was using Australian pronunciation or maybe she just didn't look things up? Either way, no fun.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness, Deadnaming, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Outing, Dysphoria, Homophobia, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Transphobia, Infertility, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Racism, Suicide, and Body shaming