{"id":1522,"date":"2009-10-12T16:57:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T06:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.msnaughty.com\/blog\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2009-10-12T16:57:09","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T06:57:09","slug":"igad-international-gynae-awareness-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/12\/igad-international-gynae-awareness-day\/","title":{"rendered":"IGAD! International Gynae Awareness Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blogpics\/igad.jpg\" align=\"left\" alt=\"Gynae Awareness Information Network\" \/>I&#8217;m disappointed I missed it this year: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gain.org.au\/\" target=\"blank\">International Gynae Awareness Day<\/a> (and week) was on September 10. It aims primarily to encourage the breaking down of entrenched social, and cultural taboos, still surrounding most things &#8216;gynaecological&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>It was founded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ourbodiesourblog.org\/blog\/2009\/04\/women-can-kath-mazzella\" target=\"blank\">Kath Mazella<\/a>, who 15 years ago endured radical surgery to overcome vulval cancer; she had her vulva and clitoris removed to save her life. She&#8217;s now working to make sure this doesn&#8217;t have to happen to other women.<\/p>\n<p>Now I considered myself to be fairly well informed about sexual health matters so I&#8217;m amazed I&#8217;d never heard of vulval cancer. And to be honest, it scares the crap out of me. Cervical cancer, ovarian cancer&#8230; we all know about those. But this? Losing your clit? That&#8217;s fucking dreadful! How do we check for this? Do doctors even know anything about it?<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, the GAIN site has information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gain.org.au\/healthinfo\/gynaecancers\/vulvacancer\/\" target=\"blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things Kath campaigns on is the correct usage of the word &#8220;vulva&#8221; to describe the female genitals. She, like me, is sick of people calling it the vagina.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even today, we find it difficult to talk about our genitalia, and to use the correct name for these precious parts of our own bodies. The founder of GAIN &#8211; Kath Mazzella, a survivor of vulval cancer was surprised, then angry, and finally frustrated, to continually hear many, many women, the world over, refer to their &#8220;vulva&#8221; as their &#8220;vagina&#8221;! <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Shockingly, Kath has even been told by government funding agencies to tone down her language because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sexparty.org.au\/index.php\/blog\/517-perth-get-together?format=pdf\" target=\"blank\">the word &#8220;vulva&#8221; is pornographic<\/a>. &#8220;Vagina&#8221;, however, is OK. Can you believe the nonsense some people perpetuate?<\/p>\n<p>In any case, this post is a plug for Kath and her good work. And also to show off that spectacular logo: isn&#8217;t it cute?<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m disappointed I missed it this year: International Gynae Awareness Day (and week) was on September 10. It aims primarily to encourage the breaking down of entrenched social, and cultural taboos, still surrounding most things &#8216;gynaecological&#8217;. It was founded by Kath Mazella, who 15 years ago endured radical surgery to overcome vulval cancer; she had her vulva and clitoris removed to save her life. She&#8217;s now working to make sure <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/12\/igad-international-gynae-awareness-day\/\">Read More &#8230;<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[92,163,383,384,839,856],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sex-and-women","tag-awareness","tag-cancer","tag-gyne","tag-gynecological","tag-vulva","tag-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/msnaughty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}