CYBERSPACE — Several adult performers took to Twitter on Wednesday to vocally protest a statement by the New York Times Styles section’s “gynecologist and sexpert” Dr. Jennifer Gunter, who made the unsupported claim that “most women get [the] small labia in porn through surgery.”
Performer and adult industry activist Lotus Lain reposted Gunter’s tweet, shortly before the San Francisco-based Canadian-American ob/gyn — and New York Times’ go-to source for female anatomy — deleted it along with the extensive thread that followed:
The rest that got cut off says: “responsive body part only for the pleasure of men.”
— itsLotusLain ? (@itsLotusLain) May 8, 2019
That’s what she think of us that have small labias & perform in porn. That we surgically altered our (what she assumes is large labias) to have the tiny 1s we have for porn. #mylabiaisterrific! pic.twitter.com/QBTRbGC0WF
It is unclear where Gunter obtained the statistic that “most women” in the adult industry have had a vaginal rejuvenation procedure (aka, labiaplasty).
Several other performers and sex workers weighed in, puzzled as to how “the newspaper of record” is employing someone who uses her credentials to spread misinformation about a historically marginalized community:
sooo @DrJenGunter, is your main problem with porn or plastic surgery? ???? Sex work is real work, and who gives a shit if someone has surgery? If you think people should mind their own business re: abortion, why not do the same w/ cosmetic surgery? pic.twitter.com/41PQLHbwws
— Sydney Leathers (@sydneyelainexo) May 8, 2019
tbh astounded @DrJenGunter would say that pornographers have small labia because we have surgery. i’m not aware of a single performer who has had a labia reduction (we’re pretty open about procedures etc) https://t.co/E6BbuRF52k
— janice (@rejaniced) May 8, 2019
People like to deify doctors and other graduate level professions, I think it extends into classism honestly and a systemic problem of someone being good at 1 thing thinking they are good at all things.
— Iris Keenkade ???? (@IrisKeenkade) May 8, 2019
The informed, measured tone of the adult performers' responses to Gunter's original tweet contrasts with the physician's generalizations and assumptions about a community with which she seems completely unfamiliar.
This is not the first time Gunter has deployed anti-porn rhetoric to back up her dubious medical, anatomical and social claims. Like many SWELs (Sex Worker Exclusionary Liberals) active in politics, corporate life and the mainstream media, Gunter seems to think adult performers participate in a dubious activity.
Reacting last year to a ludicrous statement by a Tennessee politician that porn leads to school shootings, Gunter tweeted that "porn can lead to bad sex, mistaken ideas about typical external genitals, and the sad idea that condoms are unnecessary. It does not lead to school shootings and this woman is an idiot."
In a 2018 article entitled "When the Cause of a Sexless Relationship Is — Surprise! — the Man," Gunter listed "pornography" in a laundry list of extremely negative psychological factors affecting "many men."
"Libido can be affected by a number of things," wrote Gunter, who often offers normalized, heterosexual monogamy between cis partners (i.e., the stereotypical urban, middle-class New York Times reader being presented as universal) as her examples.
For Gunter, lack of marital sex among the newspaper's readers could be due to the male libido being under attack from "depression, medication, stress, health, affairs, previous sexual trauma, pornography, pain with sex and relationship dissatisfaction (having sex while going through an ugly divorce is probably an outlier)."
Even when driving home the commonsense point (agreed upon by virtually everyone in the adult industry) that watching porn should not be a substitute for the sex education that religious extremists have managed to remove from most public schools, Gunter sounds troubled by the existence of sexual content.
"Porn may normalize anal sex," she tweeted earlier this year. "If you like it, awesome! But porn is acting. I mean I want to punch dudes every time I watch 'Wonder Woman' [sic], but I don’t go out and do it. What you see on screen isn’t instructional."
Like many SWELs, Gunter is on record expressing her dislike for porn, even if she avowedly does not know much about it.
"First of all I’m not into porn so I’m an unlikely defender, but science is science," she wrote in 2016, trying to present herself as more open-minded than the GOP's draconian position regarding sex. "Porn seems largely a sprint to penetration [sic], however, each to their own and if that’s someone else’s thing then great. If the actors are safe (read condoms are used) and everyone is 18 years or older, then I’m cool. However, if you are going to label something a health crisis it better actually be one."
In 2011, in an essay that she still hosts on her website, Gunter was much more straightforward about her anti-porn agenda. The piece is called "Why Porn Bums Me Out." This is the first paragraph:
"I don’t like porn. While I find the story lines cheesy, the bodies fake, and the facial expressions that are supposed to represent the height of sexual satisfaction anything but sexy, it’s the idea that I’m watching people giving each other sexually transmitted diseases that, well, repulses me."
Gunter has a book scheduled for publication this summer called "The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine."
Once her book comes out, XBIZ readers should not be surprised if her medical "myth-busting" excludes the experiences of sex workers.