Used Yoni Steamer?

Some Things Should Not be Swapped

I love my local Facebook Swap group both for getting inexpensive stuff that I think I need and getting rid of expensive stuff that I probably shouldn’t have bought in the first place. I’ve sold or given away clothes, toys, and shoes that my children outgrew; baking pans that I never used; a full-size bunk bed; lawn furniture that no longer had pillows; and a couple of brightly colored bicycles that I can’t believe my children were ever small enough to ride. My fellow Swappers have also been the beneficiaries of my frequent failure to return online orders within the window (these things get marked NWT for new with tags), plus a few occasions where I didn’t check the quantity of an order carefully enough (the five-gallon bucket of pickles purchased mid-pandemic comes to mind).

I’ve also bought a bunch of stuff on Swap: a cool green tray, ski equipment (that got used twice before being reswapped because the kid hated skiing), an ice cream maker that I used all the time during lockdown, a one-cup coffee maker, two cool antique typewriters (one of which I spray painted pink), and a really large spider plant that I have actually managed to keep alive.

Recently, I’ve expanded from my local Swap group to Facebook Marketplace where I obsessively look for old chairs because I’ve taken up reupholstery as a hobby. I started with chairs we already had in the house. Two parson’s chairs, two armchairs, one bench, and a heart-shaped pouf later, I started collecting things I found online that I will recover someday (really, I will).

I finished this one—my favorite project by far—a few months ago and have now started on one that was so old it was stuffed with hay instead of foam

I also have a large wood-framed chair in the basement and a fabulous settee with arms carved to look like swans that’s been in the garage for almost two years. Both are waiting for me to work up the courage to tackle such big pieces of furniture and mocking me just a little bit every time I walk by. Last week, I found a fabric that I loved so much I bought it even though it won’t work for any of the projects in my queue. So of course, I’ve been searching marketplace for a chair it will look good on.

I wish I could say that the following picture was a result of one of those searches because I can only imagine how hard I would have laughed. But alas this comes from a friends’ swap group in another state.

Anyone want a used yoni steamer?

For the ungooped among us, let me start by saying that yoni refers to the female genital region. It has its origins in Sanskrit. Depending on who you ask it means vagina, vulva, womb, sacred passage, and/or bringer of life. However you describe it, I can promise you that it doesn’t need to be steamed-cleaned which is what this doodad does.

This apparatus is somewhere between a stool and a small appliance. I’ve never seen an item like this before to be honest, but I’m assuming you put hot water and some healing herbs in the bottom, turn it on to heat, and then cop a squat. If you look closely at the picture, you can see a vaguely-vulva-shaped piece of plastic that you take out so that your lady bits are directly exposed to the steam.

Vaginal steaming is apparently an ancient practice. It got a lot of attention about ten years ago when Gwyneth Paltrow told everyone that she steamed her own vagina over a warm mugwort bath. For some that would be TMI, but Gwyneth built goop in her own I-survive-on-air-and- expensive-skin-serums image. (What she’s never told us is whether her “smells like my vagina candle” better resembles the scent before or after said bath.)

With or without mugwort, steaming your nether regions is a bad idea. Vaginas are self-cleaning and have a complicated microbiome that should not be disturbed unless you have symptoms like itching or burning (in which case they should be checked out by a health care professional, not an actress-turned-lifestyle guru). If there is a problem, hot steam is not the solution. In fact, getting the area too hot is one way to knock that delicate microbiome out of whack. It’s also a way to get some serious burns on some very sensitive skin. Just ask a 62-year-old woman in Canada who was hospitalized with second degree burns of the vadge after trying this unnecessary ancient practice.

This isn’t the only bad-for-your-vagina idea Gwyneth promulgated. She was chastised by the Santa Clara County District Attorney for suggesting that putting $66 stone eggs into your vagina could “balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control.” The DA believed these claims were not only baseless, they were harmful. Real experts pointed out that a porous stone egg was terrible thing to put up there. It could introduce bacteria and even lead to toxic shock syndrome.

Goop paid a $145,000 fine for spreading that and other misinformation and published a mea culpa that was so faux naïve it was almost endearing:

Goop provides a forum for practitioners to present their views and experiences with various products like the jade egg. The law, though, sometimes views statements like this as advertising claims, which are subject to various legal requirements. The Task Force assisted us in applying those laws to the content we published, and we appreciate their guidance in this matter as we move from a pioneer in this space to an established wellness authority.

Ten years ago, this seemed like a big transgression. Now it’s just Tuesdays with Bobby Junior. But that doesn’t change the fact that vaginas don’t need steaming.

As a Swapper, though, I have to say that the most disturbing part of this post isn’t that the vadge steamer is unnecessary and potentially dangerous. It’s the fact that the vadge steamer is unnecessary and potentially dangerous and USED!!! And at $75 it is not a bargain.

Maker of “Female Viagra” Gets Slapped by FDA for Inaccurate Social Post

Goop isn’t the only company that occasionally gets pushback on its claims. Late last month, the FDA sent a notice to the makers of Addyi that a post on CEO Cindy Eckert’s personal Instagram account made “false or misleading” claims about the drug. Addyi—which is approved to treat hypoactive sexual desire disorder—has been controversial since the very beginning.

Flibanserin was originally developed as an anti-depressant. Instead of helping your brain hold onto serotonin like SSRIs, this drug lowers serotonin levels to allow for higher levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. These brain chemicals are known to influence motivation and desire.

It was billed as female Viagra and jokingly referred to as the little pink pill, but flibanserin is nothing like Viagra because low libido in women is not like limp dicks in men. While the underlying problem in someone suffering from erectile dysfunction may be psychological, it turns out there’s a pretty simple physical cure. All Viagra has to do is increase blood flow to the penis so as to increase tumescence (a word we don’t use often enough). All the user has to do is pop a pill at least half an hour before they want to be sex-ready (and be on the lookout for that dreaded four-hour erection).

Addyi works entirely on brain chemistry. To have any effect, users must take it every day. There are side effects including dizziness, nausea, and intense sleepiness. Users are told to take Addyi at bedtime because of how tired it may make them. They also have to be careful about drinking alcohol because research found that the combo of Addyi and booze could cause a potentially dangerous drop in blood pressure. (The drug originally came with a box warning that “alcohol is contraindicated,” but the language was softened by the FDA in 2019 after additional research. Now users are told to wait at least two hours or skip their bedtime dose altogether if they’ve been drinking.)

While it’s pretty easy to measure (possible literally) whether Viagra is working, success with Addyi is also harder to gauge. Whether it works on sex drive is very subjective. In clinical trials only between 8 and 13 percent of women taking the drug reported better results than those in the control group. One of more measurable outcomes in the trials was the number of “satisfying sexual events” (SSEs) that participants had over the course of a month. These could include sexual intercourse, oral sex, masturbation, or genital stimulation by the partner. It’s true that those taking Addyi had more SSEs than the women in the control group, but the numbers are not impressive. Women taking the pink pill had between 0.5 and 1 more SSE per month than those getting the placebo. (Can half a sexual event be satisfying?)

Even before these less-than-stellar finding were released, Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the maker of Addyi, was accused of retrofitting a problem so they could make money on the solution. Sprout described HSDD as a condition in which women have a low sex drive for more than three months and experience stress as a result, but some feminist scholars and sexologists expressed doubts that such a condition even existed. They pointed out that sexual desire is a complicated mix of relationship factors, life stress, and societal pressure to want sex and argued that not wanting “enough” sex or not wanting sex “enough” was not a medical problem.

Sprout tried to turn this around in the court of public opinion (or is it public relations?). After the FDA twice rejected the drug application, a supposedly grassroots coalition of women’s groups came together to suggest that the decision was not based on potentially dangerous side effects or decidedly meh results. The “Even the Score” campaign argued that the decision was a result of gender bias at the FDA. Groups like The National Organization for Women (NOW), the American College of Nurse Midwives, the National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health, and Black Women’s Health Imperative argued that women’s sexual health had been ignored for too long and that approving this drug was the first step in rectifying that.

This effort, which turned out to be funded by Sprout (shocker), got a lot of attention. The coalition came out with popular spoofs on Viagra ads and Time Magazine listed Addyi as “the number one inanimate object that drove the news in 2015.” The campaign worked. The FDA approved the drug in 2015 even though no new data had come out since the previous rejection. The agency did require the drug to carry a warning about avoiding alcohol. The coalition declared victory, and the founders of Sprout turned around and sold the company to Valeant for one billion dollars.

But Addyi never lived up to the hype. In 2016 it only did $10 million of sales. Cindy Eckert and a group of Sprout shareholders filed suit against Valeant claiming it was overcharging for the pill and under marketing it. Valeant agreed to sell the drug back to Sprout in exchange for a 6% royalty of future sales. Back in charge, Eckert and her team reduced the price and introduced a more aggressive marketing plan.

At times, however, the FDA has found that plan too aggressive. In 2020, the agency sent a warning after the company aired radio ads that did not include some important information about the risks of the drug and the limitations on who can use it. The FDA said the ad created “a misleading impression about the safety and approved use of the drug."

The agency’s current complaints about Eckert’s Instagram post are similar. The post suggested that Addyi is called the “the sex pill for women” but did not explain that the pill was only approved for a very specific problem and is not considered an overall sexual performance enhancer. The letter also noted that once again the company didn’t explain who could and could not use the drug. The FDA reprimanded Eckert for not learning from past mistakes: “OPDP [Office of Prescription Drug Promotion] is concerned that, despite receiving this previous Warning Letter, Sprout continues to promote Addyi in a similarly misleading manner.”

The company was given 15 days to reply with “a comprehensive plan of action to disseminate truthful, non-misleading, and complete corrective communication(s) about the concerns discussed in this letter.” Those 15-days ended last week.

My first thought when I read about this was something along the lines of “Wow, I didn’t think we had rules or an FDA anymore, I’m surprised anyone cared.” But then I remembered that the guy who fired all of the experts on the CDC’s vaccine committee last week and replaced them with whackadoodles has one idea that I don’t hate: getting rid of direct-to-consumer advertising for pharmaceuticals. Perhaps this is the start of a trend in which the FDA will go after inaccurate ads. Of course, starting with Addyi plays right into the arguments “Even the Score” made a decade ago about sexism in the FDA.

All these years later, the debate over whether HSDD is a diagnosable disorder that can be treated with medication has not really been settled. Certainly, some women have lagging libidos which puts stress on them and their relationships. Whether this is a result of brain chemistry, relationship issues, a busy work schedule, caretaker fatigue, or the mile-long to do list that puts sex after loading the dishwasher, finding an orthodontist, washing this week’s laundry, folding last week’s laundry, cancelling cable, and taking the dog (or cat or hedgehog) to the vet is a modern mystery. Oddly, in this modern era, brain chemistry seems to be the most fixable of those issues. But I would argue that with minimal improvement and scary side effects, Addyi has never been the answer.