I’ve had a really hard time getting doctors to listen to me because they seem to assume I can’t know anything I wasn’t taught. I have participated in 12 dissections of the clitoris now but people still have this attitude that I must not know what I’m talking about. Hopefully we will be publishing our photos soon so that doctors can’t keep dismissing obvious anatomy and omitting it from textbooks.

However, without the help of my father, a plastic surgeon, I would have gotten nowhere. Though ABOG did change their tune after months of social media activity to raise awareness about their dismissal of my concerns, they give me absolutely no credit. I really hope my study is the first to show photos of the dorsal nerves of the clitoris in peer reviewed literature. I’ve wanted to do it for 8 years but didn’t know I could for the longest time.

When I first started speaking up, doctors were awful to me. One OB/GYN kicked me out of her office. All I’ve wanted to do is prevent harm I suffered from happening to other patients. There is a serious cultural problem in medicine that precludes learning from mistakes at scale and inhibits change. Ego and politics seem to come before patient safety.