About Us

We Deserve Better was founded on the principle that gynecology is broken and requires immediate and widespread reform. 

Gynecology as it stands today is antiquated, outdated, misogynistic, and dogmatic to the point it's practically more of a religion than a science. 

It's a field of medicine that claims to be for women yet is based almost entirely in violence against women. 

With rampant misogyny, misinformation, and sexual violence, a serious lack of informed consent, and no accountability for healthcare providers in sight, We Deserve Better is founded on the idea that gynecology as it exists today is unacceptable and that widespread change and reform needs to occur. 

We believe that bodily autonomy is not only a basic human right, but also among the most crucial basic human rights. 

Patients should be listened to and respected. 

Our voices should be heard, uplifted, and prioritized.

The right to informed consent is our most basic right as patients, yet it is the right most often denied to us in reproductive health care. 

One quick look at TikTok or any Reddit thread about reproductive health will tell you most women and AFAB people are not giving their informed consent. 

Every day women get pap smears believing that they're screening for STDs or ovarian cancer when it's just screening for HPV. 

Millions of women believe that a pelvic exam and pap smear are necessary to safely use hormonal birth control, get an IUD without understanding how the procedure is performed or what instruments are used, have routine pelvic exams without ever being told they're not evidence-based or recommended by any reputable health organization, and still believe manual breast exams are clinically relevant. 

All of these are examples of uninformed consent. 

You may be technically giving consent, but it's not informed if you don't know all of the information. 

It's also not informed consent if you aren't able to say yes or no without there being repercussions like being denied care, or having prescriptions withheld. That is not consent. That is coercion. 

Consent given in the absence of the ability to say no is not consent.

"Consent because you have no other option is not consent," Katee Robert - 

We live in a world where medical providers do not face consequences for their actions, and they know it. They know that, no matter what lines they cross and how often they cross them, there's a very good chance they will never face repercussions for doing so, and if they ever do, those repercussions will be a slap on the wrist at best. 

That needs to change.

We don't want to live in a world where we can go under anesthesia for surgery and wake up to find medical students performed pelvic exams on us without our knowledge or consent, and we have absolutely no legal recourse for it.

We don't want to live in a world where a provider is allowed to hold a prescription hostage for a medically unnecessary pap smear. 

We don't want to live in a world where rape can be called "malpractice" instead of rape.

Or where patients can file complaint after complaint about inappropriate behavior and nothing is ever done. 

We want to live in a world where medical providers are held accountable, where they can and do face real legal consequences, where their licenses are not bulletproof, and where patients have real, accessible legal pathways to seek justice.

Gynecology has a very long history of violence against women, from its very inception all the way up until now. Gynecology and violence against women and AFAB people, misogyny, and racism have gone hand in hand.  

That history is still to this day justified, excused, and defended. 

It should be condemned, and the fact that it is not is a symptom of a larger problem. It shows that gynecology and the providers working within it don't really see anything wrong with how gynecology got its beginning,  or believe the end justifies the means. 

You cannot move past, heal, or improve upon what isn't acknowledged.

We deserve better is a first-of-its-kind, entirely grassroots patient-led, owned, and operated patient rights organization dedicated to educating, informing, and empowering patients and making what we believe to be essential changes to the way gynecology is practiced worldwide.   

What started as a small community created by 4 people on Reddit in 2018 has grown to 7000 members strong today and has spawned a TikTok page, a YouTube channel, a blog, and a first of its kind organization. 

When people see the phrase anti-gynecology, they often find it rather confusing and controversial, and very often jump to conclusions before they understand the meaning. 

So let's take a moment to break down exactly what being "anti-gynecology" means. 

It does not mean we are anti-reproductive health care or anti-reproductive rights; it doesn't mean we're anti-science or anti-vaccine either, as many people often assume. 

It means that we are pro-bodily autonomy, pro-informed consent, pro-choice (and not just pro-choice when it comes to abortion rights either; we are pro-choice when it comes to all decisions women and AFAB people make regarding their bodies and reproductive health, even the ones we don't agree with) and pro-dignified, kind, trauma-informed, and accessible healthcare. 

Being anti-gynecology doesn't mean that we are against women and AFAB people having access to reproductive health care; it means we want all of us to have access to better reproductive health care, which we do not believe is possible with the way gynecology currently works. 

Gynecology, as it stands today, is basically the wild West of medicine. 

There are so few checks and balances to keep providers in line and ensure they're providing appropriate care, so little accountability that providers routinely get away with violating patient rights, ignoring evidence-based medicine, and even breaking the law without facing consequences, and so little that patients can realistically do about any of it that reproductive health care has become a free-for-all. 

We currently live in a world where you can go under anesthesia for knee surgery and end up having medical students perform pelvic exams on you without your consent, and there will be absolutely nothing you can do about it because it's legal in 25 US states for them to do so.

Gynecology as it stands today governs our choices based on the whims of providers and "clinic policies" rather than making suggestions based on science and evidence. 

If a provider wants to hold your birth control prescription, or even your antidepressant, or ADHD medication, hostage until you "consent" to a pelvic exam or pap smear, they can, and nobody will stop them. It won't matter if there's no evidence supporting doing so; it won't matter if the exam is completely medically unnecessary because gynecology providers are just going on "vibes" at this point. 

The speculum has been redesigned and improved multiple times, yet we're still stuck with the same design that was invented in the 1800s by a pig who performed horrific human experiments simply because providers "didn't feel like" learning how to use and implement the new devices. 

We are anti-gynecology because we are pro reproductive health care. 

Because, unfortunately, those two things are very different from one another. We envision and are working towards a future where that is not the case. 

A future where there is accountability, consequences, and checks and balances for providers, where 64% of women do not experience medical misogyny,  where 1.4 million medically unnecessary pelvic exams are not performed on girls and young women ages 13 to 20, where pelvic exams performed without consent are legally considered rape and can be brought to a court of law. 

A future where informed consent, informed decisions, trauma-informed care, and accessibility are actually valued. 

A future where providers follow the science, not the dogma. 

That is what being anti-gynecology means. 

We are not opposed to reproductive health care by any means, we're not even opposed to gynecology as a field of science; we are opposed to how that field of science is practiced because it's antiquated, barbaric, dogmatic, and misogynistic.

From the very start, gynecology has been hand in hand with violence against women, misogyny, and racism. Unfortunately, not much has changed, and these issues are still affecting women and afab people today.

We can effectively trace this all the way back to the birth of modern gynecology in the 1800s, when the man hailed as the “father of modern gynecology” began performing horrific human experiments on Black women and children held as slaves, and throughout the decades since with a time in the 1900s in which women suspected of being sex workers were held against their will and forced to endure speculum exams to test for STDs, the invention of the pap smear in the 1940s by a greek doctor whose wife endured daily pap smears for years, the 1972 arrest and imprisonment of a feminist activist for teaching women how to view their own anatomy with a speculum and take back some of the power the speculum has stripped from us, all the way to today in which women are denied our right to informed consent far more often than we're granted it, we're expected to endure extremely painful medical procedures such as IUD insertion, biopsies in which metal rods are shoved through the cervix into our internal organs, procedures to remove abnormal cells in which part of our internal organs are cut out and burned off with only Tylenol as pain relief, and our medications are held hostage until we “consent” to medically unnecessary and often completely useless invasive exams.

In fact, one of our biggest complaints about gynecology is how unscientific it actually is.  
Take, for example, the pelvic exam. There was never any significant scientific evidence supporting pelvic exams, yet even after multiple reputable health organizations such as the American College of Physicians and the American Preventive Services Task Force came out and said there is no evidence suggesting routine pelvic exams should be performed most gynecologists still perform them regularly and continue to recommend them against all scientific evidence and organizations like the American college of obstetrics and gynecology defend the practice; with the former vice president of the ACOG going as far as to just out right say that they know the practice is not evidence based but they will continue to encourage it a as “bonding experience” between providers and patients and describe the exam as a “time of intimacy” a statement which should be absolutely revolting to any reasonable person, and others just getting right to point and asking “are you trying to bankrupt gynecology?” admitting both that routine pelvic exams were never about women's health or our scientific understanding of it, and that gynecology relies so heavily on outdated archaic practices that without them they fear bankruptcy.

The same goes for holding birth control hostage until a patient completes a pelvic exam and/or pap smear despite there being no medical reason to require those exams, the refusal to provide pain relief for many gynecological procedures, the lack of research and funding put towards reproductive health conditions, and the continued denial of things like the cervix having nerves.  

If you know that what you're doing has no scientific evidence behind it and doesn't make any logical sense, but you still continue to do it simply because of what you “believe” about it, that's closer to a religion than to a science.

Or even worse, to believe in general the exam may be unnecessary,but when *you* do it, it's somehow magically not unnecessary anymore.

That's dogma, not science.

And I don't know about you but I don't want dogma in my healthcare anymore then I want anti-science nonsense, outdated BS, or religion in my healthcare.

If gynecology actually followed the science it would be unrecognizable in comparison to what it is today. 

We Deserve Better is all about getting reproductive healthcare to the point future generations what recognize what it is today.

Absolutely not! 

While we do believe in the absolute importance of informed consent and making one's own decision regarding all healthcare, we are not anti-science or anti-medicine, and we believe that vaccines are safe, effective, and lifesaving. 

In fact, one of our biggest complaints with gynecology is how unscientific it is as a field of medicine.

Many of the practices still employed in gynecology today are extremely outdated, dogmatic, and not supported by any real evidence. Things like the routine pelvic exam that we're often told is essential for our health in actuality is little more than a ritual. 

Like throwing salt over your shoulder, or checking whether or not you locked the front door exactly three times.

There's nothing scientific about that.

There's nothing evidence based about that.

Despite how often the accusation that We Deserve Better is anti-science gets thrown around by those critical of us, I would argue that we're more science based than gynecology. 

We can actually provide sources for our claims beyond just telling you "it's clinic policy". 

We've actually read the latest literature unlike most of the gynecologists out there still requiring a medically unnecessary pelvic exam to prescribe the pill. And that literature spoke volumes about how truly behind the times gynecology is.

We believe that trans rights are human rights.

Trans women are women.

Trans men are men. 

Gender affirming care is life-saving healthcare.

And that the gender we're assigned at birth and chromosomes don't define who we are, how we express ourselves, and who we want to become. 

We want to make it abundantly clear that we stand with trans people. 

And under circumstances will transphobia of any kind be tolerated in any We Deserve Better space, including our subreddit, Discord server, and comment sections.

Gynecology is rife with patient rights violations. 

For a field of healthcare that claims to be for women and AFAB people, gynecology is extremely misogynistic. 

Medicine in general suffers from a misogyny problem, with 66% of women reporting to have experienced some kind of gender based discrimination within healthcare, 29% reporting having their concerns dismissed by a provider, 15% feeling a provider did not believe them or thought they were lying, and 19% feeling that assumptions were made about them.  

Women are also significantly less likely to receive adequate pain management than men, and more likely to be misdiagnosed. 

These things are not coincidences; they're signs of the rot that is misogyny spreading through healthcare. Naturally, gynecology is where we see the aftermath of this the most.

It doesn't end with misogyny. 

Gynecology also has widespread issues with racism, ableism, LGBTQ+ phobia, and classism.

54% of Black women report experiencing discrimination or unfair treatment in health care settings, 21% explicitly state they were treated unfairly by a health care provider specifically because of their race or ethnicity, 22% of Black women report being refused pain medication they felt they needed, and 61% say they feel they must pay close attention to appearance and prepare to be insulted to receive fair treatment. 

Black women also face a maternal mortality rate three times higher than other races and ethnicities. 

33% of LGBTQ+ patients say they were treated unfairly or with disrespect by a provider. 61% report facing at least one negative provider experience due to their sexual orientation; 20% explicitly feel they faced direct discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

14% report providers showing visible signs of discomfort with their sexual orientation, 16% report being denied or refused medical care, 8% experienced abusive language, and 7% encountered unwanted physical contact.

8.3% of low-income people report having experienced discrimination or abuse in a healthcare setting due to being low income. 

And the stats get even worse when you look at disabled and chronically ill patients... The very patients who you think would benefit most from healthcare with a whopping 81% of disabled people reporting experiences of ableism, discrimination or poor treatment in healthcare, and 94% of disabled and chronically ill patients reporting having experienced medical gaslighting.

When providers do wrong in all of medicine, there is very little accountability to be had, if any at all; gynecology is no different... In fact, it's probably worse. 

Patients have very few pathways to take when it comes to seeking justice and accountability when something that shouldn't have happened to us happens, and there is almost no meaningful accountability for providers. 

Providers have strong legal safety nets, powerful lawyers, insurance companies, and healthcare systems, and even special laws protecting them from facing the consequences when they cross a line. 

This has led to there not really being lines at all anymore, because providers know nothing will happen to them if they cross them. 

Of all the medical sciences, gynecology is by far the least scientific. 

Many of the most common practices within gynecology are not based on any actual scientific evidence, yet providers and even major health organizations such as the ACOG still practice and recommend them. 

A practice done simply because you "believe" in it, without credible evidence supporting it, is closer to a religion than a science. And personally, while I am a spiritual person myself, I don't particularly want dogma inserted into my healthcare, and it's hard to see providers' sometimes unwavering belief in things like routine pelvic exams and holding birth control hostage for medically unnecessary exams as anything but dogma when it so clearly goes against actual evidence-based practices.