(No) Wonder: In My Ghost Era

Hi (No) Wonder-ers, 

Welcome back! So do y’all like our new home on Ghost? Thank you for sticking with me on our journey of empowerment through scientific knowledge, emotional literacy, and sex-positivity. And if you’re one of the wonderful friends I’ve made on Threads over the last year… welcome to (No) Wonder! I love and appreciate each and every one of you 🫶

If you’re new here, don’t worry. My previous Substack content will all be posted here for everyone’s entertainment, enlightenment, and sex-positive perusal ("From the Vault" in the menu at the top of the Home Screen). Conversely, any Substack (No) Wonder-ers are welcome to browse my Threads posts (@merritmd) about such topics as “blue balls,” clitorises, reverse cowgirl, and the difference between “urethral” and “ethereal.”

https://www.threads.net/@merritmd

Last summer I made the difficult decision, in response to some lawyerly intimidation, to stop writing long-form content publicly. I did so in order to preserve my primary livelihood, my “day job,” and concentrate on that.* Take a break, care for the patients in front of me.  

“Touch some grass,” as the kids say.

I soon recognized that I could not take comprehensively care of the patients in front of me without addressing their information ecosystem. Not the menopausal woman, convinced vaginal estrogen would kill her. Not the other menopausal woman who faked orgasms for decades without ever having experienced the real thing. Not the patient whose father-in-law convinced the patient that masturbating caused the patient’s prostate cancer. Not the vasectomy consult patients – plural! – who heaved sighs of relief when I told them that yes, with a vasectomy they get to keep their testicles. Not the guy who blamed himself when semen retention didn’t help his erectile function or libido at all, and if anything actually made it worse.

Thus there’s no escape from the ill effect of knowledge gaps, stigma, and shame on my patients. Clearly the withholders of information and purveyors of misinformation have pressed onward, to my patients’ detriment. And, thanks to Brandolini’s Law** now I am in the office spending inordinate effort to set these patients right – saying nothing of the time these folks spent suffering needlessly, which they will NEVER get back!

Sitting on the sidelines while shame, stigma, and knowledge gaps adversely affect my patients’ and their partners’ lives is simply not an option. Even if it can help provide me with a warm, fuzzy illusion of security. Even if Threads’ content moderation process, if you can even call it that, rates sexual health information as more threatening than slurs, threats, and hate speech.

If ideologues, fear-mongerers, predatory marketers, bigots, and science-deniers were right… they wouldn’t need to target science communicators with intimidation measures and death threats in response to scientific data. They wouldn’t need to artificially stifle the discourse in order to control their narrative. Their bluster belies a lack of evidentiary support. To paraphrase Carl Sandburg: they can’t pound the facts, so they pound the table instead.

So here I am, and here we are. We’re back, and I love this for us. Let's GO!

Sex-Positively Yours,

Merrit 

*This was also shortly before Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie infamously decided he was A-OK with monetizing Nazis on his platform, which confirmed my decision to leave Substack.

**Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than the amount of energy needed to produce it.”