KELI GARZA
Keli is the founder of Steamy Chick, the largest distributor of vaginal steam supplies in the United States. How dooes our emotions and trauma affect our menstrual cycle? What is the real history of gynecology? And what does all of this have to do with vaginal steaming?
[Men, this is crucial for you to know too! Cuz let's be real - we cannot do this work alone, especially if it is (cis)men who have historically caused harm.]
FOLLOW KELI’S WORK HERE: STEAMY CHICK
*Content Warning: We go extremely deep and detailed into the history of gynecology, reproductive health, and sexual trauma. This talk is NOT for the faint of heart. However, we won’t leave you without providing solutions at the end!
Highlights:
“I was pulled into this by the need that women have to address their gynecological issues in an all-natural way.“
“I'm not very impressed with gynecology; I feel like gynecology is in its baby stages. Surgery is useful for saving women and babies lives in certain instances, but the majority of instances there are other methods that could be used that would be much healthier for women and gynecology hasn't even began to study them or look at them. “
“Only 5% of the national research budget is spent on women's health issues. We are more than 50% of the majority! And out of that 5%, those men up there that are in charge of where the funding goes will not fund menstrual cramps. It's been turned down over and over and over again.”
“The gynecology that we have right now started in the 1800s, and it was founded by J Marion Sims who was a slave owner, who was also a physician, and he was interested in research. He was interested in the woman's body. So, what he did was he started to operate on his female slaves, and, you know, this was tying them down and cutting them open, and many of them died during his experiments. And so once he had killed his slaves, he purchased other slaves, other slave women, that he then continued to do these medical experiments on, this medical research. And so people say, oh well, during that time it was a different time, and that was okay then. It wasn't. He used to try to have other physicians come and observe what he was doing, and the other physicians were like, dude you're crazy! Like, what are you doing? You’re cut these women open. And so he did it enough that he learned how to cut women open without killing them. So, once he learned how to cut women open without killing them, that was a huge medical discovery that you could go and repair a woman's uterus through cutting them open. So, Sims is recognized as the grandfather of gynecology. He is absolutely praised. There are statues of him that have been erected as a great medical mind, that brought us gynecology and it’s really terrible. it's a really terrible history. “
“Every time vaginal steaming comes out in the media, it's just ridiculed doctors oh this is ridiculous oh why would a woman ever do that. Well, why don't they listen to the case studies? Why don't they look at the evidence? why didn't the first the grandfather of gynecology look at what midwives were doing to address fistulas, to address fibroids, to address cramps?”
“It's men that have decided that it's not important to study (vaginal steaming). So, what we need is we need is women who have money, who can fund this type of stuff. We need women who decide that it is important that have the money that can decide we're not going to sit and wait let you guys determine what you think is important medically for us women anymore because their history sucks.”
“We do have a lot of freedom that our ancestors didn't have. When we take autonomy over our bodies and come out from underneath that colonial and patriarchal rule, I think the ancestors are happy. There’s just so much divine feminine energy that's getting propelled into this, and the more that I do this the more strength I feel. It’s affected all aspects of my life. I'm a decision maker now. I just don’t sit around wondering if these male authorities are going to give me permission. It’s just like now that I'm have control over my body I have control over my whole life. Something, I always say, if a woman isn’t in control of her menstrual cycle, she's not in control of her life.”
“I realized earlier this year I need to become a millionaire, because I need to able fund one of the universities I'm working with. They're like, we need a five million dollars so that we could do this level of a project, and I was like, ‘Five million dollars? Okay, we need to keep on rising.’”
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BIOgraphy
Keli Garza has a Masters degree in International Development graduating cum laude. Garza is the owner of Steamy Chick the largest distributor of vaginal steam supplies in the United States. To further vaginal steam education Garza founded a branch of her company called the Peristeam Hydrotherapy Institute to train practitioners in the use of vaginal steam for menstrual and reproductive health and to further research on the gynecological benefits reported by hundreds of customer case studies. Garza is at the forefront of professionalizing vaginal steam into an alternative medicine field known as peristeam hydrotherapy.
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