My ultimate mentor was the rock ’n’ roll sex-positive legend, Betty Dodson, 89, who lives in New York. She had just restarted the “masturbation masterclasses” she created in the Seventies because she believes internet-age women are still at sea about their sexuality. I learned masturbation is the foundation of every woman’s sexuality and learning to love your body in a shame-free way brings you power and confidence.

Researching the vulvodynia world for this story so many years after my pain began was strange. In some ways, not much had changed. Julie Holland, psychopharmacologist, psychiatrist and author of Moody Bitches says: “Women are still, very simply, second-class citizens in the world of medicine. Until recently, surgeons knew much less about pelvic anatomy for women than for men. This has translated into thousands of hysterectomies with avoidable complications.”

In her 2017 book Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick, Maya Dusenbery shows how women are still living with the repercussions of the ‘hysteria’ label doctors gave us in the 19th century.

We are still regarded as unreliable narrators and Dusenbury points to studies showing women with abdominal pain wait in A&E for 65 minutes compared with 49 minutes for men. While problems still exist, some myths are being dispelled. The Wonder Down Under: A User’s Guide To The Vagina by Ellen Støkken Dahl and Nina Brochmann reveals a 2011 study on the link between repeated yeast infections and vulvodynia was done, wait for it… on mice.

Women’s pain isn’t taken seriously by doctors – and this has to change