When the Body Says No: The Experience of Vaginismus and the Validity of Female Pain

Vaginismus first entered medical discourse in 1861 when Dr J Marion Sims linked symptoms of vaginal hypersensitivity to muscular spasms. Today, vaginismus is similarly defined by the NHS characterised as an involuntary tightening of muscles around the vagina whenever penetration is attempted. Although these medical descriptions do not encapsulate every experience of the condition, it is generally agreed that the condition makes penetration near impossible, and very painful. The use of tampons, penetrative intercourse, cervical examinations, and other activities become sources of shame and fear for sufferers. Vaginismus is neglected as it is an underdiagnosed condition, which sufferers often must treat themselves, away from medical support. It is contested by doctors, who do not believe that there is anything wrong with the sufferer. By taking the experience of vaginismus as my starting point, I argue that the medical response to vaginismus is shaped by wider cultural perceptions about the believability of female pain. Female pain is viewed not as fact, but as a misinterpretation of bodily events. This article highlights the issues that surround the disbelief of female pain in relation to vaginismus, and how such perceptions might be altered. Key words: vaginismus, sexual pain disorders, sexual practice, women's medicine, heteronormativity

Abortion Surveillance and Women’s Medicine

During World War II, Soviet doctors had become used to expressing their own views and acting on them. After the war, doctors understood that policymakers were interested in reinstituting the prewar abortion surveillance system, but they considered that women, who had suffered much in the war, needed safe abortion, not prosecution. Instead, a postwar purge in the medical field, decimated hopes for postwar alternatives. Contacts with the West ended and many Jews lost their jobs, common results of workplace purges in late Stalinism. The purge of the Moscow Institute of Obstetrics and Gynecology was no exception. Under threat, medicine gave up on the idea of helping women individually through expert judgment and private consultation. As the top health official in charge of women and children, Deputy People’s Commissar Mariia D. Kovrigina learned much about what was medically desirable and politically possible.

Beyond Replacing the Dead

After 1955, the number of clinical abortions in the USSR rose steadily. Soviet doctors of women’s medicine began developing contraception to stop the prevalent practice of multiple abortions. However, their vision of preventing abortion as a way of improving the reproductive health of Soviet women increasingly contradicted the emerging pronatalism of the 1970s. As the introduction of contraception remained blocked, doctors again made it easier for women to get clinical abortions in the early stages of pregnancy. Key postwar practices would carry over into the post-Soviet era. Meanwhile, the reformed family law of 1968 brought only superficial improvement to the legal status of out-of-wedlock children. The one-parent pronatalism that allocated unequal parental responsibilities between the mother and father was largely unchanged from 1944 until 1991.

Pathos, Eros, and Curiosity

Miniature ivory anatomical models or manikins were first created in the late 1600s, but their history as props for man-midwives as well as kunstkammer objects has not been fully explored until now. Through an investigation of 180 models and texts surrounding them, their roles as props, playthings, and luxury objects is presented against a background of changes in craftsmanship, women’s medicine, and the art and commodity market starting in the seventeenth century. The manikins are explored in terms of their reception for various owners and audiences as well as differences in their making over time to give a framework for further study on these objects.

Women and Medicine: A Historical and Contemporary Study on Ghana

Women have always been central concerning the provision of healthcare. The transitions into the modern world have been very slow for women because of how societies classify women. Starting from lay care, women provided healthcare for their family and sometimes to the members of the community in which they lived. With no formal education, women served as midwives and served in other specialised fields in medicine. They usually treated their fellow women because they saw ‘women’s medicine’ as women’s business. They were discriminated against by the opposite sex and by the church, which regarded it as a taboo to allow women to practice medicine. This study points to a Ghanaian context on how the charismas of women have made them excel in their efforts to provide healthcare for their people. The study also focused on the role of indigenous practitioners who are mostly found in the rural areas and modern practitioners who are mostly found in the peri-urban, urban areas and larger cities in Ghana.