“Since no one seemed to believe her, she turned to self-medication, using information she found on a website describing vaginismus, a vaginal…
“Women are socialized to swallow pain with a smile. We are taught to put ourselves last and others first, to make the dinner and then serve ourselves the worst cut, the most nourishing morsels reserved for those we do and should love more than ourselves.
“Men never ask what they should call women’s pain, so they call us crazy. They call us crazy and they laugh at us. The same men who say women aren’t funny obviously do find women funny. They find women funny at the most inappropriate time: when we’re hurting”
“The moment we start talking about wounded women, we risk transforming their suffering from an aspect of the female experience into an element of the female constitution — perhaps its finest, frailest consummation. The ancient Greek Menander once said: “Woman is…