both cool hip woke leftist women and right wing women believe that enduring pain without complaint is a sign of female maturity. they dismiss women’s pain for the same reasons. they believe our pain is frivolous, and this belief ties directly into medical misogyny and does nothing to improve medical outcomes. leftist women who participate in this will have the audacity to believe they’re morally superior to right wing women, which makes them the worst offenders in my eyes—you must endure the pain of bodily violation to protect yourself and suck it up, they say. they will criticize women for caring about their own pain and dismiss them as being childish rather than criticize medicine for being violent to women. i hate them. 💀
gynecology is a medical field chock full of absolute barbarism. it is well known that the origins of its practices stemmed from using enslaved women as experiments, with no anesthesia. rape and the dismissal of our pain is baked into the practice. women need to be screened for all of these related issues, but gynecology and the wider sphere of medicine in general have done everything in their power to alienate women from necessary care by dismissing our pain. it’s not frivolous. they don’t care. and this lack of care on the part of gynecology is what kills women, not women’s fear and avoidance of rape and pain.
you want women to get pap smears? demand that these evil and sadistic gynecologists offer sedation in all of their offices. they can do it. they won’t do it because they believe our pain is frivolous, and they will tell you as such. they think sedation is a cheat code, they think it’s far too much to ask for, because women asking to bypass pain is always viewed as a sign of immaturity. they will attribute our fear to a matter of psychology instead of a matter of objective self-protection. they are evil.
after over a decade of attempting to get pap smears, failing, crying because i failed to be a big girl by failing to endure the pain, and then coming to the realization that it is the gynecologists who are wrong and it is them who are failing women, the only way i was able to do it was via sedation. after visiting multiple different practices over the years, i’ve come to the conclusion that it is a medical and social crime against women that sedation is not offered. it’s not a perfect solution, but it is a much better, more constructive solution than telling women their pain and fear of rape is frivolous. we’re not insane and we’re not immature. we just live in a male supremacist hellscape.