“Ask Me About My Uterus:” Theological Responses to Women’s Pain in Contemporary Western Medicine
Sarah Jean Barton, MTS, MS, OTR/L Doctor of Theology Candidate, Duke Divinity School Henri Nouwen Fellow, Western Theological Seminary; Devan Stahl, PhD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Ethics at Michigan State University; and Cathy Webb, MS, CCC-SLP PhD(c) Disability Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago
As evidenced throughout medical literature in the United States over the past several decades, women bear the majority of the health burden due to chronic pain, experience greater lapses of time before correct medical diagnoses related to pain, and receive prescription painkillers at much lower rates than their male counterparts. (1) In addition to medical attention to these realities of chronic pain (including specific journals such as Women’s Health and Clinical Medicine Insights: Women’s Health) other authors have begun to highlight the health disparities faced by American women in pain, through a variety of genres: Abby Norman’s combined memoir and non-fiction analysis of endometriosis, Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain, Aana Marie Vigen’s qualitative study and theological reflections in Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count Among the Living,” Michele Lent Hirsch’s synthetic account of memoir, neuroscience, and sociology, Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine, and Maya Dusenbery’s sociological analysis titled Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick.
These descriptive works paint a sobering picture of the lived realities of women with chronic pain in the contemporary United States, aggravated by the systemic problems that sustain consistent mis-diagnoses and under-treatment of pain, as well as the disparities in comparison to men with comparable conditions. These descriptive accounts also underscore the gendered responses to women’s pain especially evident among male clinicians. Finally, these accounts also attend to the intersectional realities of how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability interact to further marginalize women in their experiences of chronic pain and chronic illness.
This panel, composed of three women living with chronic pain or chronic illness, engages feminist approaches to describe the experiential realities of living with pain, as well as to also offer a theological re-narration of this pain and constructive possibilities to address women’s health disparities. From the vantage point of Christian theology, this panel seeks to uncover the connections between empirical evidence and lived experiences of chronic pain. In addition, this panel considers how a theological re- narration of chronic pain might offer insight into the significance of women’s pain as well as resources for meaning-making in the midst of pain.
The first panelist, a clinician and disability studies scholar, considers the impact of disbelief and misdiagnosis on her embodiment of pain, including how expectations of performativity and gender stereotypes influenced her own diagnostic process. Reflecting on insights gained through studying disability theology and biblical accounts of suffering, this presenter will discuss their influence on how she navigates relationships with herself, the church, and the broader world.
The second panelist, a clinician and theologian, reflects on years of pain as the result of an undiagnosed and untreated autoimmune disease. This panelist offers an analysis of women’s chronic pain and processes of mis-diagnosis as narrated through Psalm 42 and Psalm 88, considering the practices of truth-telling and lament as indispensable for faithfully responding to pain. In addition, the second panelist suggests how a renewed theological commitment to practices of hospitality in response to narratives and experiences of pain, in both clinical and ecclesial settings, offers concrete ways to more wisely and faithfully to respond to women’s experiences of chronic pain in the contemporary church and clinic.
The final panelist, a clinical ethicist and theological bioethicist, will describe the episodic pain she experiences as a result of a chronic illness. She will describe the insight she gained about the spiritual meaning of her own suffering and illness when reading the stories of ascetics and saints, including Evagrius Ponticus, Julian of Norwich, and Theresa of Avila. She will discuss what it means to be faithful in times of suffering. When we cannot overcome illness, we must learn to live with it like an ascetic. Learning to live with chronic illness often requires assuming pain and suffering as a spiritual practice.
1 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment- 2017100912562
These descriptive works paint a sobering picture of the lived realities of women with chronic pain in the contemporary United States, aggravated by the systemic problems that sustain consistent mis-diagnoses and under-treatment of pain, as well as the disparities in comparison to men with comparable conditions. These descriptive accounts also underscore the gendered responses to women’s pain especially evident among male clinicians. Finally, these accounts also attend to the intersectional realities of how race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and disability interact to further marginalize women in their experiences of chronic pain and chronic illness.
This panel, composed of three women living with chronic pain or chronic illness, engages feminist approaches to describe the experiential realities of living with pain, as well as to also offer a theological re-narration of this pain and constructive possibilities to address women’s health disparities. From the vantage point of Christian theology, this panel seeks to uncover the connections between empirical evidence and lived experiences of chronic pain. In addition, this panel considers how a theological re- narration of chronic pain might offer insight into the significance of women’s pain as well as resources for meaning-making in the midst of pain.
The first panelist, a clinician and disability studies scholar, considers the impact of disbelief and misdiagnosis on her embodiment of pain, including how expectations of performativity and gender stereotypes influenced her own diagnostic process. Reflecting on insights gained through studying disability theology and biblical accounts of suffering, this presenter will discuss their influence on how she navigates relationships with herself, the church, and the broader world.
The second panelist, a clinician and theologian, reflects on years of pain as the result of an undiagnosed and untreated autoimmune disease. This panelist offers an analysis of women’s chronic pain and processes of mis-diagnosis as narrated through Psalm 42 and Psalm 88, considering the practices of truth-telling and lament as indispensable for faithfully responding to pain. In addition, the second panelist suggests how a renewed theological commitment to practices of hospitality in response to narratives and experiences of pain, in both clinical and ecclesial settings, offers concrete ways to more wisely and faithfully to respond to women’s experiences of chronic pain in the contemporary church and clinic.
The final panelist, a clinical ethicist and theological bioethicist, will describe the episodic pain she experiences as a result of a chronic illness. She will describe the insight she gained about the spiritual meaning of her own suffering and illness when reading the stories of ascetics and saints, including Evagrius Ponticus, Julian of Norwich, and Theresa of Avila. She will discuss what it means to be faithful in times of suffering. When we cannot overcome illness, we must learn to live with it like an ascetic. Learning to live with chronic illness often requires assuming pain and suffering as a spiritual practice.
1 https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/women-and-pain-disparities-in-experience-and-treatment- 2017100912562