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Fiorentino Honors Thesis accessible.pdf (1.82 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

(In)valid Vaginas: Overcoming the Shame of Vaginismus and Rejecting the Idea of Sexual Failure

Fiorentino, Emily Anne
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1010-8416
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1656679574693866

Abstract Details

2022, BA, Oberlin College, Comparative American Studies.
This paper seeks to understand why pelvic pain conditions cause women to feel such intense shame, and to begin to untangle the many tensions these conditions embody. Pelvic pain -- particularly vaginal pain that causes pain upon attempted penetration into the vagina, including during sex -- is commonly experienced, yet is only beginning to become common knowledge. Women with these conditions feel a great deal of shame, anxiety, and self-hatred, yet often suffer in silence. This paper examines how pelvic pain conditions are at once not taken seriously by the medical establishment, and have not been given the attention and research they deserve and, at the same time, how medicalization and the complex social expectations that govern pelvic pain make women reliant on treatment that will never be able to fully cure them. Women deserve to be able to understand and treat their conditions, but their suffering is also inextricably complicated by their perceived “failure” at being a woman, and the resulting disbelief in their worth as people, that is caused by their inability to have penetrative sex. I will argue that biomedical models of treatment will therefore never be adequate in fully addressing pelvic pain conditions, because they will never be capable of solving the forces of gendered norms that cause much of the suffering that these conditions induce.
KJ Cerankowski (Committee Member)
Crystal Biruk (Committee Member)
Wendy Kozol (Advisor)
91 p.
American Studies; Gender Studies
Vaginismus; Pelvic pain; Sexual pain; Medicalization; Medical anthropology; Gender; Heteronormativity;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Fiorentino, E. A. (2022). (In)valid Vaginas: Overcoming the Shame of Vaginismus and Rejecting the Idea of Sexual Failure [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1656679574693866

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Fiorentino, Emily. (In)valid Vaginas: Overcoming the Shame of Vaginismus and Rejecting the Idea of Sexual Failure. 2022. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1656679574693866.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Fiorentino, Emily. "(In)valid Vaginas: Overcoming the Shame of Vaginismus and Rejecting the Idea of Sexual Failure." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1656679574693866

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

oberlin1656679574693866
277
© 2022, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License (In)valid Vaginas: Overcoming the Shame of Vaginismus and Rejecting the Idea of Sexual Failure by Emily Anne Fiorentino is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.