Communicating the incommunicable? Women with endometriosis, asymmetries and limits of empathy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29397/reciis.v18i3.4208Keywords:
Pain, Communication, Empathy, Gender, EndometriosisAbstract
In this essay, we analyze the documentary Endometriosis: a life shaped by pain, a material that aims to “show, remove from invisibility and give voice” to women who live with intense chronic pain caused by endometriosis. We will preliminarily discuss the difficulties and potentialities of witnessing physical pain, based on the work of Scarry, Sontag and Bourke. Next, we will address three socio-historical factors that can help explain the silencing of patients’ experiences: first, the limits of medical compassion, especially related to issues of gender, class and race; second, the construction of the idea of the female body as inherently pathological; third, the complexities in the doctor-patient relationship as it intersects with gender. Finally, in the last topic of the work, we will examine the efforts of endometriosis patients to make their pain intelligible and modulate the response they want to receive from their interlocutors.
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