Sex Without Pain: A Self-Treatment Guide to the Sex Life You Deserve by Heather Jeffcoat (of @ladypartspt) outlines a concise program to overcome the debilitating condition of Vaginismus. She describes in laymen’s terms what the condition is and how physical therapy plays an integral role in the recovery. The book doesn’t focus on the psychological factors that can also be at play when struggling with Vaginismus, only the physical ones, since that is her specialty. She explains a very specific way to stretch the vaginal entrance with your dilators, giving the exact locations and time to spend on each task before moving forward. She follows it with a collection of stretches to help with loosening your hips and thighs, all of the muscles surrounding the pelvic floor which play a role in tightening it to create “the wall” that blocks entry. The 87-page length may appear daunting for outlining a program to follow, but there are a few blank pages between chapters, the exercises are more image than text, and the last few pages are just a personal log, so you can read the whole thing in about 2 hours. It’s a great program to work through with your partner, as it is meant to be shared, so they will also understand what and why you are up against this barrier and a detailed plan for how to fix it. I personally haven’t had these specific stretches recommended by any of my physical therapists I’ve been to so I’m looking forward to trying them out. I’ve also never heard of sliding the dilator outward before, rather than just stretching the vaginal walls to the sides. As someone who still hasn't achieved completely pain free sex, I’m excited to try out these moves myself after my next period.
Invisible: How Young Women with Serious Health Issues Navigate Work, Relationships, and the Pressure to Seem Just Fine by Michele Lent Hirsch details the accounts of several young women, 35 and under, struggling with major health issues and how it impacts all corners of their lives. She makes it a point to interview women of various sexualities, backgrounds, and races to gain a well-rounded view of the similarities and differences we all encounter based on how we were born and how we identify as young adults. She discusses health diagnoses such as HIV, alopecia, PCOS, cancer, Anaphylaxis, Chron's, and many more.
One of the major takeaways from this book is how much more common of an occurrence it is for men to leave “sick” women in heterosexual relationships or marriages (due to the age-old expectation that women are meant to take care of men and not vice versa). The author found time and time again when she asked others, and based on her own personal experience, that queer and non-binary relationships didn’t elicit the kind of fear of rejection in women once they revealed their health problems as did the heteronormative ones. This is something I hadn’t yet thought of myself, as a cis-gendered female who has only had relationships with men, but I found it really interesting. I will say that my bisexual ex was by far the most understanding of my health issues and thus it was and still is my longest relationship. Hirsch’s argument is that this effect is stemmed from the fact that women in general are more focused on getting to know the other person and figuring out how to build a life that works within the framework of the sick person’s needs, whereas men are more likely to expect their partner to fulfill the role they have already set up for her. This has DEFINITELY been true in some of my failed relationships. The guy would guilt trip me about my inability to have “normal sex”, ride a super nauseating carnival ride, or walk on uneven ground. This book does an excellent job of explaining the way we as women are taught from a very early age that we are “gross”, must constantly make changes/upgrades to our bodies to look like the ideal feminine form, and how we internalize this into anticipating that a potential boyfriend or husband will leave us if they see our scars (figuratively or literally).
Hirsch also analyzes how major illnesses affect our careers when you have organizations with no HR team and a boss that tells you to “leave your cancer at the door”. This section reminded me of Lara Parker’s book Vagina Problems when she described how lucky she feels at her current job for having a
flexible schedule, as well as the guilt she feels when she must leave early due to agonizing pain from her Endometriosis, despite making up for it later. We as women have been trained to not “take up space” as they say, so we often fear outwardly expressing the need for accommodations, whether that be an ergonomic office chair, food that fits a special diet, or a shorter walk to get somewhere. We worry about complaining or being whiny and thus often make our pain worse by continuing through an uncomfortable situation to avoid judgement. I definitely related to the idea of older people saying that I'm "too young" to have the health concerns that I did in my 20's. People view young women as vibrant, full of life, babymakers, and anything that negates that is frowned upon. This books discusses how the decision to have kids should be up to you and not from the pressure of others, but also how many of us who have already dealt with so much in our bodies would rather not put it through the strain of a pregnancy or risk passing down our diagnoses to a child, especially if it's a daughter who has a greater chance of getting them.
Two concepts introduced by Hirsch that I loved are: deathy, the idea of not actively dying but possessing a condition which people assume makes you closer to death than someone else your age, and claiming your illnesses as disabilities, regardless of what textbooks or insurance companies deem it. In short, she describes the reaction of people getting uncomfortable after the reveal of your illness or illnesses to be them reacting to your "deathyness". People don't like to be reminded of their own mortality, so if someone at work has lost their hair from chemo or uses a mobility aide for MS it can make people uneasy and sometimes act overly cautious in their treatment of such people. It's great to have a word to label this pretty well known phenomenon. As for disabilities, anyone who feels that their health issues affect their daily life and ability to perform tasks others would normally do has a right to call those issues disabilities. For some people, the stigma of the word itself is worse than continuing to call it "an issue" but it's all about personal preference and everyone should have a choice whether or not they view a health problem as part of them or just something they deal with. I know for me I accept my conditions as a part of my identity. That may change as I grow older, but for now I wholeheartedly feel that they are a huge part of my life.
I found the section of Invisible about people disbelieving women to be particularly interesting because I learned quite a few facts I wasn’t aware of. Did you know that 90% of Lupus cases occur in women? Or that autoimmune disorders occur 80% of the time in women? Or that, per the FDA, women of childbearing age couldn’t participate in drug trails until 1993?! I was aware that it’s almost always white men who are used in drug trials in the US, and that is why women are often not believed when their reactions don’t coincide with the reactions men had, but I was not aware of how different women’s reactions can be based off of our hormones alone. Apparently, women can become addicted to drugs much quicker than men due to the heightened progesterone level we have right before ovulation. I find that absolutely fascinating. There is SO MUCH to be studied and learned about the female body that we’ve barely grazed the surface of, as of yet. I for one can't wait to read more books about it and continue to learn how we can adapt our lifestyles and what tools to use to make our lives more comfortable and enriching as we navigate living in such a patriarchal minded society.
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