It Hurts Down There: The Bodily Imaginaries of Female Genital Pain - Paperback

by Christine Labuski (Author)

Tracks the medical emergence and treatment of vulvar pain conditions in order to understand why so many US women are misinformed about their sexual bodies.

How does a woman describe a part of her body that much of society teaches her to never discuss? It Hurts Down There analyzes the largest known set of qualitative research data about vulvar pain conditions. It tells the story of one hundred women who struggled with this dilemma as they sought treatment for chronic and unexplained vulvar pain. Christine Labuski argues that the medical condition of vulvar pain cannot be adequately understood without exposing and interrogating cultural attitudes about female genitalia. The author's dual positioning as cultural anthropologist and former nurse practitioner strengthens her argument that discourses about "healthy" vulvas naturalize and reproduce heteronormative associations between genitalia, sex, and gender.

Author Biography

Christine Labuski is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the coauthor (with Nicholas Copeland) of The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream.