On the topic of "me too"....
While I was at the Mayo Clinic, the gastroenterologist began talking to me about something called pelvic floor dysfunction. it's a common problem that can cause all sorts of issues. But this is what got me....
He asked about my history and whether or not I was an assault survivor. Sitting there with my dad, I said yes. And then he began to explain to me that damage is done to the pelvic floor during sexual assault and childbirth.... it can cause all kinds of issues related to constipation....And it's called pelvic floor dysfunction.
In all of my years of being quite open about my sexual assault history, I've never had the medical community discuss the after effects of sexual trauma... other than raising psychological issues.
That's when it hit me....The number of women who have experienced significant physical trauma to their genitalia as a result of either sexual assault or childbirth is huge! and yet It is not something that we talked about as a culture.
I don't know why it has taken all of this time for doctors to awaken to the reality and therefore come up with a name for the damage that is done to female bodies when we are sexually assaulted and when we give birth. Instead, the entire medical profession assumes that a woman's body behaves exactly the same as a man's body and it completely negates that which is uniquely female... Never mind the fact that our doctors tell us that we can go back to having sex 6 weeks after pushing something the size of a watermelon out of something the size of a lemon drop. Ummmmm......
This is just one of many examples of the way in which we edit out the feminine experience. Of course, as soon as a man gives it a name, then it becomes worthy of study, discussion and treatment.
This begs the question....what other aspects of the female anatomy are fraught with medical difficulty as a result of physiological traumas?
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