A Life with Pain Built In
Deconstructing the suffering.
There is something strangely gratuitous in the way I see feminists talking about pain. We are beginning to take a particular pride in our own suffering, especially in the pain we ascribe as a symptom of womanhood or of patriarchy, in a way which refuses to acknowledge the horror of the system that causes it.
Instead, we talk about our pain as though it is inherent and abstract. Where there is pain (and particularly when this pain belongs to attractive, white, middle-class women), we too often place it beneath a lens of heroism. It’s here that we find pain is wrongly beginning to be considered a marker of womanhood, and a marker of feminism. We tell ourselves that as a woman, and even more so as a feminist, we should be in pain. We act like our pain does not hurt us, because of its ability to inspire community and rebellion.
Enter season two of Fleabag (2019), Phoebe Waller Bridge’s exquisite magnum opus, featuring a monologue on the menopause which gained instant notoriety across the Internet.
“Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny: period pains, sore boobs, childbirth, you know. We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t.
They have to seek it out, they invent all these gods and demons and things just so they can feel guilty about things, which is something we do very well on our own. And then they create wars so they can feel things and touch each other and when there aren’t any wars they can play rugby.
We have it all going on in here inside, we have pain on a cycle for years and years and years and then just when you feel you are making peace with it all, what happens? The menopause comes, the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world.
And yes, your entire pelvic floor crumbles and you get fucking hot and no one cares, but then you’re free, no longer a slave, no longer a machine with parts. You’re just a person.”
In just a few minutes of television, it feels as though Waller-Bridge has presented to us on a plate the bleeding heart of womanhood and of women’s profound suffering. Whether physical or metaphysical, the sentiment remains that pain is something a woman seemingly cannot be without. It provides an easy solution to the question of what it means to be a woman. It validates the suffering that for so long has been overlooked. But the time for acceptance is over – now, we need action against pain.
Our bodies seem to be where we choose to retreat in terms of our activism. I feel that this movement towards treating pain as a de facto aspect of the female experience looks from afar like a form of surrender. We distance ourselves from our bodies and intellectualise our pain to a point where we can become proud of it. We look at our pain and we say, “look how the system has made me bleed, and look how I take it like a man”. But it is impossible to take this type of pain like a man, because (cisgender) men are not subjected to the same systemic violence wherein their bodies are made into a battleground.
This priority of acceptance and normalisation over action is breeding complacency within feminism. If we admit that we believe that pain is an inevitable aspect of the female experience, we are also admitting that we see no use in kicking and screaming until it stops. Data shows that research into women’s health is disgustingly neglected and underfunded, and yet this is not where we turn our attention when the pain becomes unbearable. Instead, we choose to discuss it as though it is profound and special. As though pain is something helpful with which to bond a community. We are too often failing to consider that perhaps our bodies are not naturally predisposed to pain, whether it be menstrual, menopausal, or otherwise. Perhaps this is only true under a system that inflicts hurt against women.
But no – let us believe that we are always going to hurt. Let us believe that asking for more violates the laws of nature. Let us believe that our pain began when Eve was cast out of Eden, and that it will continue until the end of days, whether or not we fight it.
I don’t believe that women do have pain built in. Pain is instilled within us under patriarchy. In naming pain as a predicate of womanhood, we are only inviting more of it. To be female does not have to be synonymous with hurt, and yet we choose to take the hurt gracefully anyway. Pain is not revolutionary. There is nothing noble, nor virtuous, nor righteous about pain brought on by oppression. Pain is just pain. And pain is tragic.