I was diagnosed with a pedunculated fibroid – a dynamic growth with an elongated neck, attached to the posterior wall of my uninhabited uterus, chronically hungry for attention, causing constant low-grade ache that is punctuated by nauseating pain. A peduncle, I gather from my rudimentary gardening knowledge, is a stalk that bears a flower or flower cluster.
This peduncle though, bears a collection of tissue that rotates at whim. When it twists, the convulsive pain sears through the entire lower left side of my body, involving my abdomen, back, and leg. These episodes of excruciating pain led me to the hospital three times in two weeks in January alone. It took some time to lay to rest the ghost of my mother’s nemesis – colon cancer. After the last test that confirmed the good health of my gastrointestinal system, I was euphoric, despite the pain. The medical focus then shifted to gynecological reasons and the diagnosis of the pedunculated fibroid.
After I discovered the cause of months of persistent pain and its recent episodic highs, I could not keep out of my head the image of the jackrabbit bouncing pedunk-pedunk, as it led Alice down the rabbit hole. In English, rabbits are supposed to bounce boing-boing, but perhaps due to Hindi being my first language, this was the mental image that ‘pedunculated’ inspired in me. That in turn, evoked the memory of a meme that showed how onomatopoeic words differ depending on the language by listing human interpretations of frog sounds from the English ribbit, to the Polish kum kum, Chinese guo guo, Japanese kero kero, Hindi tarr tarr, and so on.
I digress. It could be due to the pain-induced fog in my brain. Perhaps my weird coping mechanism. Or maybe the realization of the individuality of interpretations. Interpretation matters, especially as one considers the prospect of major surgery. But, why do they call it a ‘hysterectomy’?
The History of a Misogynistic Term
Turns out that the ancient Egyptians, and then the Greeks, believed in the wandering womb, which inhabits a woman’s body like ‘an animal within an animal’, causing many diseases and a condition called hysteria. The wandering ways of the womb was used to explain mysterious mental and physical occurrences in women as late as the 17th Century Salem Witch trials to 19th Century psychiatry. Although the wandering womb, and its manifestation ‘female hysteria’, fell out of favour in explaining women’s physical and psychological ailments in the 20th Century, its legacy continued in misogynistic characterizations of women who had a tendency to cause trouble. Women in the suffrage campaign for instance were accused of suffering from hysteria, or the ‘kind of enthusiasm that degenerates into habitual nervous excitement’. The connection of hysteria to the uterus then is clearly much more than the linguistic origin of the word. It is rooted in the long history of misogyny.
As a middle-aged woman who has chosen to remain child-free, I have had no special relationship with my uterus. A few years ago though, the regular monthly reminder of its good health turned into an avalanche of blood and pain. The solution was a simple surgery for uterine fibroid removal. Three years later, after ignoring dull but persistent pain for months, I was diagnosed with this ill-tempered pedunculated fibroid, and its many submucosal siblings.
My uterus is no more or less than any other organ in my body. My anxiety about it’s impending excision is no more or less than what I would feel for any major surgery. As I told this to myself, I also looked for reassurance in other people’s experiences. Choosing the cloak of an anonymous reader, my first stop was the online repository of personal blogs which shared experiences of menopause and hysterectomy. While they offered a convenient one-way interaction, the online narratives also turned out to be one-dimensional from my perspective. The first few accounts I found, dealt with the angst of losing a part of their ‘womanhood’. I could not relate to the emotional anguish expressed as an existential crisis for one’s femininity. These accounts did give me the courage to talk to real people, my friends, some of whom were members of my online tribe. Their impassioned logical advice and experience-sharing focused entirely on the practicality of the surgery and the recovery period.
My Journey
I have missed my mother most in these anxious days of trying to figure out how to process the imminent surgery. She always understood. I do have my rock to lean on though, my partner. More than two decades ago, during our first serious conversation about planning to spend our lives together, my first question to Sanjiv was about his opinion on the demeaning and exploitative custom of dowry, which he assured me, was totally against his principles. His first question to me was what I thought about having children. I had never given it any thought. Growing up in a nuclear family far removed from any little ones except for my two brothers, and raised by progressive parents who actively sought to guard me against the regressive gender norms of a deeply patriarchal society, my future plans extended only to finishing my doctorate and the hope of pursuing a purposeful career.
This stranger whom I had met just a few weeks ago through our mothers’ machinations, who lived nearly 8000 kms away in South Africa, and with whom I was willingly and inexplicably making tentative plans for a possible wedding in the next several months, had posed a question rather contrary to prevalent societal expectations. Encouraged by my ambivalence, he explained the ideological and environmental reasons why he is not in favour of bringing more children into this world. We did not spend too much time debating the issue since I needed no convincing and we both knew that the topic was rather premature.
Our eight-month-long courtship culminated in a traditional Indian wedding and then the move to South Africa shortly after, overlapping absurdly tightly with the final throes of writing up my doctoral dissertation. The transition to a new country was not as hard as the pressure of the expectations of a traditional family. Ironically, the constant badgering to conform only helped cement our resolve to live our lives on our terms. Very soon, we learnt the futility of explaining our life choices to most people. We were regularly admonished for taking too long to produce a child. Kind hearted people suggested medical and divine interventions. Others did not hesitate to shame me for being baanjh – barren.
It was not a decision we had taken lightly. Sanjiv and I had explored all possible angles of why humans should and should not have children. Without going into the details, we reached the conclusion that the reasons for wanting a child are as personal and compelling as not wanting one. Only my mother understood and supported our decision. The judgement and the barbs from familiar people and complete strangers that have continued into the second decade of our marriage, did not manage to make us regret our decision, or make me feel less of a woman for not having children.
So why am I shaken by the vestiges of a misogynistic system hidden in the term hysterectomy? Perhaps, because misogyny is not a thing of the past. There are far too many daily reminders of its debilitating presence. It is expressed in many forms of conscious, subconscious, unconscious biases and structural inequalities, which lead to the physical, social, cultural, and economic disempowerment of women across class, region, religion, and ethnicity. It is also manifested in women not being allowed to talk about their pain.
When you Learn, Teach
As an academic, I feel compelled to share what I have learnt, so here I am, adding my own musings to the online repository of personal experiences for other women/ wimmin/womyn/ womxn and their allies who have not bought into sex-essentialism and biologism. I hope we normalize women talking about their pain, and their bodies. I believe it is natural to feel anxious about loosing an organ, any organ. Neither its presence nor its absence though should be a condition for making us feel whole as a person, since we are much more than the sum of our organs.
As I prepare to bid adieu to my soon to be departed uterus, I am thankful for its many years of good health. It is now time to let it go. Its loss will hopefully only accelerate my crone phase of wisdom and power. It will certainly not diminish me. And I hope to continue to cause trouble for years to come.
Meenal (Feb 23, 2020)
References:
Billock, J. (2018). Pain bias, the health inequality rarely discussed. BBC Futures. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180518-the-inequality-in-how-women-are-treated-for-pain
Devereux, C. (2014). Hysteria, Feminism, and Gender Revisited: The Case of the Second Wave. English Studies in Canada 40.1: 19–45. https://ojs.lib.uwo.ca/index.php/esc/article/view/9593/7693
Micale, M.S. (1989). Hysteria and its Historiography: A Review of Past and Present Writings. History of Science xxvii. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/007327538902700301#
Pritlove, C. et.al (2019). The good, the bad, and the ugly of implicit bias. The Lancet 393.10171: 502-504. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)32267-0/fulltext
*Published in Write in Power: An Anthology of the Personal and the Political (Bangalore: The Hidden Pen Collective, 2021), pp. 34-39.
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