Reviews with content warning for Infertility - Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World

What an absolutely vital and incredible read! This book has made me totally rethink my approach to medical misogyny and medical malpractice as a direct result of the disbelief of women and their experiences with pain. I've suffered with unexplained chronic pain for a long time, and I've always been turned away when I attempted to seek help, support and understanding of the pain and exhaustion that no professional has ever seemed to want to touch with a five-foot pole. Reading this book felt like a warm hug - true, the facts are harrowing, particularly those regarding the experiences of women of colour and their repeated erasures from feminist movements, as well as their especially harsh experiences with medical malpractice and being treated as experimental patients without their expressed knowledge or consent, but every single fact has been included in this book to scream out that all women, regardless of race and class, deserve and demand to be believed by the professional practitioners that hold their lives in their hands.

I really appreciated, too, having a clear timeline of events that provide much-needed context regarding various issues in women's health. It was by no means an easy read, and there were times where I was so disgusted by the things women have gone through that I wanted to put the book away, but it was certainly an immensely helpful one. Cleghorn has clearly gone to great lengths to write a text of such great importance on the subject of medical misogyny, and everything in her book is backed up by a massive amount of citations, none of which are pointlessly crammed in there either. I truly look forward to reading her upcoming book in 2024 - MOTHERS: An Intimate History - and I fully expect it to be just as crucial a read as this was.

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nialiversuch's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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gentle_garbage_baby's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

Very interesting history of the trouble that women (in the West) have had regarding illness, medicine, and doctors. There's a consistent theme of women not being listened to when describing their own pain, with doctors deciding it is 'hysteria' or other sexist interpretations. Unfortunately, some of these attitudes still exist today, and I'm sure there are many women who have read this book who can relate to aspects of it, including myself. Some sections can be quite distressing, so I wouldn't recommend this to people who get particularly upset by the subject matter.

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bookswithgeorgia's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

2.25

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burdasnest's review

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informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

This book made me feel seen and connected to all of the women in our time and the past who suffered medically because of their sex. Cleghorn acknowledges intersectionality and inequity well, but keep in mind that this is focused on western medical history and knowledge and cisgender women. She also emphasizes the absolute importance of the myriad issues we have before us as unwell women. I feel called to advocate and act by this book, and think that it should be required in health curriculum in higher education from physiology to public health.

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