Western medicine has always had a ready explanation for women who were too emotional, too angry, too withdrawn, too sexual, or simply unwilling to comply. For centuries, “feminine” has been shorthand for chaotic. Descartes’ emphasis on clear, distinct reasoning and his separation of the mind from the body helped establish modern ideals of... See more

Throughout history, massaging "hysterical" female patients to orgasm was the most commonly known "treatment," a topic discussed at length in Rachel P. Maines' book The Technology of Orgasm. If hysteria was seen as the result of sexual deprivation, doctors relieved these "symptoms" through various modes of inducing orgasms, either through vibrators... See more

pieces examine how transness has been pathologized as a medical disorder requiring a cure, or that one assimilate in effort to become “unclockable.” And ultimately, the case of people who move across gender assignations displaces the ongoingness of colonial classification systems. Those with an expressed disinterest in being “cured” of their... See more