Everyone has a master, after all, and the fault lies less with the individual men than with the system in which they lived and labored. Western medical storytelling has largely eschewed the discussion of women’s bodies, let alone elevated them as powerful, capable, or of equal worth to men’s. In the medical history that defines women’s “normal” bodily functions—as well as their pain, pleasure, strength, and intellectual capacity—the voices of women themselves are notably absent.
