The above studies suggest that when women try to testify to their pain, they are routinely dismissed by the medical establishment on both of these bases—impugned as incompetent and hysterical, on the one hand, or as dishonest malingerers, on the other. And these injustices are often vastly worse—sometimes not merely in degree but in kind—for women who are multiply marginalized, because they are Black, queer, trans, and/or disabled.
