Abstract

Since the 1970s, there has been a surge in the discovery of women-specific diseases, illnesses, and other medical conditions. This medicalization of women's experiences has occurred at the same time that many women have realized great political, social, and economic gains---often as the result of activism designed to shape thinking about women's bodies and biology. This raises several questions, including what compels a rapidly increasing medicalization, whether women play a role in this process, and to what long-term effect are women's lives being medicalized. ;This work explores the increasing medicalization of women's lives utilizing postmodern, feminist, and queer theoretical perspectives to critically consider forces that compel medicalization and the political implications thereof. Central to this analysis is the role of liberalism in both increasing medicalization and obscuring its implications, particularly its tendency to remove medical issues from the realm of political contestation and place them within the private, technical realm of science. These political implications are explored as is the notion that while women may be making important political gains by framing rights-based appeals around issues associated with their bodies, the long-term effect of this strategy could be disastrous. Many of women's current health-related demands simply may replay historical conversations about the centrality of women's bodies in determining political roles and efficacy. The rights that women gain and the advances they make as a result of this strategy could revive conversations about their incompetence and irresponsibility as public actors. To this end, the dangers of entrenching oppressed identities through medicalizing the self as an emancipatory strategy is considered