“Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria or your own unfeminine inadequacy. Women have learned to submit to pain by hearing authority figures – doctors, priests, psychiatrists – tell us that what we feel is not pain.”

“Pain is real when you get other people to believe in it. If no one believes in it but you, your pain is madness or hysteria or your own unfeminine inadequacy. Women have learned to submit to pain by hearing authority figures – doctors, priests, psychiatrists – tell us that what we feel is not pain.”

— Naomi Wolf