Research Paper on:
ANALYSIS: SEXUAL POLITICS OF SICKNESS

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
argument of some kind, the question arises, "is it that time of the month already?" It is this subliminal idea that women are sick mainly because they are women that  has led medicine to not take seriously the real illnesses of women. Or at least, this is the thesis that authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English point out in the  book Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness. Main point of the authors is that medical science has been the one thing that has promoted sexual discrimination in our  society (Ehrenreich and English 5). "Medicines prime contribution to exist ideology has been to describe women as sick, and as potentially sickening to men," the authors write in their introduction  (Ehrenreich and English 5). These days, note the authors, when it comes to obtaining medical health, women are caught in a quandary.  On the one hand, medicine provides antibiotics, surgery, abortions and contraception; on the other, medicine has determined womens social roles (Ehrenreich and English 83-84). For years, women have accepted from  doctors the idea that because something is wrong, it must be because they are women (Ehrenreich and English 84). For example, the medical handling of pregnancy these days contributes to  growing fears about it; and potential illness as a result. The standard birth takes place in a clinical hospital where the patient is treated as a thing, rather than a  mother-to-be who is about to bring forward another human being into the world. There is little dignity accorded to giving birth in a hospital, especially when a woman is hooked  up to monitors, which is likely why some women are opting to give birth at home, with only a midwife in attendance.