“What Do You Do if They Say ‘No’?”: Agency, Materiality, and Justice in Pelvic Exams

ABSTRACT

In this defining moments essay, I take up feminist new materialist and reproductive justice theories to explore communication, autonomy, consent, and in/justice in the context of pelvic exams. I use feminist new materialism and reproductive justice to illustrate the ways in which traditional medical education practices, histories of misogynoir, speculums, patient gowns, and more communicate and matter in pelvic exam teaching and practice. In so doing, I move between academic prose and short narratives drawn from my lived experiences as both a patient and a Gynecological Teaching Associate (a role in which I instruct medical students learning to perform pelvic exams). Ultimately, I argue that attending to influence of other-than-humans and adopting relational conceptions of agency can help health communication scholars and practitioners advance equity and justice in pelvic exams.

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge Dr. Sonia Ivancic and Niv Ketheeswaran for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. 55-word stories are a genre of short stories written in 55 words. They can be used to facilitate reflexivity and thick description in health communication research (see Cusanno et al., 2022).

2. “Dr. Martin” is a pseudonym chosen by the research participant.

3. See Glass & Sullivan (2018).

4. See Wainberg et al. (2010).

5. Since I conducted my interview with Dr. Martin, Florida passed a law requiring written consent for medical students to perform pelvic exams on anesthetized patients. Yet, it remains unclear how this law will be implemented and affect medical practice (Sexton, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. 1746051. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in the material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.