There was a great article on the Ms. Magazine blog written by Frances Whittelsey about how we don’t talk about hysterectomies. We don’t talk about how they are overdone, that there are alternatives and that many women suffer serious health consequences because of them. Yet what many of these women suffer still falls to silence.

Whittelsey asks aloud why women don’t get more involved in their sexual health when a decision about a hysterectomy are to be made. Why do we spend so much time and effort looking sexy and not on having a satisfying sex life?

I think it’s probably because women have long been trained to trade sexual satisfaction in exchange for looking good.

It seems to be almost a funny thing to say in the age of Sex in the City and the rabbit vibrator, but a woman’s sexuality really isn’t about her. A woman’s sexuality is still perceived as an attraction, a show, an advertisement.

I recently finished Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter and I really thought that Orenstein did an excellent job of exploring of feminine ‘performance.’ In the end it’s not the pink, or the fairy tales, or pretending to be a princess that is the problem with the Princess culture. It’s the consumerism; the buying, the accessorizing, the complete obsession with ‘good looks’ being the defining characteristic of what a woman is. What starts out innocently as painted toes and plastic tiaras ends with mini-skirts and crop tops. Mass consumerism of products that focus on outer beauty teaches young girls to focus on their outer beauty.

Combine that with culture that then views a woman’s sexuality as a transactional item. Not only is it used to sell, well, every thing but we frequently speak of it as though it were a currency. Sex and beauty are seen as commodities that one could trade for other wants. Sex is talked about as something that women can either “give up” or they can “save it.” As if it (sex!) were money in a piggy bank. And just like cold coinage, sex retains no emotional value. It is not seen as something for women; her sexuality is divorced from her sexual pleasure.

So is it really that surprising when these women reach their adult years their sexuality is still about performance? About looking good rather than their sexual enjoyment? So yes, it is not too difficult to believe that women are putting more effort and thought into their face cream than the future of their sexual health.

I find it interesting that Whittelsey claims that the extreme hysterectomy rate has not received the same amount of attention as other feminist health issues, which is true. One of the examples she lists however is the rate of cesarean sections.

It’s an interesting parallel, because hey, they both involve cutting up uteruses, but the coverage often given to c-sections is not exactly positive.

The mass media headline was that women were driving up the c-section rate for a convenient and painless* delivery. This spawned the ‘too posh to push’ tagline. Women were simply to self-absorbed to go through a vaginal birth.

Unfortunately the feminist response was lacking. That too posh to push junk? Sexist as hell, and many feminists rightly called it out as such. But that was it. Most never went further; they never thought to ask, is there a problem here?

Any literature that I read from a feminist perspective didn’t actually care to comment on the actual c-section rate, and if they did they pretty much argued that even if 100% of births were elective c-sections, it would be OK, because that was what women were choosing. Which irritated the hell out of me.

I’ve said this before but “choice” is meaningless if you don’t have a full picture of the facts. It’s kind of like choosing a door on a game show. You can see you can pick Door #1, Door #2 or Door #3 but, as you can’t see what’s behind those doors, it’s just a crapshoot.

Now you can probably see how this fits in with the hysterectomy problem. Being a personal medical choice, the feminist line is to trust women and leave it up to them. Women making their own decisions = not a problem.

But it does become a problem when women are prevented from making informed decisions. In the case of both hysterectomies and c-sections women are often not told of the long term health risks. In both cases they are often not given their full range of options and sadly they are often given inappropriate reasons for why they need to have the procedure.

In the end, it’s all up to individual women but they shouldn’t have to fight their way through this in the dark. Get informed, spread the word, encourage second opinions, and talk to your doctor like you’re interrogating them. When people are full aware of the options, it is much easier to make the right choice for themselves.

* Whoever came up with that one has certainly never had major abdominal surgery.