Table of Contents

List of Figures Acknowledgments Prologue: A Fourteen-Foot-Tall Vagina 1. Insinuation: A Biocultural Condition 2. Examination: Clinical Interpretations of Vulvar Pain 3. Accumulation: The Materiality of Absence 4. Manifestation: (Un)conscious Presencing 5. Integration: Coming Together or Falling Apart 6. Generation: Novel Morphologies 7. Evaluation: Concluding Thoughts Epilogue: Collaboration Notes References Index

About the Author

Christine Labuski is Assistant Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and the coauthor (with Nicholas Copeland) of The World of Wal-Mart: Discounting the American Dream.

Reviews

"...a particularly fateful intervention into the slowly growing discussion about female genital pain ... well-informed and insightful." - Nursing Clio "This is an empirically engaged, ethnographically rich interpretation of genital pain in a cross section of women-but it is also so much more. Christine Labuski has a deep understanding of both the anatomical biomedical construction of female genitalia and manifestations of physical pain and suffering, which she combines with a marvelous cultural analysis of how entangled these biological 'facts' are with the contemporary culture of female loathing and self-loathing." - Lisa Jean Moore, coauthor of The Body: Social and Cultural Dissections