Not Tonight : Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health / Joanna Kempner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kempner, Joanna, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Migraine.

Migraine--Social aspects.

Headache--Social aspects.

Headache.

Migraine Disorders--psychology.

Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice.

Women's Health.

Gender Identity.

Sex Factors.

Medical Subjects:

Migraine Disorders--psychology.

Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice.

Women's Health.

Gender Identity.

Sex Factors.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (260 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2014]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Pain. Vomiting. Hours and days spent lying in the dark. Migraine is an extraordinarily common, disabling, and painful disorder that affects over 36 million Americans and costs the US economy at least 2 billion per year. Nevertheless, it is frequently dismissed, ignored, and delegitimized. In Not Tonight, Joanna Kempner argues that this general dismissal of migraine can be traced back to the gendered social values embedded in the way we talk about, understand, and make policies for people in pain. Because the symptoms that accompany headache disorders-like head pain, visual auras, and sensitivity to sound-lack an objective marker of distress that can confirm their existence, doctors rely on the perceived moral character of their patients to gauge how serious their complaints are. Kempner shows how this problem plays out in the history of migraine, from nineteenth-century formulations of migraine as a disorder of upper-class intellectual men and hysterical women to the influential concept of "migraine personality" in the 1940s, in which women with migraine were described as uptight neurotics who withheld sex, to contemporary depictions of people with highly sensitive "migraine brains." Not Tonight casts new light on how cultural beliefs about gender, pain, and the distinction between mind and body influence not only whose suffering we legitimate, but which remedies are marketed, how medicine is practiced, and how knowledge about disease is produced.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. All in Her Mind

Chapter 2. All in Her Brain

Chapter 3. Embracing the Migraine Brain

Chapter 4. Gendering the Migraine Market

Chapter 5. Men in Pain

Conclusion

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226179292

022617929X

OCLC:

888749255