ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how and why the rhetoric of the feminist and women's health movement articulated strategies of actors opposed to the inclusion of Late luteal phase dysphoric disorder (LLPDD), on grounds of the dangers of growing medicalization and of the stigmatization of psychiatric diagnoses related to women. This representation of LLPDD as a "woman's issue" clearly identifies the existence of a woman domain and the need for its analysis. The reality of Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) in the woman domain meant that either it was ignored or considered a "pseudoproblem" by doctors and scientists or it was medicalized into a biological fact, which meant the women were controlled by their hormones and by "experts." The controversy was indeed recognized as a "woman's" or "feminist" issue. The individual women with PMS also drew upon the feminist and women's health literature by demanding that they could speak for themselves, with their own knowledge about their bodies and health experiences.
