ABSTRACT
Reactions to lived experiences, such as suffering, are neither color-blind nor gender-neutral. Just as race is a social construction, gender identity is a cultural artifact. This chapter devotes specifically to exploring the distinctive ways that men and women experience and express suffering. It considers class status and race, along with gender, form a tri-dimensional social reality that are intertwined in an individual, and must be acknowledged in an examination of suffering. Just as attitudes and behaviors toward marriage or work are acquired by modeling and practice, so is the gendered reaction to a lived experience, such as suffering. Suffering as a phenomenon of lived experience is subject to the vagaries of time and place, and is interpreted as such through an embodied person. Experiences and expressions of suffering are often connected to expectations that individuals have about their lives and qualities that are integral to one's identity.
