ABSTRACT
Drawing on interviews with 20 Australian women, this chapter explores the commonalities and differences in emotional responses to hysterectomy, that is, the surgical removal of the womb or uterus. While my focus is on direct experience as a way of knowing, I understand women’s experiences of their bodies, and their responses to those experiences, to be socially and culturally produced (Wolff 1990). Thus, women’s experiences of hysterectomy are not only informed by the dominant modes of thinking about the body in general, and the female body in particular, but also need to be understood within the context of women’s socially ascribed identities and the ways in which these change across the life course.
