ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that two sorts in particular were "sexually significant" for women in the past: those acquired from men in intercourse, and those that would make a woman feel sensitive about her body in sexual situations. This special "sexual" vulnerability constituted a major source of victimization for women. The effects of the pelvic injuries upon the woman's sexuality can be imagined. While the other "diseases of sexual significance" had greatly receded by the 1930s, V.D. has until continued to remind women of an unequal "natural" vulnerability to sex. Although the men's death rate from "nonvenereal diseases of the genito-urinary system" in England between 1848 and 1872 was almost three times as high as the women's, such deaths were nonetheless only 1.4 percent of all male deaths. Urinary disorders have shifted from being men's to women's diseases. In women's own perceptions, prolapse, and especially procidentia, must have been like the clap of doom upon their femininity.
