ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way that self-care, responsibility and gender play out for women with endometriosis. Most of the extant social scientific literature focuses on women's pre-diagnostic experiences, including, in particular, issues around the delay to diagnosis. Michel Foucault's work is perhaps the best-known counterpoint to the orthodox approach. In recent years, Nikolas Rose has written extensively on the relationship between action, responsibility, freedom and choice. Feminist political theorists might challenge the suggestion that women's experiences of citizenship are similar to men's. Rosi Braidotti argues that the positioning of women as monstrous stems from the constructed difference between women and men: Woman, as sign of difference, is monstrous. Alice and Yolanda perform themselves as initially nave, confused, dysfunctional and disconnected from their bodies/selves, and later, as more connected, rational and responsible subjects. Women are also relieved because they understand themselves to be moving closer towards, or enacting, a valorised form of subject hood.
