Camilla Di Nardo
Camilla Di Nardo (she/her) is a Gender Studies master’s student at Utrecht University. Living with vulvodynia, she uses creative writing as a way to shed light on the invisibility of genital chronic pain in Italy. She wrote the poem in the manifesto to tell her story of medical gaslighting, diagnosis, and acceptance.
“Hysterical Women Manifesto” has the creative contribution of Arianna Maschini (she/her), psychology student and photographer (IG: @keeptheflashon), who provided the picture, and Alice Onesti (she/her), communication and media graduate, who worked on the design.
(typed text below)
Hysterical Women Manifesto
Camilla Di Nardo
I’m a hysterical woman
Some believe that my uterus moves around my body
Forcing me to do strange things
Now I can see it
A uterus floating towards my brain
Making me imagine inexplicable symptoms
It is an inconvenient pain
An agony that no one should name
As it is dirty
And makes me less of a woman
Like a sword that opens me in half
Turning me against my body
The first gynaecologist told me it was my fault
Since I wanted to have sex before marriage
The second said I was too anxious
The third didn’t know what to do with me
All of them taught me the same thing:
“There is something wrong with your head”
Oblivious hysterical women still existed
Here I am
A century after Freud
A woman that cannot sit
A woman that cannot fuck
A woman that cannot be a woman
But what is a woman?
You forced a definition on us
When studying our bodies’ diseases
Without listening
When dissecting our symptoms
Like we were caged animals
A woman is a woman only if she has a uterus
A functioning uterus
Not a hysterical one
A woman is virginal
A woman has sex with men and gives birth to their children
A woman won’t complain about a pain that is only in her head
A woman doesn’t do what I do
Hysterical women of all centuries are united
They’ve had enough
We won’t listen to you anymore
We refuse your definitions
We take control over our bodies
And our pain
My pain is sexual but it is not dirty
My pain is loud:
I’ll scream about it
I’ll shield it
And protect it from your judgements
As it is part of myself
I won’t promise anything to you because you don’t have any power over me
Not anymore
I make a promise to myself
And to my fellow hysterical women:
I’m claiming back everything that was taken away from me
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