A review by kingofspain93
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery

5.0

Women's "doctor stories" are similar, even when they are quite different. A white Ivy league college student is more likely to be seen as anxiety-ridden, while a woman of color is more likely to be stereotyped as a drug seeker. "Educated white women" are seen as health-obsessed hypochondriacs who need to get off WebMD. But less-educated women may be seen as malingerers looking for a disability check. A thin woman is told she can't be seriously ill since she "looks so good!" while a fat woman is told all her symptoms are due to her weight. For most of our lives, we are "too young" to be sick anyway, and our symptoms can be blamed on menstrual cramps, pregnancy, motherhood, and menopause. By the time we're finally old enough to be seen as sick, we're so old that nobody cares if we are. Our intersecting identities may make the particular stereotypes that hurt us different, and yet somehow we so often end up in a similar place: fighting to have our reports of our symptoms trusted and taken seriously.