Nov 18, 2019
However, with chronic pain, which has no obvious external cause and becomes a part of the phenomenological self, when others react with disgust, it is as though they are reacting with disgust towards the individual with chronic pain. This is especially the case when combined with wider ableist social structures that reinforce the ‘better dead than disabled’ message underlying ‘sympathetic’ statements along the lines of ‘I wouldn’t be able to cope if I were like you’.
Using Pain, Living with Pain, in Feminist Review By Emma Sheppard