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This is one of those topics where the mundane detail is more revealing than the spectacular one. A doctor’s note sounds almost comically bureaucratic when you put it that way: a woman says she does not want to have sex with her husband, and somehow the conversation ends with the need for a medical professional to certify that she is temporarily unavailable for sexual use.
I have heard versions of this from women recovering from childbirth, women recovering from major surgery, women dealing with chronic pain or other medical problems, and women whose husbands apparently needed an authority figure to explain that a body undergoing significant physical trauma might not be particularly interested in intercourse or apt for it, for that matter. I have also heard from nurses working on maternity wards who describe having to keep an eye on women who have just given birth because their husbands are already pestering them about sex while they are still in hospital beds.
Image source: Freepik.com.
There is something almost absurd about having to spell out why this is wrong. If my blog is still visible to the manosphere (because I’ve blocked them left and right on any occasion I had), I bet a lot of them would come into the comments angrily to announce that they don’t understand what is abusive about this. Of course you don’t, fellas. Thanks for outing yourselves.
To be clear: a woman should not need a doctor’s note to refuse sex with her husband. She does not need a diagnosis, an injury, a prescription, a cervical examination, or the signature of a medical professional. Her lack of desire is sufficient. Her discomfort and exhaustion are sufficient. Actually, her simple decision that she does not want somebody inside her body or interacting with her in a sexual way is sufficient.
And yet the existence of these stories tells us that, in a lot of heterosexual relationships, ‘no’ is not actually being treated as a complete sentence. It’s being treated as just the beginning of a negotiation meant to drag on and wear her down until she engages in the sexual currency exchange...
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