Do you believe me?: Exploring AFAB LGBTQ2SIA+ People's Emotional Experiences of Reproductive Pain Measurement
Plain language summary
How we understand and experience pain is different from person to person. How we understand pain is made up of physical, emotional, social and cultural pieces. Research has said that pain can only be correctly described by the person in pain. Even though only the person in pain can describe it, some researchers and doctors try to make tools to measure pain from the outside that can apply equally to everyone. Lots of these tools are called ‘pain scales.’ Some pain scales ask patients to rate their pain from 1-10. Other pain scales ask patients to point to the cartoon face that best shows how they feel.
Sometimes, healthcare workers use these pain scales to try to tell if a patients’ pain is real from the outside instead of trusting the patient. When this happens, it can change the kind of healthcare patients receive. Sometimes, it makes this healthcare worse. Whether or not a patient is believed is also a result of biases, like sexism, racism, and homophobia.
My research explores the experiences of LGBTQ2SIA+ people assigned female at birth (AFAB) having their pain measured. The research specifically focuses on experiences with healthcare workers measuring reproductive pain. By asking people about their experiences in interviews and collaborative art, I hope to better understand how they have experienced having their pain measured.
Summary
Pain perception is a highly subjective and nuanced phenomenon, informed by physiological symptoms, and emotional, social, and cultural constructs. As such, pain has come to be understood as an experience that can only be reported on by the person experiencing it. Despite pain’s subjective nature, pain measurement scales abound in attempts to flatten pain into a universal quantitative metric that can be used to surveil and objectively determine whether a person is “really” in pain based on self-rating and bodily performance. The expectations of universally standardized pain facial expressions that translate to a universally applicable pain scale have material impacts on pain management for individuals whose pain self-rating and/or behaviours may not align with expected pain presentation or who are predisposed to being perceived as malingering due to pervasive medical biases. For people assigned female at birth (AFAB) seeking healthcare for chronic reproductive pain, the intersections of misogyny, ableism, and pervasive heteronormativity can result in particularly pronounced accusations of malingering and a resultant ‘gender pain gap.’
My proposed research aims to intervene on the flattening process enacted by the pain scale, and asks AFAB LGBTQ2SIA+ participants to engage, through rigorous interview and co-created art, with their relationship to both pain and pain scales.