When the Womb Was the Problem

Once upon a time, your uterus could get you locked away.

Not because it was diseased.
Not because you were dying.
But because the very fact of having one was considered dangerous.

Too much emotion?
Too much desire?
Too much opinion, grief, anger, aliveness?

Clearly: hysteria.
And clearly: the womb was to blame.

Welcome to the strange, revealing history of how women’s bodies have been medicalised — and how that story still shapes us more than we realise.

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Language note 🌿

In this article I use words like “women,” “female body,” and “womb” because I’m speaking mostly from and to the experience of midlife women who were raised and treated as female in medical systems. I also honour that not everyone with a womb identifies as a woman, and not all women have a womb. Please read in the way that best fits your own body and identity.

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Hysteria: When a Woman’s Whole Being Became a Diagnosis

For centuries, “hysteria” was one of the most common diagnoses applied to women.

The word comes from the Greek hystera, meaning womb.

The basic idea went like this: if a woman was too sad, too angry, too sexual, too creative, too outspoken, too sensitive, or too ill in ways that medicine couldn’t explain, it must be because her uterus was misbehaving.

The womb, they said, was wandering around her body. It was climbing up to her chest, squeezing her heart, making her irrational, unstable, emotional, wild.

If a man was furious, visionary, ambitious or haunted, he might be called driven.
If a woman was any of those things, she could be labelled hysterical.

And once a word becomes a label, it can be used as a weapon.

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When the “Cure” Was Removing the Uterus

If the womb was the problem, then of course the “solution” seemed obvious: remove it.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, hysterectomy was sometimes promoted as a way to “cure” hysteria, nervous disorders, “unmanageable” behaviour and other forms of female non-compliance.

The subtext was clear:

If your grief is too big, your body is wrong.
If your anger is too loud, your body is wrong.
If you refuse to stay within the role assigned to you, your body is wrong.

Cut it out. Tame it. Silence it.

A woman’s deepest centre of creation — the place that can grow life, or simply hold the possibility of it — was treated as a source of pathology, not power.

Even when hysterectomy is absolutely medically necessary (and it sometimes is), it’s important to recognise the cultural history sitting in the background: a long story of viewing the female body as unreliable, unstable and inherently problematic.

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Designed Around the Male Body: The Default Human

Most modern medical models were not created for, or with, women in mind.

For a long time, research was done primarily on male bodies. Medications were tested on male physiology. “Standard” symptoms were described from male experiences.

Women were considered too “variable” — with their hormones, cycles and inconvenient wombs — to be reliable research subjects.

So the male body quietly became the default human. Everything else was a deviation.

The problem is that women’s immune systems, hormonal patterns and responses are different. Our heart attack symptoms can look different. Our reactions to medications, dosages and procedures can be different.

But when the template is male, anything that doesn’t match that template is seen as overreaction, mystery, “atypical presentation” or… psychological.

In other words:

“We don’t understand your body, so the problem must be you.”

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Too Close to Nature: The “Unreliable” Woman

Layered on top of this is a long-standing philosophical bias:

Men are associated with mind, logic, culture and rationality.
Women are associated with body, nature, emotion and instinct.

In this story, being “close to nature” is not a gift; it’s a liability.
Being cyclical, responsive and sensitive is not wisdom; it’s weakness.
Being driven by intuition or feeling is not another form of intelligence; it’s proof you’re not to be trusted.

Women were seen as too leaky (bleeding, lactating, crying, feeling), too porous (influenced by the moon, tides, seasons, children, lovers), too changeable (monthly cycles, pregnancy, postpartum, menopause).

So of course, they said, you couldn’t expect a woman to be stable, rational, dependable in the same way as a man. She was too entangled with nature.

And because nature itself was something to control, conquer and tame, women became something to manage, contain and, if necessary, cut.

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The Original “BOB”: When Doctors Prescribed Pleasure

Here’s where it gets very ironic.

The same system that labelled women hysterical, untrustworthy and over-emotional also developed one of the earliest versions of what we would now recognise as a discreet device.

Yes, really.

Physicians once used manual “treatments” for hysteria — and later, invented mechanical devices — to bring women to “hysterical paroxysm” (a carefully sanitised term for orgasm).

The logic was: the womb is causing trouble, the woman is backed up with unexpressed “nervous energy.” Release the tension, and she’ll be calmer, more compliant, more manageable.

On paper, this was framed as a medical procedure.

In practice, it was a deeply revealing moment:

Women’s pleasure was only acceptable if it served male-defined medicine.
The body’s natural capacity for erotic release was pathologised and then prescribed back to the woman as treatment.
The female body was still not seen as sovereign, wise or self-directed — just another site for “intervention”.

The early ancestor of BOB was not born from women’s liberation.
It was born from a system trying to control women more efficiently.

And yet… even there, something subversive was happening.

The body was speaking.
Women were feeling.
Relief was real, whether or not the story around it honoured them.

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“Wrong” Because It’s Not Male

If you zoom out, a pattern emerges.

Anything about women’s bodies that doesn’t behave like a male body is treated as defective, mysterious, excessive or imaginary.

Men have a relatively stable hormone profile over 24 hours: normal.
Women have cyclical hormones over roughly 28 days: unpredictable, unstable.

Men’s pain is concerning: investigate.
Women’s pain is concerning… until the scans are clear. Then it becomes anxiety, stress, attention-seeking or “part of being a woman.”

A male sex drive is powerful: to be channelled and managed, but accepted.
A female sex drive is powerful: to be doubted, shamed, joked about, or seen as dangerous.

We internalise these messages.

We learn:

My body is suspicious.
My emotions are untrustworthy.
My instincts are probably wrong.
My desire is embarrassing.

And eventually:

“I’d better let someone else tell me what’s going on inside me, because I can’t trust myself.”

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The Quiet Rebellion: Listening to Your Own Body

Here’s the turning point.

Every time a woman listens to her own body, trusts her own experience, questions a dismissive diagnosis, honours her cycle, her limits, her desire — or even buys herself her own discreet device without shame — she is quietly stepping out of this old story.

She is saying:

“I am not a malfunctioning version of a man.
I am not a problem to be managed.
I am a living, intelligent, responsive being with my own rhythms.”

This doesn’t mean rejecting all medicine or science. It means refusing to abandon yourself inside systems that were not designed with you in mind.

It means asking:

What does my body say?
What does my nervous system need?
What does my womb, my gut, my heart know?
Where have I been told I’m “too much” when I was actually telling the truth?

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Why I’m Talking About This (And Not Just About BOB)

You might be thinking:

“Why are we talking about hysteria, wandering wombs and old medical devices in 2025?”

Because the residues are still in the field.

They show up when you apologise for being in pain.
They show up when you doubt your own intuition because a test came back “normal.”
They show up when you minimise your needs because you don’t want to be “dramatic.”
They show up when you feel shame about wanting pleasure, support, rest or spaciousness.

The history of hysteria is not just a curiosity.
It’s part of the ancestral atmosphere many of us are still breathing.

Talking about BOB, about pleasure, about “inappropriate” midlife desire, about the medicalisation of the female body — all of this is part of the same work:

Taking yourself back.

Back from stories written through the male body as default.
Back from diagnoses that erased your complexity.
Back from the idea that you are dangerous, unreliable, “too close to nature”.

You are close to nature.
That is a feature, not a flaw.

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A New Story for Your Body

So where does this leave us?

Not in rejection of medicine.
Not in denial of real illness or the very real relief that surgery, medication and treatment can bring.

But in a different stance towards your own body:

Curiosity instead of contempt.
Collaboration instead of control.
Respect instead of ridicule.

A stance where you can say:

“Yes, I’ll take the best of what the medical world offers.”

And also:

“I will no longer abandon my own knowing to fit into a model that was never built for me.”

Your womb is not a curse.
Your hormones are not a character flaw.
Your sensitivity is not a clinical problem to be erased.

They are part of your design.
Part of your intelligence.
Part of your medicine.

From here, healing looks less like being fixed… and more like being reclaimed.

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Gentle Note

Nothing in this blog is a replacement for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Please continue to seek and receive the care you need from qualified medical and mental health professionals. The work I offer sits alongside that, not instead of it.