Elissa Bassist, Schools of Public Engagement '12
Between 2016 and 2018, Elissa Bassist saw more than 20 medical professionals for a variety of mysterious ailments. Bassist had an ailment from which millions of American women suffered: pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, a psyche that didn’t make sense to humanity. But then an acupuncturist suggested that some of her physical pain could be caged fury finding expression and that treating her voice would treat the problem. It did.
Growing up, Bassist found that her family, her boyfriends, school, work, and television had the same expectation for a woman’s voice: Less is more. She was called dramatic and insane for speaking her mind; she was accused of overreacting and playing victim for having unexplained physical pain; she was ignored or rebuked like women throughout history for using her voice “inappropriately,” by expressing sadness or suffering or anger or joy.
In Hysterical, Bassist explains how girls and women internalize and perpetuate directives about their voices, breaking her own silences and calling on others to do the same—to unmute their voices, listen to them above all others, and use them again without regret.
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