Breaking the Silence of Patriarchal Apathy: The Graphic Reinscription of Women’s Reproductive Health in Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves

Abstract

In the field of women’s reproductive health, the narratives of the ‘Wandering womb’, the non-fulfilment of sexual desires, or failure towards the duty of childbearing as reasons for women’s health issues, both physiological as well as psychological have been rife since ancient times. Even now, after the rejection of many of these theories, making way for new scientific explanations and understandings, there remain many differences in the manner in which health facilities are handed out to women when compared to men. Especially when it comes to reproductive health, depictions in literature, as well as other cultural productions, have often either glossed over these matters or have presented them in an intentionally euphemistic manner, albeit in the guise of decency. The reality of the difficulties of women’s reproductive illnesses (self-perception) complicated both by birth control fertility treatments as well as the pregnancy in itself that often bring several complications in a woman’s body are usually never considered sickness (societal recognition) or disease (recognition by medical practitioners). In using the terms illness, sickness and disease, the paper is carrying forward the accepted critical difference between the three first articulated by A. Twaddle (1964) Through the study of Lucy Knisley’s refreshingly frank graphic memoir Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos, this paper aims to question the process of normalisation that turns many of women’s illnesses suffered during pregnancy or in the process of birth control as ‘side-effects’ and unrecognised, how they become impossible to cure, in the first place. The paper will show how the text not only uncovers the mystification surrounding women’s health in general, revealing the patriarchal attitudes that inform such notions, but does so in a simple manner that is also fun to read- making it a compelling feminist text.