Black Women and “Doing” Pain

The stereotypical images of Black women as hypersexual, have long been used to silence Black women in pain via social authoring—the social translation of Black women's pain that generates a radically different meaning than what a typical pain expression is intended to convey. Aware of this social authoring, I argue that Black women maintain their voice by “doing” pain. I define “doing” pain as the deliberate adjustments to one's appearance or behavior by disenfranchised agents attempting to express pain within a medical context. Moreover, I argue that “doing” pain can be a form of insurgent agency in which the patient manipulates the rules of the “pain game” as a costly attempt to secure equitable pain care.