The Social Clinic: Mapping the Social and Colonial World of Gynecology

The ethnographic interludes before and after chapter 3 cross the reader temporally and spatially as Faul examines how gynecology, both sociohistorically and in the present, is an imperialist, colonial, and modern contact zone. These slices of sociomedical history through slavery eugenics and hygienist ideologies are the sociological and anthropological hauntings in what Falu terms the “social clinic.” This chapter interrogates gynecology more deeply for sociohistorical ideologies entrenched in a contemporary colonial, racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative, and homophobic space. Through these histories of gynecology and medicine, Falu interprets the intricacies of language, symbols, and power relations, and the nuances of physicians' socialities sometimes contested by Black lesbians. Gynecology is where gender is constructed, race is made, and sexuality is deployed. Through the dichotomy of private and public, gynecology reveals contradictions worth contemplating. The sociohistorical ideologies and institutional practices ingrained in gynecologic spaces mirror broader hegemonic forces in the social world.