Women Are Born With Pain Built In

It’s a strange thing, how pain becomes a background hum in the life of a woman, so quiet and constant that we don’t always notice it anymore. Pain is handed to us, from the moment we are born, as if it’s just something that belongs to us. You don’t question it. You don’t protest it. You simply endure it. But at what point do we stop and ask why?

Why am I expected to suffer without question, without relief, without acknowledgment?

For women, pain becomes a part of our identity long before we understand what it means. It starts with the familiar refrain: "It's just part of being a woman." Period cramps are normalized as an inevitable curse, migraines are dismissed as "just hormones," and childbirth is celebrated as the greatest test of endurance. From the moment we’re born, we are taught to wear pain as a badge, to hold it within us, as if it’s not just a biological reality, but a social expectation. It becomes our responsibility, not just to endure, but to remain silent while doing so.

But what if we’re wrong? What if all the years of quietly tolerating discomfort, both physical and emotional, are not a sign of strength but of deep submission? What if the constant pain we carry is not something to be glorified, but a symptom of something far more insidious: a cultural mandate that teaches women their suffering is part of their value?

I didn’t realize how deeply this message had sunk into me until I was sitting in an exam room at boarding school. The cramps hit me with such intensity that I could barely focus on the paper in front of me. But I thought, this is just how it goes. I’ve felt this before, many many times. It’s inconvenient, but it’s nothing unusual. Pain is just something women live with. So, I soldiered on, like so many others do. But when I finally mentioned to the invigilator that I didn’t feel well nut that I was just going to endure it "because that's just how it works", she responded with words that hit me like a shock: “No, pain is not normal.” I ignored her advice and kept going, because being performative meant more than taking care of myself in that moment, But those words opened up a question I had never thought to ask myself: Why did I accept my pain as normal?

Margaret Atwood once wrote, “You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” That "man", I've now understood, is the internalized voice of patriarchal conditioning. The one that tells us to be silent, to be strong, to endure, to dismiss our own suffering. It’s the voice that demands we push through, that celebrates our ability to carry pain as if it were a virtue. It convinces us that pain is part of our nature, that it is our responsibility to bear it. But what if the act of enduring pain, the silence in which we carry it, is not strength but compliance?

Female pain is not just biological; it is political. It is woven into the very fabric of the structures that govern our lives, from the medical system to the workplace, from cultural expectations to intimate relationships. Fleabag captured it perfectly when she said, “Women are born with pain built in. It’s our physical destiny, period pains, sore boobs, childbirth.” But that’s only half the truth. The more insidious reality is how society has built upon this unavoidable biological fact and turned it into an expectation. Pain is no longer just something we experience; it becomes something we must accept. It is framed as a rite of passage, a mark of resilience, a measure of our worth.

Think for a moment about how this manifests in the world around us. In the medical field, women’s pain is often dismissed, minimized, or outright ignored. Conditions like endometriosis or fibromyalgia are frequently misdiagnosed, with women’s symptoms being chalked up to “psychosomatic” or “emotional” issues. In emergency rooms, studies show that women wait longer for pain relief than men, often told to simply “tough it out.” And when we speak up, we are labeled dramatic, hysterical, or overly emotional. When we don’t speak up, when we endure silently, we are praised for our “strength.” But in both cases, the outcome is the same: our pain is erased.

And no, it's not a matter of biology. It’s about power.

Finally, unlearning this means unmasking the lie that suffering makes us virtuous and that strength is measured by how much we can endure.

For the first time, asking why we’ve been taught that silence in the face of pain is a sign of character.

We must confront that voice, the one that tells us to keep quiet, to bear it, to pretend it’s all fine. And we must dismantle it, piece by piece.

Yes, women are born with pain built in. But what we are not born with is the obligation to bear it in silence. Pain can be a part of our story, but it does not have to define us. And it certainly doesn’t have to be normalized. Not anymore. Not ever again.