Consented

A Doctor's Call to End Medical Violence and Reclaim Patient Autonomy

Medical culture has a problem with consent. And it’s not just a few bad doctors.

In Consented, I diagnose medicine with a systemic illness: medical rape culture, a set of beliefs and practices that normalize the violation of patient autonomy. Each chapter examines one way this culture is created, sustained, and often carried out in ways that feel routine, justified, even invisible.

From the invention of the speculum to the legacy of eugenics, Consented traces how a culture of violation became embedded in medicine and why it remains largely unchanged. From the routine teaching of pelvic exams to the dehumanizing language of medical texts, I expose how harm persists not only in extreme cases, but also in everyday practice.

Grounded in over 900 research papers, archival work conducted during a dedicated writing fellowship, and weeks spent inside historical medical libraries, this book is also shaped by something more essential:

Patient stories.

Your stories.

In Consented, I write about:

• What happens when consent that is signed, but never felt.

• Why patients who are blamed don’t get better.

• The quiet ways medicine disciplines women’s bodies.

• How bodies become objects to be measured, examined, and spoken over.

• How difference—gender, sexuality—is turned into diagnosis.

• How racism translates into who gets to live and who doesn’t.

• How trauma is minimized, renamed, or ignored.

• And how the system shapes all of us, patients and providers alike.

If you are a patient,

If you’ve ever felt dismissed, blamed, labeled, or unheard.

If you’ve rehearsed what to say before an appointment, trying to get it “right.”

If you’ve learned to perform your symptoms just to be taken seriously.

If you’ve been asked to prove your worth on a scale,
or your pain on a number.
If you’ve ever thought it might be easier to suffer alone than to ask for care —

This book is for you.

And if you are in medicine,

If you’ve felt the tension between who you are inside the system and who you are outside of it.

If you’ve tried to belong, only to feel yourself disappearing.

If you’re tired of standing across from your patients instead of with them.

If you’ve decided to become the same person in and out of the exam room —

This book is for you, too.