Penney Miyan (she/her) is a fourth-year M.D./Ph.D. Candidate in Bioethics (Philosophy) from Long Island, NY. She has a research background in phenomenology, and uses it as a tool to understand perceptual recognition and learning in aesthetic experiences; namely those related to beauty and ugliness. Applying her research interests to bioethics, her dissertation is currently centered on the ethics of cosmetic surgery, and under what conditions of body modification, agency can be limited or enabled.
Project: What is Medical Gaslighting?
This research project will examine the relationship amongst gender, epistemic authority, and medical testimony in cases of medical gaslighting. Shortly after giving birth in 2017, Serena Williams experienced severe dyspnea and shortness of breath. Given her history of blood clots and a pulmonary embolism in 2010, Williams insisted that she needed immediate treatment. Despite her expertise regarding her own body (as one of the most successful athletes of all time) and a prior medical history of blood clots, her concerns were initially dismissed by healthcare providers. Williams’ experience illustrates a broader problem within medical contexts: patients, particularly women of color, are frequently denied credibility and epistemic authority regarding their own bodily experiences. My project will look at cases of gendered knowledge in healthcare settings to ask: First, what is medical gaslighting? Second, how should we understand contested patient testimony? Finally, how can “gut feelings” function as legitimate forms of knowledge? Existing discussions of medical gaslighting focus on failures of trust and sincerity as per Elizabeth Barnes and Katherine Hawley. While Barnes and Hawley unpack what is going on in cases of contested testimony (in medical settings and more broadly), discussion on gendered embodied knowledge involving emotions and bodily knowledge is missing from their account. I believe that embodied and gendered knowledge is missing from many accounts of medical gaslighting, and I hope to further develop an account of medical gaslighting in my project.