Sarah

“Most women fight wars on two fronts, one for whatever the putative topic is and one simply for the right to speak, to have ideas, to be acknowledged to be in possession of facts and truths, to have value, to be a human being.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me

“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“The disorder is more common in women."
Note the construction of that sentence. They did not write, "The disorder is more common in women." It would still be suspect, but they didn't bother trying to cover their tracks.
Many disorders, judging by the hospital population, were more commonly diagnosed in women. Take, for example, "compulsive promiscuity."
How many girls do you think a seventeen-year-old boy would have to screw to earn the label "compulsively promiscuous"? Three? No, not enough. Six? Doubtful. Ten? That seems more likely. Probably in the fifteen-to-twenty range, would be my guess - if they ever put that label on boys, which I don't recall their doing....
In the list of six "potentially self-damaging" activities favored by the borderline personality, three are commonly associated with women (shopping sprees, shoplifting, and eating binges) and one with men (reckless driving). One is not "gender specific," as they say these days (psychoactive substance abuse). And the definition of the other (casual sex) is in the eye of the beholder.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain