This article presents the results of a qualitative study of women who had filed complaints of domestic violence, situating gender relations in a broader context. The authors focus on the meaning ascribed to sexual coercion in violent relations, suggesting that conjugal sexual violence is related to the perverse effects of changes in the sexual division of labor and the aggravated double demands on women from housework and the workplace, in relation to the dismantling of the male's role as provider in situations of poverty. In this context, women's refusal to engage in sex (a form of resistance which expresses their desire to be sexual protagonists and communicates disappointment with their partners) can be seen as contributing to the exacerbation of conjugal violence. In their partial position of "subjects of resistance", these women reveal a situation of oppression which is rarely referred to as violence: feelings of disgust and repulsion following sexual relations conceded as "conjugal rights" are similar to those manifested by victims of rape by strangers (which, in contrast, is generally recognized as "sexual violence").

The article discusses drug abuse and eating disorders from the critical gender and healthcare perspectives, postulating that subjective suffering can be expressed in the body through psychosomatic illnesses. From this perspective, craving for drugs or superfluous consumer goods, just as illness from self-imposed hunger in pursuit of an ideal of slimness, as in anorexia and bulimia, can be symptoms that expose the woman's suffering. A review in the fields of public health and feminist theories highlights the magnitude of the phenomena of medicalization and commodification of health in the psychiatrization of female discomfort. In the gender transition in capitalist societies, social demands for the performance of old and new women's roles accentuate feelings of inadequacy, expressed as the gender discomfort permeating drug abuse and eating disorders, analyzed as diseases of protest. The study proposes to reclaim the ideals of the Program for Comprehensive Women's Healthcare to deal with such challenges.

A partir de breve demarcação e conceituação do problema da violência contra mulheres, sob as perspectivas de gênero, direitos humanos e saúde pública e, da constatação de sua persistente invisibilidade na assistência em saúde, o artigo aponta algumas consequências para a saúde das mulheres, problematiza o modo como profissionais  lidam com tal fenômeno social e, sinaliza limites e demandas abarcados no processo de educação em/na saúde frente ao tema da violência entre parceiros íntimos (VPI), apostando-se na potencialidade do diálogo entre os pressupostos feministas e freirianos para o acolhimento das mulheres em situação de violência, orientado pelos princípios  da integralidade e da interseccionalidade.