A paper read before a cancerology convention as a patient-witness to s
peak on the subject of ''The Quality of Life after Breast Cancer''. A
breast amputation is experienced by many women as identity harming and
breast cancer Is one of the few diseases whose aftereffects are perce
ived as esthetic damage. By virtue of the conventional view of THE wom
an, a view which is internalized by women since childhood a ''reconstr
uction'' of the breast is almost automatically proposed as compensatio
n for the said damage. The institutional violence underlying this inju
nction is analyzed here and rejected as basically misogynist. An alter
native view is offered where accepting one's asymmetry is validated as
the basis of a new art of living. The Amazon author shoots an arrow a
t close range against the prejudices that leave the mastectomized wome
n alone with their ''terrible secret''.