Feminism and a world designed for men

[FabricLiveBaby!]

Oh, and 20 years later, another luteal cyst appeared.. That too, hurt like a cunt and it was "tiny" (about 2cm), - luteal cysts tend to go away by themselves tho. You poor ladies with the grapefruit cysts.

 

[kabbes]

What I don’t understand is that the female GPs are no better than the male GPs when it comes to women’s health. I mean, in some ways they are better but in other ways they are worse.

 

[Poot]

What I don’t understand is that the female GPs are no better than the male GPs when it comes to women’s health. I mean, in some ways they are better but in other ways they are worse.

It's hardly surprising that after a lifetime of being told that women's pain is normal and not important this becomes the party line even for the most empathetic doctor, though. It's cultural.

 

[Poot]

What I don’t understand is that the female GPs are no better than the male GPs when it comes to women’s health. I mean, in some ways they are better but in other ways they are worse.

Oh, and I don't think they ARE worse, I think they are perceived to be because, you know, they're women.

 

[kabbes]

I don’t know. I perceive a certain “well it’s not so bad for me so how can it be bad for you?” attitude from some of them (on the occasions I have been in attendance)

 

[Pickman's model]

What I don’t understand is that the female GPs are no better than the male GPs when it comes to women’s health. I mean, in some ways they are better but in other ways they are worse.

If it's an institutional issue, a factor which pervades how medicine is researched, taught, received and understood then it's no surprise. You're like the judges on strictly who hold the celebs to account on what the dance ought to have been rather than the dance the professionals taught them.

 

[polly]

It's hardly surprising that after a lifetime of being told that women's pain is normal and not important this becomes the party line even for the most empathetic doctor, though. It's cultural.

I don’t know. I perceive a certain “well it’s not so bad for me so how can it be bad for you?” attitude from some of them (on the occasions I have been in attendance)

Both of these can be true at once, and internalised misogyny is real.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

What I don’t understand is that the female GPs are no better than the male GPs when it comes to women’s health. I mean, in some ways they are better but in other ways they are worse.

Speaking purely for myself, I've always found women GPs far more understanding and empathetic when it comes to things like period pain, HRT, hormonal stuff, than men GPs.

 

[weepiper]

I had one of them too when I was 15 and it hurt so much, and responded to pressure in such a way that the GP misdiagnosed it as appendicitis and I was rushed to the emergency room for an operation.

Afterward, as I woke up from the general anaesthetic, the (man) surgeon said "it was only a tiny cyst on your ovary. Must have been pushing against a nerve *shrug*"

Like I was making the pain up or something.

That fucker hurt like a bastard.

Yes, they thought I had appendicitis too from the way I was rolling around screaming. So painful and frightening.

 

[scifisam]

I had one of them too when I was 15 and it hurt so much, and responded to pressure in such a way that the GP misdiagnosed it as appendicitis and I was rushed to the emergency room for an operation.

Afterward, as I woke up from the general anaesthetic, the (man) surgeon said "it was only a tiny cyst on your ovary. Must have been pushing against a nerve *shrug*"

Like I was making the pain up or something.

That fucker hurt like a bastard.

That's ridiculous - of the doctor, I mean, obvs. Small cysts don't usually cause pain just by being cysts, but they do when they burst. Having something burst inside your body is obviously going to hurt, isn't it?

 

[spanglechick]

It took me something like twenty-five years to be diagnosed. The first 10 years or so, before I had my daughter were fucking awful. Before I was 16 my GP didn't let me on the pill and it changed my life. The four years before that involved SO much bleeding and pain for more days of the month than not.

Can you imagine a world where men have a condition where their arm bleeds unstoppably for a week every month and it hurts, and then for some men it bleeds longer, and some of them bleed in other places and it's hugely painful? Even if it were women bleeding out of their arms in the same way, there would have been major steps taken to combat this from early times. But it's from women's genitals and that makes it bad.

Imagine it was bleeding from their dick.

 

[Orang Utan]

if men had periods, they would boast about how heavy their flow was

 

[spanglechick]

I also wasn’t diagnosed until fertility treatment (38 or 39) I had two endometriomas removed, one was 8cm diameter, and the other 5.5cm. I had to wait months for the surgery and then they forgot to refer me back to the fertility clinic. By the time I queried that, I was more or less forty, and too old to be treated.

But I never realised my pain was unusual. I never told a doctor. Periods are supposed to hurt, I thought. Bleeding through and ruining my pants and clothes was, I thought, me “doing it wrong”. I can’t blame the medical profession but I do wonder at how ready I was to accept it all as what I deserved, somehow.

 

[trashpony]

I also wasn’t diagnosed until fertility treatment (38 or 39) I had two endometriomas removed, one was 8cm diameter, and the other 5.5cm. I had to wait months for the surgery and then they forgot to refer me back to the fertility clinic. By the time I queried that, I was more or less forty, and too old to be treated.

But I never realised my pain was unusual. I never told a doctor. Periods are supposed to hurt, I thought. Bleeding through and ruining my pants and clothes was, I thought, me “doing it wrong”. I can’t blame the medical profession but I do wonder at how ready I was to accept it all as what I deserved, somehow.

But you can! Well at least the acceptance that it’s normal.
There was a conversation between women in an online women’s group I’m in the other day and one woman was complaining about really heavy painful periods and another one told her that wasn’t normal and that she didn’t experience that. First woman got a bit bristly and said well it was pretty normal for most women she knew. Second woman explained that it isn’t normal for periods to be so painful and debilitating and we should kick up a fuss and demand investigation if they are.

I had never looked at it like that before - I’ve really just seen it through the lens of lucky/less lucky in terms of how shit your periods are. And that’s just wrong isn’t it?

 

[scifisam]

I also wasn’t diagnosed until fertility treatment (38 or 39) I had two endometriomas removed, one was 8cm diameter, and the other 5.5cm. I had to wait months for the surgery and then they forgot to refer me back to the fertility clinic. By the time I queried that, I was more or less forty, and too old to be treated.

But I never realised my pain was unusual. I never told a doctor. Periods are supposed to hurt, I thought. Bleeding through and ruining my pants and clothes was, I thought, me “doing it wrong”. I can’t blame the medical profession but I do wonder at how ready I was to accept it all as what I deserved, somehow.

Yeah. It's amazing how long women accept such long term pain and bleeding as so normal that we don't even ask for help with it.

Though it would also be nice if the medical profession asked women about how their periods were going even if they're not on contraception, the same way they do reviews for other things that affect your health. It is a medical issue. You don't have to be diagnosed with "having periods" but it is something that affects your health.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I had never looked at it like that before - I’ve really just seen it through the lens of lucky/less lucky in terms of how shit your periods are. And that’s just wrong isn’t it?

Yes this is wrong - but we are socialised from an early age to put up and shut up. My mother (b1930) also taught me I should keep everything to do with periods and sanitary protection secret and never mention them to men.

Talking about menstruation and gynae issues was part of feminist consciousness raising in the 80s. There were no books in the library about period pain. The number of women with awful periods made it sound 'normal'. Sounds like we still need to do more consciousness raising.

 

[Manter]

Interestingly my mum is having cancer treatment at the moment and they are being (to me) surprisingly responsive about her side effects. They actively asked her about them and are changing her drugs (while she was doing a terribly female/British ‘well, I don’t want to make a fuss, it isn’t unbearable’). The person managing her care overall is a senior nurse practitioner, and I wonder if that makes the difference- she has a consultant as well, of course, but there is someone who is closer to the reality of illness driving some Of the decisions.

 

[scifisam]

Interestingly my mum is having cancer treatment at the moment and they are being (to me) surprisingly responsive about her side effects. They actively asked her about them and are changing her drugs (while she was doing a terribly female/British ‘well, I don’t want to make a fuss, it isn’t unbearable’). The person managing her care overall is a senior nurse practitioner, and I wonder if that makes the difference- she has a consultant as well, of course, but there is someone who is closer to the reality of illness driving some Of the decisions.

Senior Nurse Practitioners do seem to make a difference, IME, whether they're male or female.

To follow up on what kabbes said, there are some women who dismiss "women's problems" more than men, because they assume that if they haven't had the problem, then anyone else is making it up. Some women do internalise misogyny to the extent that they can be worse than men. The vast majority of women who work in medicine aren't like that, but they are, obviously, more memorable.

 

[JudithB]

if men had periods, they would boast about how heavy their flow was

 

[JudithB]

This is cool

Subscribe to read | Financial Times - ah there may be a paywall?


Caroline Criado Perez has won the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award for Invisible Women, her examination of how designers and developers have perpetuated bias towards men in the data they use.

 

[Manter]

This is cool

Subscribe to read | Financial Times - ah there may be a paywall?


Caroline Criado Perez has won the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award for Invisible Women, her examination of how designers and developers have perpetuated bias towards men in the data they use.

Gift link so people who don’t subscribe can read it Exposé of data gender bias wins FT/McKinsey book prize | Financial Times

 

[SheilaNaGig]

But you can! Well at least the acceptance that it’s normal.
There was a conversation between women in an online women’s group I’m in the other day and one woman was complaining about really heavy painful periods and another one told her that wasn’t normal and that she didn’t experience that. First woman got a bit bristly and said well it was pretty normal for most women she knew. Second woman explained that it isn’t normal for periods to be so painful and debilitating and we should kick up a fuss and demand investigation if they are.

I had never looked at it like that before - I’ve really just seen it through the lens of lucky/less lucky in terms of how shit your periods are. And that’s just wrong isn’t it?

I’ve been caught in this. My periods have never given me any trouble. I’ve had cramps and heavy blood flow and PMS symptoms on occasion, enough to give me a sense of what others suffer with, but not very often and never to the extent that it interferes with my life. And I’ve a always been able to track it back to something else and so resolve it. Whenever I’ve tried to say “But I don’t need think I’m abnormal, I think periods shouldn’t be this difficult. Something is right with me, something isn’t right with you” , that conversation has been shut down, by the woman. I tried so many ways to approach it but in the end I gave up. I was accused of showing off, gloating, falling for the party line and pretending to myself, making it up, having a very high pain threshold or otherwise getting my parameters for “normal” muddled, being an outlier or odd in some way, even had my infertility given back to me as a reason for having simple periods. I’ve always felt that if I can have problem free periods, why don’t more women have easy periods? When I was in my teens I even felt left out of the the magic circle of my peers who were struggling.

Even writing this out makes me feel like I’m somehow saying the wrong thing. As if I’m showing off about how lucky I am or something.

So messed up.

 

[trashpony]

It is messed up. I know though when my sister was having such heavy periods that she was passing out when she was a teenager, my mum took her to the doctor and he just shrugged and said some women's periods were like that and all he could do was put her on the pill. So she was on the pill from the time she was 13

I'm like you - have had pretty easy periods my whole life and always felt a bit guilty about it. I'm really sorry someone said that to you about your infertility too SheilaNaGig - that's really cruel (and completely untrue).

 

[kabbes]

My observation about the medical profession in general is that they mistake “problem” for “problem with a ready-made solution I can easily diagnose and prescribe for”. So they’ll continuously be dismissive of issues that fit into the former category but not the latter. If they don’t have a pill for it, it doesn’t exist.

 

[Manter]

My observation about the medical profession in general is that they mistake “problem” for “problem with a ready-made solution I can easily diagnose and prescribe for”. So they’ll continuously be dismissive of issues that fit into the former category but not the latter. If they don’t have a pill for it, it doesn’t exist.

Yes. And pharmas aren’t great on diversity in R&D (it’s a huge area of focus) and historically have only tested on men because of the ‘pregnancy risk’.... and on the spiral goes

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Interestingly my mum is having cancer treatment at the moment and they are being (to me) surprisingly responsive about her side effects. They actively asked her about them and are changing her drugs (while she was doing a terribly female/British ‘well, I don’t want to make a fuss, it isn’t unbearable’). The person managing her care overall is a senior nurse practitioner, and I wonder if that makes the difference- she has a consultant as well, of course, but there is someone who is closer to the reality of illness driving some Of the decisions.

I think there have been moves to try to be better about determining levels of pain, discomfort, distress etc, because the standard model has repeatedly proved to be basically just awful and prone to all sorts of bias. There is a huge racial element too for instance - not sure about studies in the U.K. but in the US, black people routinely have their pain downplayed (if you are black and a woman you're really in trouble) and an added point is that if you are in a group like this and you _do_ speak up, you're seen as a malinger and exaggerating.

How far this has spread in practical terms is a different matter of course.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I think there have been moves to try to be better about determining levels of pain, discomfort, distress etc, because the standard model has repeatedly proved to be basically just awful and prone to all sorts of bias. There is a huge racial element too for instance - not sure about studies in the U.K. but in the US, black people routinely have their pain downplayed (if you are black and a woman you're really in trouble) and an added point is that if you are in a group like this and you _do_ speak up, you're seen as a malinger and exaggerating.

There was a small study here in the UK about carribean / african people with terminal cancer. (Kings College Hospital 15 or 20 years ago I think) It showed they were given less pain relief less often than white british patients.

 

[equationgirl]

I have a benign tumour in my right breast which causes terrible pain. It's thought that it sits on the nerve. Sometimes the pain s so bad it makesmecry, and I say that as someone who at the point of diagnosis had had chronic pain for over 20 years.

The female consultants I saw watched me cry and did nothing other than say 'that type of lump' does not cause pain. I eventually got referred to a pain management clinic and they prescribed some things that have helped.

And a quick search of various medical papers revealed yes, the type of lump' I have can cause pain.

I had to fight to get heard, when I really didn't have much in the way of resources to fight with. Ironically, my male GP took one look at me and doubled my pain meds.

 

[kabbes]

I’m sorry to hear that, eq. I hope your pain medication is at at least somewhat effective for you.

 

[kalidarkone]

I have come to realise that women having gynae procedures and operations are not always given enough information to be able to make an informed choice.

Prior to my hysterectomy in 2011 I just did what came naturally which was to research all my options given I had a very large fibroid that was rendering me anaemic and meant I had no quality of life as I was constantly bleeding. I had an advantage as I was a student midwife and had access to UWE health and social science library where I was able to research and compose a list of questions for my consultant -who was honestly surprised and impressed that I a fat black woman would have the foresight and the ingenuity to do such a thing
So I told them I wanted a sub total hysterectomy - why would I want my ovaries, and cervix taken if I don't need them taken? The Cervix is important for sex and why would I want to go into medical menopause by having my ovaries removed?
So I got what I needed and asked for-and they all thought I was very unusual for asserting myself ...
Since then I have realised that they don't ask women. I niaevely assumed that as they were removing a part of your body that they would. I was only alerted to this by meeting other women going through similar gynae issues who were not researching their condition and had a total hysterectomy performed despite there being no justification for this-for cancer yes. For a flipping fibroid -really ?

What is worse is that there are a lot of female consultants maintaining the patriarchal culture that is dominant in women's health care.