Women are still, in the 21st century told that pregnancy is a cure for endometriosis, albeit a temporary one.
You made that up. That’s not what they’re told. They’re in fact told that endometriosis causes cysts to form on the uterus. When the uterus sheds its lining during a period, this causes intense pain. Pregnancy relieves the symptoms by stopping periods, but once it resumes, so do the symptoms. Nobody tells women pregnancy is a cure. They are accurately told that pregnancy will reduce the symptoms for a while. As the cysts leave scar tissue into which a fertilised egg cannot implant, endometriosis causes diminished, and eventual loss of, fertility. With all misandrist propaganda, what is always missing, as here, is any comparative analysis of men’s supposedly preferable situation in the same period. The claim that women’s pain was historically ignored would resonate more were it not for the fact that, for example, men injured in any limb in battle up until about 150 years ago simply had it amputated without anaesthetic. If they survived the operation, and the repeated bleedings that were thought to assist recovery, they were then discharged as unfit for further service. For the most part, these men weren’t volunteers. So in what way were they better off for being men? As soon as pain relief did become available, it was immediately offered not just to men under the knife, but to women in childbirth.
Over the last 70 or 80 years doctors have been able to dispense four types of pill not known hitherto that remain the most frequently prescribed. These four are contraceptives, anti-depressants, pain killers and antibiotics. Take a wild guess, Helen, at who benefits the most from the existence of these; who takes most of them? Clue: it isn’t men.
You’re in the wrong place if you want to arouse hatred against men in general today for failing to meet your latter-day expectations of them in the past. You might get a reverent hearing in some places, but here, you should expect to be confronted with the facts you haven’t properly considered. If you want a choir to preach to, this isn’t the Guardian.
Aren’t the odious statins right up there as one of the most widely prescribed medications for both men and women? And the beauty for big pharmaceuticals is that you are not supposed to ever stop taking them – you are in it for life. Unless of course you discover that they reduce cholesterol but not mortality and that in reality, mainstream cholesterol tests are pure fiction.
It’s a good point, Lesley, although as statins have (I think) been around only since the 1980s it’s maybe too soon to tell if they’ll remain in the arsenal given the issues that you point out.
I’m personally bewildered why people take statins rather than eating more porridge and avocadoes. I’m guessing that usage will tail off as hipsters age 🙂
Jon, maybe because the body is not functioning as well due to age even though one’s diet is good – porridge is my favourite. I’ve been on them for 15 years (minimum dose) and no seeming problems. I am informed they do help clean the arteries out.
Clean the arteries out? Of what?Something critical to functioning called cholesterol… or Co-Q10? Interestingly Merck must have known for decades that statins reduced Co-Q10 levels, because they patented a statin with Co-Q10 but no-one wisened up to the problem so it was unnecessary to pursue. Heart disease and risk is picked up by inter alia calcium scans, insulin resistance, rate of HDL to triglycerides and a particular dense subtype of LDL. The average doctor and cardiologist just gives you the bog standard test and gives you some statins.
Have the proper screening, drop the porridge, follow a paleo type diet, take magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3, do some exercise etc.
I understand it is not natural: “ Fatty material (or atheroma) starts accumulating in the lining of the artery wall from when we are quite young. The material is ‘foreign’ to our bodies, so causes inflammation.” Having read a bit more the statins don’t clear them but prevent the build up.
I really think you should swat up on the new thinking on the cholesterol myth and then find a doctor who will do the tests that I mentioned. As I said previously, the smoking gun is that statins reduce cholesterol but do not reduce mortality.
If I were a man, having a paperclip “shoved up” my much narrower channel, I would expect morphine at the very least!
Last edited 2 years ago by Allie McBeth
Jamie Farrell
2 years ago
Im afraid this is one of the poorest pieces I’ve ever read on this site. The lack of actual evidence is staggering, the one eyed nature of the “argument” is monumental, and the utterly deluded “conclusions” drawn (such as that when the Greeks in effect began to study medicine, the fact that they didn’t immediately understand perfectly all aspects of human biology from year zero, was quite obviously because they were sexist) are actually just frightening.
Seems from the article that men, in the medical field, have devoted very great efforts at solving the medical issues. The writer is angry that previous generations of medical and scientific people were not today’s fully equipped, modern tech laden, and woke. How dare they be old fashioned in the past. I await a CRT article next, showing how the modern is so horrible because the past was utterly wicked.
Firstly, I will admit, I didn’t finish this article; the title alone was enough to turn me off. As part of my PhD thesis, I am researching ancient women’s reproductive health. As I search through the Hippocratic Corpus and the works of Celsus, Soranus, and Galen, among others, I am finding none of the so-called misogyny the author claims existed. Instead, I find men invested in women’s health and concerned for their reproductive outcomes. I dare anyone to read Hippocrates’ descriptions of young women dying from post-partum infections and not be moved by their poignancy. These men recognised that the reproducing years were the most dangerous in a women’s life. So much so that Soranus admitted that women who remained virgins all their life usually enjoyed better health.
And of course men were, and are, invested in women’s health. We have mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters and female friends. We love and cherish them. Jesus wept. The entire foundation of 3rd/4th wave feminism seems to be a deeply disturbed view of men.
Orwell, in Down and out in Paris and London, the song some male scoundrels sing to entertain the tramps of a woman destroyed by a wicked, lieing, deceiver:
“As into the grave they laid her low, The men said, ‘Alas, but life is so,’ But the women chanted, sweet and low, ‘It’s all the men, the dirty bastards!'”
oops – forgot the use of the * as was ‘Awaiting for Approval, so re-posting with the vital redacting,
Orwell, in Down and out in Paris and London, the song some male scoundrels sing to entertain the tramps of a woman destroyed by a wicked, lieing, deceiver:
“As into the grave they laid her low, The men said, ‘Alas, but life is so,’ But the women chanted, sweet and low, ‘It’s all the men, the dirty bast* rds!'”
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
In my experience, the reason why women seem to suffer more in relation to medical treatment is that they tell everyone about it whereas men don’t often discuss such things.
You’re not wrong. If two mothers overseeing their toddlers in the park find themselves sharing a park bench and happen to fall into conversation, they will often disclose their complete obstetric history to one another on five minutes’ acquaintance, including how many miscarriages they’ve had. It’s extraordinary really. I can’t think of anything comparable that men overshare with other men.
This is even seen in the way parents react to their kids’ pain in the playground. Dads will laugh and toughen them up if they fall or get in a normal play fight. Mums will be terrified, particularly by the latrer
The more I read feminists complain about how miserable their life is, all because of misogyny and patriarchy, I realise why men were pretty much responsible for almost everything that was invented, built or discovered:
Men didn’t have the option of doing nothing to improve their lot but complain endlessly. Nobody cares if a man is being hysterical, dies horribly or suffers pain.
Bit worried about my daughter to be honest, that she might grow up in this environment to be narcissistic, and entitled, ends up with a studies degree + government job, all the while complaining about how nothing is her responsibility and everything is men’s fault.
*White man’s burden. It is an honour; once you see through their vitriol & jealousy.
Last edited 2 years ago by Callum Innes
Gordon Black
2 years ago
Wow … how wrong was I? My hunch has always been that ‘medical’ was a female ‘thing’. That hunch came from 70 years of sporadic contact with GP surgeries, pharmacies and hospitals where the staff, patients, prescriptions, goods and customers were, to my eyes, overwhelmingly female oriented … and all the time it was run by bad men.
Make lives miserable for those actually trying to work?
It is a noble pursuit.
Saul D
2 years ago
How can modern medicine be compared to the ancients in any serious science-based discussion? There is simply zero connection from modern to ancients except for some faux literarium.
Childbirth was one of the earliest applications of anaesthetic from at least 1848 when pain relief was ether/chloroform. Laudanum/opium was used for labour pains from at least 1813 (so two centuries ago). This one is from on “Hysteralia or Irritable Uteris” is from 1833: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM183310230091101 . Obviously in the 1830s genuinely life taking diseases were bigger issues in medical affairs, but it’s a myth to believe medicine ignored women.
David Nebeský
2 years ago
Half an hour ago I read “What’s killing New Orleans?” and I felt it was the worst and least honest article I’ve read on Unherd so far. And then I read this one….
Same for me. I was shaking my head at paragraph after paragraph in Birrell’s deeply biased NO piece (rhetorically, where to begin?), and then I read this one. We men have mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters and female friends. We love and cherish them. Jesus wept. The entire foundation of 3rd/4th wave feminism seems to be a deeply disturbed view of men.
Last edited 2 years ago by Christopher Gelber
Peter LR
2 years ago
My wife didn’t scream with the iud insertion! She thinks it depends on who is doing the procedures and inserting the speculum. Some practitioners, like my daughter, are very caring and very careful – no wonder she is personally requested.
Agree with all above: why these misandrist articles; can’t we learn from one another rather than denouncing?
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago
Well, now that 45% of doctors in the UK are women, are they going to just talk about it, or invent and develop better technology and practices?
The article’s author doesn’t usually suggest the headline, so probably the articulate criticism of how nonsensical it is has led to a bit of a sub-editorial rethink…
Ditto – I wonder how many of these pieces are just attempts at moving up the BBC/Guardian job queue.
Last edited 2 years ago by Ian Barton
Tim Smith
2 years ago
Perhaps the author should read up on Ignaz Semmelweis and his research into puerperal fever.
Callum Innes
2 years ago
‘Women’s pain has never been taken seriously’ Is this a joke?
So why are women protected with greater laws, traditionally viewed as more emotional, and in nearly every society are they not called to fight?
Every person born in society knows women feel pain more and values them more than men. Pull the other.
Last edited 2 years ago by Callum Innes
MJ Reid
2 years ago
1976 :As a young woman with very painful periods I was told that it all would go away if I kept myself pregnant. I was 15 at the time and my mother was horrified that my male GP thought that appropriate. I was finally given meds which caused bleeding stomach ulcers and didn’t take the pain away.
When I was 22, again my GP told me pregnancy was the answer. I had to tell him, no it wasn’t as I had been pregnant, miscarried and still had pain. Was tlod by male GP, if I carried to term it would make a difference!!!!! Same at 27 and 32 years of age.
So yes, women are told to get pregnant to get rid of uterine pain. Over and over again, even when they know this makes no difference.
At 44, went to GP (male) about back pain and was told it was period pain. Nope. Post menopausal so mot that. Must be from your uterus. Maybe a hysterectomy will help! After 3 years of argument and the gym consultant telling my GP it was not my uterus, x rays found my coccyx has disappeared abd has caused nerve damage. I was just a hysterical patient!!
So, Jon Redman, yes, women are treated as though they are “hysterical” and not listened to. The author is correct…
Karl Juhnke
2 years ago
Yes. Sorry. I didn’t finish the first paragraph. You feminists need to stop whining and actually fix all these problems. Seriously, feminism is like a huge female complaining non stop, endlessly badgering all men to fix her problems. After a while you stop listening. There are far better things to do with ones life.
You made that up. That’s not what they’re told.
They’re in fact told that endometriosis causes cysts to form on the uterus. When the uterus sheds its lining during a period, this causes intense pain. Pregnancy relieves the symptoms by stopping periods, but once it resumes, so do the symptoms. Nobody tells women pregnancy is a cure. They are accurately told that pregnancy will reduce the symptoms for a while. As the cysts leave scar tissue into which a fertilised egg cannot implant, endometriosis causes diminished, and eventual loss of, fertility.
With all misandrist propaganda, what is always missing, as here, is any comparative analysis of men’s supposedly preferable situation in the same period. The claim that women’s pain was historically ignored would resonate more were it not for the fact that, for example, men injured in any limb in battle up until about 150 years ago simply had it amputated without anaesthetic. If they survived the operation, and the repeated bleedings that were thought to assist recovery, they were then discharged as unfit for further service. For the most part, these men weren’t volunteers. So in what way were they better off for being men?
As soon as pain relief did become available, it was immediately offered not just to men under the knife, but to women in childbirth.
Over the last 70 or 80 years doctors have been able to dispense four types of pill not known hitherto that remain the most frequently prescribed. These four are contraceptives, anti-depressants, pain killers and antibiotics. Take a wild guess, Helen, at who benefits the most from the existence of these; who takes most of them? Clue: it isn’t men.
You’re in the wrong place if you want to arouse hatred against men in general today for failing to meet your latter-day expectations of them in the past. You might get a reverent hearing in some places, but here, you should expect to be confronted with the facts you haven’t properly considered. If you want a choir to preach to, this isn’t the Guardian.
Aren’t the odious statins right up there as one of the most widely prescribed medications for both men and women? And the beauty for big pharmaceuticals is that you are not supposed to ever stop taking them – you are in it for life. Unless of course you discover that they reduce cholesterol but not mortality and that in reality, mainstream cholesterol tests are pure fiction.
It’s a good point, Lesley, although as statins have (I think) been around only since the 1980s it’s maybe too soon to tell if they’ll remain in the arsenal given the issues that you point out.
I’m personally bewildered why people take statins rather than eating more porridge and avocadoes. I’m guessing that usage will tail off as hipsters age 🙂
Jon, maybe because the body is not functioning as well due to age even though one’s diet is good – porridge is my favourite. I’ve been on them for 15 years (minimum dose) and no seeming problems. I am informed they do help clean the arteries out.
Clean the arteries out? Of what?Something critical to functioning called cholesterol… or Co-Q10? Interestingly Merck must have known for decades that statins reduced Co-Q10 levels, because they patented a statin with Co-Q10 but no-one wisened up to the problem so it was unnecessary to pursue. Heart disease and risk is picked up by inter alia calcium scans, insulin resistance, rate of HDL to triglycerides and a particular dense subtype of LDL. The average doctor and cardiologist just gives you the bog standard test and gives you some statins.
Have the proper screening, drop the porridge, follow a paleo type diet, take magnesium, vitamin D and omega 3, do some exercise etc.
I understand it is not natural: “ Fatty material (or atheroma) starts accumulating in the lining of the artery wall from when we are quite young. The material is ‘foreign’ to our bodies, so causes inflammation.” Having read a bit more the statins don’t clear them but prevent the build up.
I really think you should swat up on the new thinking on the cholesterol myth and then find a doctor who will do the tests that I mentioned. As I said previously, the smoking gun is that statins reduce cholesterol but do not reduce mortality.
If I were a man, having a paperclip “shoved up” my much narrower channel, I would expect morphine at the very least!
Im afraid this is one of the poorest pieces I’ve ever read on this site. The lack of actual evidence is staggering, the one eyed nature of the “argument” is monumental, and the utterly deluded “conclusions” drawn (such as that when the Greeks in effect began to study medicine, the fact that they didn’t immediately understand perfectly all aspects of human biology from year zero, was quite obviously because they were sexist) are actually just frightening.
Seems from the article that men, in the medical field, have devoted very great efforts at solving the medical issues. The writer is angry that previous generations of medical and scientific people were not today’s fully equipped, modern tech laden, and woke. How dare they be old fashioned in the past. I await a CRT article next, showing how the modern is so horrible because the past was utterly wicked.
I wonder what percentage of female pain throughout history has been cured by male-invented technologies
Not enough.
Firstly, I will admit, I didn’t finish this article; the title alone was enough to turn me off. As part of my PhD thesis, I am researching ancient women’s reproductive health. As I search through the Hippocratic Corpus and the works of Celsus, Soranus, and Galen, among others, I am finding none of the so-called misogyny the author claims existed. Instead, I find men invested in women’s health and concerned for their reproductive outcomes. I dare anyone to read Hippocrates’ descriptions of young women dying from post-partum infections and not be moved by their poignancy. These men recognised that the reproducing years were the most dangerous in a women’s life. So much so that Soranus admitted that women who remained virgins all their life usually enjoyed better health.
And of course men were, and are, invested in women’s health. We have mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters and female friends. We love and cherish them. Jesus wept. The entire foundation of 3rd/4th wave feminism seems to be a deeply disturbed view of men.
Not all men.
They seem pretty happy with men from cultures that are genuinely hostile to women or have genuine misogynistic elements.
Try criticising islamic or African American cultures in front of a feminist and you will see
The main question for me is … When will this tedious and divisive “misogyny mining” end ?
Answers on a postcard ….
Orwell, in Down and out in Paris and London, the song some male scoundrels sing to entertain the tramps of a woman destroyed by a wicked, lieing, deceiver:
“As into the grave they laid her low, The men said, ‘Alas, but life is so,’ But the women chanted, sweet and low, ‘It’s all the men, the dirty bastards!'”
oops – forgot the use of the * as was ‘Awaiting for Approval, so re-posting with the vital redacting,
Orwell, in Down and out in Paris and London, the song some male scoundrels sing to entertain the tramps of a woman destroyed by a wicked, lieing, deceiver:
“As into the grave they laid her low, The men said, ‘Alas, but life is so,’ But the women chanted, sweet and low, ‘It’s all the men, the dirty bast* rds!'”
In my experience, the reason why women seem to suffer more in relation to medical treatment is that they tell everyone about it whereas men don’t often discuss such things.
You’re not wrong. If two mothers overseeing their toddlers in the park find themselves sharing a park bench and happen to fall into conversation, they will often disclose their complete obstetric history to one another on five minutes’ acquaintance, including how many miscarriages they’ve had. It’s extraordinary really. I can’t think of anything comparable that men overshare with other men.
This is even seen in the way parents react to their kids’ pain in the playground. Dads will laugh and toughen them up if they fall or get in a normal play fight. Mums will be terrified, particularly by the latrer
Boats?
Thankfully this article wasn’t hysterical at all.
The more I read feminists complain about how miserable their life is, all because of misogyny and patriarchy, I realise why men were pretty much responsible for almost everything that was invented, built or discovered:
Men didn’t have the option of doing nothing to improve their lot but complain endlessly. Nobody cares if a man is being hysterical, dies horribly or suffers pain.
Bit worried about my daughter to be honest, that she might grow up in this environment to be narcissistic, and entitled, ends up with a studies degree + government job, all the while complaining about how nothing is her responsibility and everything is men’s fault.
* White Men’s Fault.
*White man’s burden. It is an honour; once you see through their vitriol & jealousy.
Wow … how wrong was I? My hunch has always been that ‘medical’ was a female ‘thing’. That hunch came from 70 years of sporadic contact with GP surgeries, pharmacies and hospitals where the staff, patients, prescriptions, goods and customers were, to my eyes, overwhelmingly female oriented … and all the time it was run by bad men.
It’s a bit like HR, full of women while at the same time run by patriarchal men conspiring to systematically pay women 30% less
Petition to defund all HR departments? What do they actually do?
Make lives miserable for those actually trying to work?
It is a noble pursuit.
How can modern medicine be compared to the ancients in any serious science-based discussion? There is simply zero connection from modern to ancients except for some faux literarium.
Childbirth was one of the earliest applications of anaesthetic from at least 1848 when pain relief was ether/chloroform. Laudanum/opium was used for labour pains from at least 1813 (so two centuries ago). This one is from on “Hysteralia or Irritable Uteris” is from 1833: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM183310230091101 . Obviously in the 1830s genuinely life taking diseases were bigger issues in medical affairs, but it’s a myth to believe medicine ignored women.
Half an hour ago I read “What’s killing New Orleans?” and I felt it was the worst and least honest article I’ve read on Unherd so far. And then I read this one….
Same for me. I was shaking my head at paragraph after paragraph in Birrell’s deeply biased NO piece (rhetorically, where to begin?), and then I read this one. We men have mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives, daughters and female friends. We love and cherish them. Jesus wept. The entire foundation of 3rd/4th wave feminism seems to be a deeply disturbed view of men.
My wife didn’t scream with the iud insertion! She thinks it depends on who is doing the procedures and inserting the speculum. Some practitioners, like my daughter, are very caring and very careful – no wonder she is personally requested.
Agree with all above: why these misandrist articles; can’t we learn from one another rather than denouncing?
Well, now that 45% of doctors in the UK are women, are they going to just talk about it, or invent and develop better technology and practices?
Talk talk talk
The title this morning was about ‘misogyny‘ and is now changed to be something about ‘hysteria’? … been reading the comments?
The article’s author doesn’t usually suggest the headline, so probably the articulate criticism of how nonsensical it is has led to a bit of a sub-editorial rethink…
Nice observation – I spotted that, but thought I was losing the plot 🙂
Stopped reading at the words Naga Munchetty, though I did notice she doesn’t appear to know what an adverb is.
Ditto – I wonder how many of these pieces are just attempts at moving up the BBC/Guardian job queue.
Perhaps the author should read up on Ignaz Semmelweis and his research into puerperal fever.
‘Women’s pain has never been taken seriously’ Is this a joke?
So why are women protected with greater laws, traditionally viewed as more emotional, and in nearly every society are they not called to fight?
Every person born in society knows women feel pain more and values them more than men. Pull the other.
1976 :As a young woman with very painful periods I was told that it all would go away if I kept myself pregnant. I was 15 at the time and my mother was horrified that my male GP thought that appropriate. I was finally given meds which caused bleeding stomach ulcers and didn’t take the pain away.
When I was 22, again my GP told me pregnancy was the answer. I had to tell him, no it wasn’t as I had been pregnant, miscarried and still had pain. Was tlod by male GP, if I carried to term it would make a difference!!!!! Same at 27 and 32 years of age.
So yes, women are told to get pregnant to get rid of uterine pain. Over and over again, even when they know this makes no difference.
At 44, went to GP (male) about back pain and was told it was period pain. Nope. Post menopausal so mot that. Must be from your uterus. Maybe a hysterectomy will help! After 3 years of argument and the gym consultant telling my GP it was not my uterus, x rays found my coccyx has disappeared abd has caused nerve damage. I was just a hysterical patient!!
So, Jon Redman, yes, women are treated as though they are “hysterical” and not listened to. The author is correct…
Yes. Sorry. I didn’t finish the first paragraph. You feminists need to stop whining and actually fix all these problems. Seriously, feminism is like a huge female complaining non stop, endlessly badgering all men to fix her problems. After a while you stop listening. There are far better things to do with ones life.