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"There is a fraught history of centuries of women's bodies mocked, minimized, disparaged, ignored"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/women-medical-experiences-poor-care_n_62b36883e4b0cf43c85f446e?ncid=APPLENEWS00001. . .
I’ve since spoken to more than 40 women about my experience, and listening to their stories, I’ve discovered that I’m not alone in shortchanging myself regarding a medical decision. I’ve learned that there are many ways women can inadvertently undermine themselves when it comes to their health.
. . .
These gendered attitudes don’t develop in a vacuum. There is a fraught history of centuries of women’s bodies mocked, minimized, disparaged, or even ignored.
In Ancient Greece, many believed that gynecological disorders made women’s bodies inherently pathological. Aristotle thought of women as “mutilated males,” as Caroline Criado Perez explains in her 2021 book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.”
The “hysteria” diagnosis in the Victorian age amounted to a dismissal of many ailments. In “Complaints & Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness,” authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English explain that during this time, men subjected their wives to oophorectomies (removal of the ovaries) to “tame their unruly behavior.” After surgery, they were returned to their husbands, “tractable, “orderly” and “industrious.”
More than three centuries later, in 1968, Dr. Robert Wilson, a prominent commentator on menopause, wrote in “Feminine Forever,” “the unpalatable truth must be faced that all postmenopausal women are castrates... No woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay.”
And while the specifics today are more subtle than they were in the past, the tradition of dismissiveness toward women hasn’t elapsed completely.
I’ve since spoken to more than 40 women about my experience, and listening to their stories, I’ve discovered that I’m not alone in shortchanging myself regarding a medical decision. I’ve learned that there are many ways women can inadvertently undermine themselves when it comes to their health.
. . .
These gendered attitudes don’t develop in a vacuum. There is a fraught history of centuries of women’s bodies mocked, minimized, disparaged, or even ignored.
In Ancient Greece, many believed that gynecological disorders made women’s bodies inherently pathological. Aristotle thought of women as “mutilated males,” as Caroline Criado Perez explains in her 2021 book “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.”
The “hysteria” diagnosis in the Victorian age amounted to a dismissal of many ailments. In “Complaints & Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness,” authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English explain that during this time, men subjected their wives to oophorectomies (removal of the ovaries) to “tame their unruly behavior.” After surgery, they were returned to their husbands, “tractable, “orderly” and “industrious.”
More than three centuries later, in 1968, Dr. Robert Wilson, a prominent commentator on menopause, wrote in “Feminine Forever,” “the unpalatable truth must be faced that all postmenopausal women are castrates... No woman can be sure of escaping the horror of this living decay.”
And while the specifics today are more subtle than they were in the past, the tradition of dismissiveness toward women hasn’t elapsed completely.
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
From "Ramblin' Rose" in 1991. Laura Dern gives an amazing performance, but this scene with Diane Ladd and Robert Duvall is my favorite.
The men in the room consider Rose a "near nymphomaniac" who needs to be "tamed". 