[ This is women-only community. If you do not identify as a woman, please do not comment. Thank you. ]
It absolutely upsets me is that when I bring up women's issues, I often get met with "Men experience that, too!", and that takes away from the attention an issue needs.
This is not me playing to win the "victim olympics", I'm just saying that men really need to listen and realize how exactly women are being treated in these scenarios and why they feel it needs to be brought to attention.
Example: medical discrimination / not having your health being taken seriously as a woman. Do men experience it? Sure! But men absolutely DO NOT experience this in the same way/volume that women do.
Did you know that many clinics will not allow you to get a hysterectomy or your tubed tied without the permission of your spouse? If you are single, they may refuse altogether because "what if your partner wants kids someday?" A HYPOTHETICAL MAN HAS MORE POWER OVER YOUR BODY THAN YOU DO!!!!
Pain being dismissed as "hysterics". Being constantly told that any medical symptoms you are experiencing are a result of """anxiety""". Dismissive of painful menstruation and/or pregnancy, because "woman have been doing this for thousands of years!" Refusing autism diagnosis because "it's not typically a girl thing".. I could go on.
This is not limited to experiences within the medical field. It's.... loooots of things.
Like, fuck.. it's okay to not understand the experience of others. It's like when I hear folks say "Everyone is a little bit OCD! Everyone experiences that sometimes!" like...... no??? Absolutely fucking not, you have no idea what OCD is like, and you're being an insensitive idiot by saying "eVeRyOnEs A lITtLe BiT—" NO THEY'RE FUCKING NOT!
Men face their own issues. Sometimes men's & women's issues overlap. Sometimes there's a little overlap, but women face a much greater degree of fuckery over the issue than men do, and vice versa. That's okay. Just don't invalidate that it may be a larger issue for women than it may be for men.
That's all.
It's not always easy in a text-based exchange, so forgive me if I go on too long.
Your point is well made; there are plenty of people out there who are always "clapping back" with "b-b-but ...!" On the other hand, there are also people whose opinion is that women always have it worse than men, full stop. Neither of those positions is an informed one.
To take your example about clinics requiring permission from your spouse if you want to have a medical procedure to prevent pregnancy -- bear with me, please -- men absolutely do experience the same when seeking vasectomies. I am quite certain that this specific issue is more common when the patient is a woman, and it is utter bullshit no matter who the patient is. I mention it, though, because it's a problem that affects both women and men, and we should all be pulling together to solve it for all of us.
We should all be in favor of recognizing and solving problems for everyone, even if there are a lot of problems which affect various demographics to greater or lesser degrees, whether those problems affect us directly or not.
Both men & women have valid complaints to their respective issues.
With health, though, the needs of a women hold much more urgency, as they are the ones accommodating a pregnancy!
If pregnancy is not something a woman wants to go through, it is imperative to understand that a women's reproductive organs have a chance of permanently cripping or killing them.
Polyps / scar tissue can migrate from a uterus to the surrounding organs. Periods can be downright debilitating. Hormones can fuck you right you. And pregnancy?? That alone can kill a woman.
That's why I'm saying this:
It's not that women's issues are "more important" than men's issue — it's that the consequences of ignoring women's issue, very much so their health issues, can often lead to a much more grim outcome.
My experience was worse than yours. I didn't mention it before, because anecdotes are not data. I'm not suggesting that women (on this issue) don't have more negative experiences than men, statistically, on the whole. I'm not suggesting anything about "who has it worse." Nobody should receive that kind of roadblock to an elective surgery of their personal choice.
Saying "But men ...," or saying "This is a women's issue - and by extension, not a men's issue," are both dividing a group of people with the exact same interest into opposing groups, who arguably appear more motivated to fight against each other instead of fight for each other.
you have worded this so well and it’s one of the reasons I have begun to mildly hate posts like this. even if it’s not intended, it reads as if it is creating a divide between people having it worse, when really it should be about solving these issues for everyone IMO.
I spent a very long time on each of these comments, because I know this is a super hot button topic for a lot of people. Which is part of the problem, evidence of that problem, something like that. Don’t crucify me on this one, I just woke up.
Hey Nougat mate! We're a women's only community so please don't comment again 😊
There it is.
Segregation doesn't help anyone; neither the ones being segregated away, nor the ones doing the segregating. It is always wrong.
Thanks Nougat, sadly had to ban you for breaking the rules. All the best 💖
I'm going to block you and your community personally, because if there's one thing I hate more than the patriarchy it's gatekeepers. You make your own world smaller and our movement less effective by attacking our own like this.
No problem, thanks and all the best ☺️
Holy duck
My sister had a c-section for her second kid. Before she had it, she asked the doctor to tie her tubes while he was already elbow deep. He said sure. It wasn't much to go through. Of course, this was almost 30 years ago and women's rights have since been eroded more than a little in the US. I got a vascectomy after my first kid. I made an appointment to get it done, I showed up, the doctor was like,"You sure about this?" I said,"Yep", and my balls were shaved, and my tubes were tied. Both were about as difficult as it should be.