The Endo Warriors
Going to War with the Medical Establishment
In today's featured essay, Abigail Anthony profiles courageous women who have faced the physical pain of endometriosis as well as battles against the medical establishment's misinformation, mistreatment, and misdiagnosis.
These "Endo Warriors" are "dedicated to improving the understanding and treatment of endometriosis" in a society that often treats women's reproductive capacity as a disease in itself.
Fairer Disputations
The Endo Warriors
ABIGAIL ANTHONY
The warriors are aware that the widespread mistreatment of endometriosis is not unique. Rather, it emerges from a much larger problem: contraceptive medication is seen not only as a cure for endometriosis, but for menstruation entirely. The liberal prescription of birth control and the normalization of period pain leaves women wondering how much pain is abnormal, doubting themselves, and deterring appropriate care.
Anna Person would pass out when menstruating, resulting in trips to the ER, where she was given Motrin. She visited eight different OBGYNS—seven of whom were female—from her first period at age 13 to age 18. “Their only solution was birth control,” Anna said. "They always said, ‘that’s just how it is, that’s how periods are, that’s just what we have to deal with as women, it’s normal.’”
This Week's Links:
First, featured author Helen Joyce proudly proclaims her contrarianism. A healthy diversity requires "interrogating yourself about what you really think and doing your best to articulate it, not once, but again and again."
The Critic
Happy to Be a Heretic
HELEN JOYCE
And then there’s my own heresy, usually known as “gender-critical feminism”, though I prefer sex-realism: that humans come in two immutable sexes. Most people know it to be true — except for those in Westminster and Whitehall; campuses and newsrooms; HR departments and boardrooms. That makes it the quintessential heresy: so obvious that most people don’t even question it, but very risky to state.
At Nuclear Meltdown, Jim Dalrymple III explores the trade-offs we inevitably make as we pass through life. If we wish for a "village" to support us, we can't live as committed individualists.
Nuclear Meltdown
JIM DALRYMPLE III
There’s nothing wrong with moving away. Plenty of people — myself included — have made that choice because it’s the most rational thing to do in a particular moment. But The Atlantic piece essentially argued that there was no trade-off at all in such a choice. You can move away and keep your friend group intact. You can have it all. What a reassuring message!
Maybe that does work for some people, but it cuts against everything I’ve read about friendships, and everything I’ve experienced first-hand. I think it’s more likely that in a lot of cases you can choose to invest in the village you have, or you can sacrifice it to get something else.
Finally, Kay Hymowitz explores implications of a study on mental health in adolescent girls. What can we learn about girls in the Western world by looking at how their happiness measures in comparison with girls in more traditional cultures?
Institute for Family Studies
What's the Matter With Girls?
KAY HYMOWITZ
Girls in more traditional societies are less depressed than their more modern counterparts precisely because they have limited options. What modern Westerners might see as oppressive gender roles and marriage norms, people in less liberal societies might experience as clarity. An established script where there are fewer choices might well make puberty less of an existential predicament. This is not a defense of a life of barefoot pregnancy, nor is it an argument that women need to give up their fought-for freedom from strict gender roles. But it is an argument for recognizing that whatever its benefits—and there are many—growing up in a society that can only answer the big questions of adult life with “it’s all up to you” can be more troubling than freeing for a 12-year-old. Their choices are many and fluid, and insofar as any norms do exist, they are loose and fungible. What’s a girl to make of her life?
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