On Mother’s Day Sunday, the Times UK published India Knight’s column entitled, “Can we just cool it with this menopause mania?”
Oh my god where to start.
Here’s a quote:
" ... mostly I know women who just accepted the menopause as a minor and temporary inconvenience, joked about it, rolled their eyes at it, refused to be defined by it and carried on with their lives, as women do."
As women do. *Rolls eyes into oblivion*
Yes India, I too know many women for whom meno was a “minor and temporary inconvenience.” I also know many women like me who struggled with a host of debilitating “symptoms” and wrestled with a dismissive, patriarchal system.
What I would have given for a minor and temporary inconvenience.
I’m happy for you and your negligible menopause, India, but the best gyno I was able to finally find told me of her suicidal patients, women staggering into her office unsure if they would survive the day. It's a very real nightmare for many women.
To continue the enraging quote:
“That is not because we are elderly drudges crushed into thinking that complaining is unseemly and nobly keeping silent about our suffering. It is because there is quite a lot of other stuff to be getting on with and the suffering is pretty minor, all things considered.”
Omfg I just can’t with this woman.
YES, there is QUITE A LOT of other stuff! Suffering was not “pretty minor,” India!
Suffering was epic, operatic, sometimes damned near unraveling! And to suggest that your experience should inform those of others is myopic, dismissive, and positively infuriating.
The culture has dismissed the pain of women and the struggles of menopause FOREVER and now, just as a hopeful awareness seems to be growing, we get a headline like this. Written by a woman, of course, carrying the water for the patriarchy.
"I genuinely had no idea I was menopausal," she says and then tells the rest of us to chill out.
BOO. HISS.
She suggests that our “mania” is only serving to frighten young women.
Again, where to start.
Girls and young women will age, as we all do, and they will face their own versions of menopause. No one is trying to scare them, but I believe that if anyone had told me ANYTHING about the possibilities, I would have been better prepared. I believe that having these conversations about our bodies can only help inform our futures.
Yes, many women are fine through menopause, they barely notice a thing. I know some of these women. Hurray for them. But one of the hallmarks of meno is that every experience is different.
Many are not fine!
I was as bewildered as anyone by my train wreck peri/meno. Though I knew almost nothing about it, I expected to sail through menopause because my young life was easy. I had mellow, reliable periods and untroubled pregnancies, followed by a menopause from hell. I would never have predicted it.
It wasn’t my plan to write about menopause. I didn’t want to be the poster child for midlife unraveling. I have written many other things: Essays and poetry, musings on our shared, weird human experience. However, the work that has garnered the most attention and response is my writing about the female, midlife landscape: Menopause, perimenopause, and a woman’s aging in what is still - unbelievably, infuriatingly - a man’s world.
I started writing about it because I couldn’t find enough to read about it. I was desperate for connection and commiseration during the most difficult chapter of my life. It was water in the desert to discover that I wasn’t alone and my experience wasn’t out of the ordinary. I found many, many women online - scared, confused, suffering, anonymous women - and our stories became little life rafts. It’s very hard for some of us - it’s true! - and when we learn that others struggle, too, we are rescued from the edges of madness. The lack of education and conversation around this thing that every woman will experience - in many different ways! - contributes to the madness.
Menopause mania indeed.
We need to talk about it. We need to share our stories, educate the young, stockpile the menopause narratives so there is a store of knowledge, an archive of experience from which we can draw in the tough times. Like the period shaming we’ve all experienced - protect the secret of your menses with your life! - our silence around this perfectly normal and possibly enlightening experience robs us of support and community.
If you’re a woman, or even if you just love a woman, pay attention. There’s a rebirth of sorts in the middle, and birth is fucking hard! We live in these glorious bodies - we should understand them. Even when they’re unraveling.
Especially when they’re unraveling.
Women are jamming the replies to Ms. Knight’s dismissive take. She’s the girl at the slumber party nattering on about her crampless existence while you’re doubled over in the sleeping bag, trying to keep the pain to yourself. She got one thing right, though:
“… one positive consequence of the whole thing is surely that you stop minding what people think, and say what you like.”
I’m mad and I’ve said what I like.
The same women that poo poo other women’s experiences with their bodies forget we were institutionalized for “hysteria,” by men. For being outspoken, assertive and (gasp) honest. India forgets she sounds like the women in the past who placated men by hiding our medical issues, so as not to be “unpleasant.” Does she tell pregnant women it’s just a 9 month dawdle of swelling and then pop! out comes a cherubic babe that our maternal instinct surely will know exactly what to do. Were her periods a teaspoon or two, a day or so of “minor inconvenience?” Does she understand menopause was largely misunderstood for years and years? Does she understand ANYTHING about female medical related issues? That women suffer still with endometriosis, PCOS, severe PMS, etc so wouldn’t it be logical that menopause isn’t going to be one way to go?! It’s on a spectrum from symptom to symptom. Is the female orgasm a “ too much ado about nothing “ as well? Who tightened her whalebone Victorian corset so tight she no longer has enough oxygen to see logic? She must be fun when visiting a friend who is having a bad day hormonally speaking- “Now, stop complaining. MY hormones aren’t acting like THAT. Surely you are just being overdramatic. What a drag you are to hang out with.” Yikes.