3 ms·
> “We’ve been told that only through the grace of modern medicine—vaccines, surgery, antibiotics—are women are living long enough to experience menopause,” says
by car_analogy 5y ago
> “We’ve been told that only through the grace of modern medicine—vaccines, surgery, antibiotics—are women are living long enough to experience menopause,” says gynecologist and obstetrician Jen Gunter, author of The Menopause Manifesto.
I'm sorry, but I simply do not believe that "we've been told that". This was said in ~1980, when people still living remembered a time before widespread vaccines and antibiotics, and there was not a disproportionate number of men reaching old age compared to women. On what possible basis could this misperception have formed? I have never in my entire life heard that anyone used to believe women would die before reaching menopause without modern medicine, while men can reach past that age just fine.
Is there a wealth of books from the time period, where grandmothers are conspicuously absent? Is there any evidence to this claim at all?
- dekhn 5y agoThe misperception probably came about when the mean age of death increased dramatically due to the enormous drop in mortality. Because far fewer young people were dying, the mean age of death increased. But plenty of people lived into their 70s, and many lived into their 50s.
- car_analogy 5y agoPossible, but that affected both sexes about equally, so using it as some kind of indicator of sexism is very dishonest.
- dekhn 5y agoWell... a major reason for death during childbirth or early years was death of the mother during childbirth, so I suppose it's not completely unrelated.