Are we doing ourselves any favours with the "I'm hormonal excuse"?

[GruntledOne]

We see only too often on here someone excusing or explaining daft/unreasonable/irrational behaviour on the basis that "I'm pregnant/just. given birth/premenstrual/menstrual/post menstrual, I'm hormonal, I can't help it". Yet there are hordes of women out there handling difficult and/or dangerous jobs day after day with no concessions for the possibility that it could be that time of the month. You don't see female police officers claiming that they don't fancy going on that dawn raid as it's the wrong time of the month, or barristers excusing a bad job because they're pregnant. I've worked with women in a variety of jobs over the years and never been able to tell when they were on their periods unless they mentioned it.

What concerns me about constantly reaching for the hormonal excuse is that it will backfire. It's exactly the excuse employers use for not employing or promoting women, and we are simply giving it credence. So should we maybe all give it a rest?

Of course it wasn't debilitating. It was daft and irrational and caused by hormones. The OP, says that my sis shouldn't blame it on her hormones, but it was her hormones.

The most recent black horse lords one and the JL Xmas ones are designed to make you cry.

I mean Lloyds.

tear fest from beginning to end.

Here's a different way to look at it.

Why not just say "Oh I'm OCD" when you like your desk organized a meticulous and specific way? OCD does seriously affect people, does it not? Everyone wants something done a very specific and organized way, so it must affect everyone, right?

The answer for hormones is the same. Hormones don't affect all, or even most, women to the extent of altering behavior like that. If they do, it's a serious condition.. and yes, you do need to seek help just like you would if you were depressed or bipolar.

Hormones can make you: more irritable, more sensitive, hungry. You know what else can make you more emotional? Hunger, stress, love. All of which are within a range that you have perfect control over. You can be more frustrated than normal and take a deep breath, we've done it plenty of times at work or in public when it wasn't ok to snap. If you can't or more likely won't control yourself, then you have the option of walking away or telling your partner you need a break and taking a long shower.

So, yes. If you have a medical condition, fine. You have my sympathy. But get help, and don't use it as an excuse to continue unpleasant behavior. It's not ok for a schizophrenic person to not take their meds and then go through an episode anymore than it's ok for a "hormonal" person to refuse to take medication and act like an insufferable bitch.

Mental issues are never an excuse to treat other people poorly, nor do they absolve you from personal responsibility to act like a decent person and seek help.

And plenty of people, male and female cry at advertisements.

Not Iron Bru ads.

It is not daft or irrational to cry. It is something that is associated with being female and with femininity but the negative connotation to femininity is a value of the patriarchy that we should not buy into. We know what bottling up emotions does to men -- it is in fact daft and irrational not to cry. Women need to own their emotionality and not try to apologise for it, or feel embarrassed to cry, Dione.

It is beyond daft and irrational for my Dsis (or anyone) to cry over an Iron Bru ad.

Women need to own their emotionality and not try to apologise for it, or feel embarrassed to cry

I could not agree more.
And they should be free to talk about it, not be dismissed and certainly not shamed for doing so or blamed for misogyny.

I am astounded that some women on this thread view female hormones and their impact in such negative terms to the extent that they pathologise what are relatively normal experiences for a significant number if women and expect them to medicate themselves. Yes some women have symptoms so severe that medication is needed, but for most, it is not.

It is beyond daft and irrational to feel angry or frustrated over a lost football game, or to go out into the streets and beat up the rival team's supporters when it's over. Do we think men should sit down together and discuss their hormones when stuff like that happens?

Talking seriously about actual medical problems is one thing, but feeling they should be ashamed, or feeling they owe someone an explanation for any behaviour that hurts nobody and saying their 'hormones' made them act in a way they perceive to be unacceptable in a world that values 'masculine' traits is wrong.

There is a big difference between medical problems and buying into the myth that hormones are women's fatal flaw/ they would be great colleagues, partners and human beings without them / we need to apologise to anyone for behaviour that doesn't hurt anyone but whose only 'problem' is it is something boys and men feel uncomfortable doing.

wow we're now medicalising common female experiences? just wow.

yes women who have common female experiences should all be dosed up on antidepressants and pregnant horse piss.

i'm stunned this shit is coming from women.

having common female experiences is not pathological ffs.

Where did that idea come from?

On one hand, it's often commented on how things that women experience, such as endometriosis, are not sufficiently recognised or taken seriously by the medical profession or funding bodies. On the other hand, there's the accusation that common female experiences are expected to be medicalised.

Surely, the best answer is somewhere in the middle and it's possible to have a conversation without going overboard on accusing others of expecting anti-depressants for crying at a movie.

I've always believed that a bit of female irritation/impatience expressed to males has been part of how natural selection has led to (advanced) society recognising equality. Without complaint women were passive. I'm not saying it takes hormones to make a stand but it's not a bad thing!

If this is due to pmt then so be it

Maybe it's more convenient to blame female hormones for expressions of irritation or annoyance or unhappiness than to take women's complaints seriously and examine unacceptable behaviour on the part of those women complain to/about?

Maybe blaming hormones is the ultimate in arrogance or offensive defence on the part of those who are the focus of women's irritation?

For me (my personal choice to take hrt aside) it's the opposite of medicalising my lived experience - it's about accepting that the normal fluctuations of hormones and associated changes in mood (which a lot of women report) are a normal part of life, to be accepted. I'm not saying that hormones should be used as a get out of jail free card, but to deny them completely seems to me to be pandering to that old trope of "male physiology is the norm against which female physiology must be judged to be deviant".

As for medicalising normal bits of human life, for me accepting that I've just drawn the short straw when it comes to menopausal symptoms is the same as accepting I drew the short straw when it came to childbirth. I'd no more beat myself up over my choice to take "horse piss" (yes, my hrt tablets do indeed contain "conjugate equine oestrogen) in order not to have crippling night flushes and insomnia than I'd beat myself up over my need for a CS.

Hormones can definitely play havoc both mentally and physically - when I was trying to find the right hormonal contraceptive there was one that caused me to have never end morning sickness, and another that left me feeling persecuted, depressed and miserable.

My doctor tried to convince me to "give it a chance" (i.e. keep going for another 6 months) but fortunately I got off those before I fell out with everyone / lost my job. So although I now don't suffer with PMT at all I can fully understand that some women do because hormones are powerful.

Well iam bloody hormonal today i feel wrecked already and its not even 10 am im working this afternoon and im dreading it i feel like some sort of doom has come over me but i will suck it up as usual just in case i upset anybody keep my head down and field the comment of are you ok jay you are really quiet today sigh

I couldn't agree more, OP.

It also bothers me when used as a defence (explicit or implicit) in criminal trials. Woman kills her children, must be mad, send her to hospital and give her counselling; man kills his children, he's evil, send him to prison for life.

These kinds of double standards benefit individual women, but harm womankind. How can we expect equality if we're constantly being treated like recalcitrant children?

MN is full of threads where women are bemoaning men for being sexually incontinent, but what if this is simply a function of having testosterone and an innate urge fuck as many females as possible? Isn't that comparable?

The usual double-standards, unfortunately.

Lurcio, surely, it's male sexuality that's pathologised and problematised in our culture. This may be a recent thing, but it's young men's behaviour that's being redefined as aberrant, not young women's.

Sexual incontinence is only the tip of the iceberg where male hormones are concerned.

There is aggression too, and history bears frequent testimony to that. This is simply called history, not 'male hormones running amok'. I agree with Lurcio's comment wrt tropes: "male physiology is the norm against which female physiology must be judged to be deviant".

Young men's behaviour has always been seen as aberrant, especially the behaviour of young men of the lowest classes and certain races that were/are considered inferior. Hence military discipline, the criminal code (which used to be far more savage than it is now), prisons, convict ships, the development of the idea that boys will be boys, and so on. It is not only women who have judged the behaviour of other men aberrant. For the most part, it was privileged men who have dictated how the justice system worked and works, or run the armed forces, etc.

The defence in criminal trials of women accused of killing their children is usually post partum psychosis or severe post partum depression, not hormones. This is a psychiatric diagnosis applied to affected individuals who have given birth.

I agree, if we want to be taken seriously.
Men can be 'hormonal' too but you would never hear one saying it!!
And this 'baby brain' crap!

We are all constantly hormonal - hormones govern our moods, our sleep, growth, hunger, everything. If you didn't feel the effects of hormones you would be dead.

Yet the word 'hormonal' only ever seems to be used negatively to refer to women or teenagers.

Rugby commentators could say 'they really got stuck in and fought hard in the final half - the team obviously felt very hormonal'

oh fgs they don't need to say it lisbeth - the whole society works round it. rape isn't punished severely even when proven and sexual aggression or abuse gets trivialised to terms like 'sexual incontinence' rather than seen as the violence and criminality it is. beating your wife is seen as an 'anger management' problem for men rather than, again, the violence and criminality it is.

men don't have to say 'i'm hormonal' - society already works round and excuses their behaviour.

by the way i wasn't saying there shouldn't be medical treatment for menopause etc i was just saying women shouldn't be forced to see their hormonal events and phases as medically pathological and they shouldn't be expected to take medications if they don't want to.