Ds, fund raising and the yummy mummy

[Isthiscorrect]

Ok so this is an AIBU on behalf of DS.

He is a third year student in central London. He is fund raising for Breast a Cancer Now. Yesterday he was at a central London tube station with a fund raising bucket, dressed in a charity t shirt, and underneath the t shirt and pink feather boa he was wearing a denim shirt and chinos.

Over the course of the two hours he raised over £200. I'm pleased, he is pleased and the charity is pleased. So why did the yummy mummy abuse him with foul language and end with telling him to get a job?

He is genuinely asking the question given no one else at all was quite so rude. He isnt bothered by the langauge, he isnt a precious snowflake, he genuinely would like suggestions as to why she might have been so rude. He fund raises regularly and has never been abused like this. Thanks in advance.

TheOnlyLiving A woman would have to be wilfully ignorant and live under a rock not to be aware of Breast Cancer

So would a man.

It's not false gendering when it is almost exclusively a female disease. Of course the rare cases of men having it should also be dealt with properly, but you can't seriously expect breast cancer campaigns to be targeted at men as much as women? that is a ridiculous notion and rather insulting to women.

Your DH didn't have breast cancer, and didn't go to a doctor for his own reasons, what on earth has any of that got to do with BC campaigns?

Because no good deed goes unpunished.
Well done to him, BTW. He's a .

midnite very sorry you went through that.

I experienced very similar: "don't you care about dying children" on the way back from seeing a counsellor after my DS died

TheOnlyLiving If even GPs don't realise that men get Breast Cancer too then something is awry with attitudes. What is wrong with the campaigns is that surrounding the disease with all this pink candy floss fosters those attitudes as well as, as I have said pissing off women who do get Breast Cancer but don't subscribe to that version of femininity. The pink and fluffy branding is more for the benefit of those who view Cancer with horror and fear and seek coping mechanisms (and those who want to cash in on such a successful brand) than the women, and men, who have to cope with that horror and fear. The campaigns also skew attention away from other Cancers, so that you end up with campaigns that headline "I wish I had Breast Cancer" as if it is somehow a good Cancer to have. Tell that to the 30%of women who go on to develop secondary disease and die from it.

There is only one charity devoted to secondary breast cancer and campaigns to raise awareness of the way in which it is short changed in terms of research and treatments www.secondhope.co.uk/what-we-do

I quite like Aibu being reduced to the level of "why do some people behave unreasonably at tube stations in London?".

I'm looking forward to:

"Why do very angry people travel on buses?"

And maybe some more general theme weeks would be good?

"why are we here?" for existentialist week

"Why god, why???!! " for Angry Ross from Friends week.

Of course GP's know that men get breast cancer. However they know its very unlikely, and a man presenting with a lump is not very likely to have breast cancer.
Which exactly mirrors your experience, so you should know that.

If you have a problem with the pink and fluffiness of it all that is fine, btu it is an entirely different thing to your original inane point that BC is not a disease of women. It is.

In the first few days after a close friend died from pancreatic cancer, I'd have bollocked any charity collector at all who shook a bucket at me because they weren't collecting for research into that. You never see collections for that.

Not fair or reasonable but I would have.

TheOnlyLiving My original "inane"

women tend to have more breast tissue than men, ergo they have more breast cells, ergo if they have the genetics for breast cells going wrong, it's more likely to actually happen if you're female.

Not arguing that it does not happen more to women, just that men do have breast tissue, therefore they do get breast cancer and if they find a lump, which also happens more often to women, the fact there are fewer men presenting with lumps is no reason not to refer it for the same investigation with the same promptness. There is, as with women, still the small chance it will prove nasty. I find this need for female ownership of a shitty life threatening, indeed killer, disease arising from a few cells we all have going rogue a bit odd.

I would add that GPs are not just uninformed in terms of men getting breast cancer. I have three friends who were fobbed off when they presented with lumps because they were breastfeeding, and their risk as young women deemed low. As a result their diagnosis came when the Cancer had already spread into multiple lymph nodes. I suppose the argument might go that breast cancer in women under 40 is rare and most lumps in breast feeding women are connected to milk production. The reality is that 60% of all breast cancer in women under 40 is diagnosed in connection with Breast feeding.

All lumps are potentially life threatening and should be checked out.

When I went to the GP with my lump she turned white and literally started to shake and just kept muttering how terrible it was that it was so common, she moved heaven and earth to get me into the Breast Clinic at the Marsden that afternoon. I found her overeaction disturbing but the reason I learnt later when I met one of my friends was that she had been told that day that having fobbed my friend off for two months, her mastectomy and mode clearance had shown that it had spread to 9 lymph nodes. She was 33 and her son was four months....

I don't think she was a bad GP, she clearly cared, but there needs to be more awareness amongst GPS that it happens to men, and it happens to young breastfeeding mothers alike.

Tinsel women tend to have more breast tissue than men, ergo they have more breast cells, ergo if they have the genetics for breast cells going wrong, it's more likely to actually happen if you're female. You are aware of that other unbalance in public perception in relation to Breast Cancer? That only 5% of risk factors are known, and that genes account for only 4% of that? 1% is down to those lifestyle factors so beloved of the campaigns and Daily Mail and victim blamers . Ergo 95% of risk is unknown, actually more for men with breast cancer since it is an unknown in research terms, they assume the same applies as for women. Of course genes are a major suspect but so are environmental factors, especially the hormonal load that is seeing an increase in all hormonal cancers in both men (prostate, testicular) and women. It is likely the answer is in a comp,ex interplay of factors. My Oncologist thinks that the increase in hormonal factors, both in terms of drugs and the environment, is a link on a par with smoking and lung cancer but the whole pink fog tends to get in the way of understanding a common issue that is inconvenient for governments and corporate organisations. It is much easier to take refuge in pink tutus isn't it?

1. I'm not a fan of the pink tutu thing
2. What ever the risk factors for a type of cell getting cancer or not, you have to in the first place have that type of cell . And the more cells of that type you have, the more likely any factors relating to that sort of cell going wrong are going to present as cancer!

No idea.

Surprisingly enough women who give birth are not a homogenous herd who can answer questions on behalf of each other. Perhaps she's a total prick or perhaps your son hasn't told you the full story. Who knows. But I do we wont be able to say.

Tinsel I have never argued that women do not have more breast tissue, just that it is not just women that have it, and that the response when it shows signs of going rogue should be the same.....