Smear tests to subordinate women

[sakura]

I have been looking at the recent threads about compulsory smear tests in Poland, and I have to say, it doesn'T surprise me that they're compulsory in some countries. THis is a natural, inevitable, progression from the actual purpose of screening.

[Oh, did you think smear tests were about saving women's lives?!?!]

wildkittydear made an excellent point (I hope she doesn't mind me quoting her}
"It is shocking that Poland is thinking of making very personal medical examinations for women compulsory. I personally am very offended by the way only breast and cervical cancer are championed as the only killers of women and I know that is an exaggeration!! but do you get my drift? Some illnesses get priority in the media and I am not convinced there is always a benign reason for this."

Yes, Womanhood is the "problem" to be cured. Women's organs that are seen as faulty-- because men don't have them. Not male = pathology.

The truth is that women's bodies are much, much healthier than men's because we have two Xs in our chromozomal make up and each X contains lots of life-preserving genes, whereas the Y is slightly pitiful by comparison.
This is why women live longer and why boys are more like to be born with chromozomal abnormalities or die when they get sick. Girls tend to recover.
The extra X gives women the biological upper hand.

Men don't really know how to look after their bodies either, in a general sense (healthy diet etc)

Considering this, it's really important to question why the medical fraternity is obsessed with getting women to their tests and not men. Men are more likely to contract all sorts of diseases and cancers, and much earlier in their life than women too.

But men are trusted to look after their own bodies and decide for themselves whether they want to be screened or not. There is no goverment promoted mass-screening programme of testicular cancer, for example. BEcause testicles belong to men, and are therefore regarded as "healthy until proven otherwize"Men are not frightened, coerced or cajolled into being screened because there is no obsession with controlling them.

THe history of medicine teaches us that women, and by default their sex specific organs, are regarded as defective and pathalogical. (when if any sex is defective, it is the male sex due to the Y, which renders them biologicaly more vulnerable to disease in a number of ways)

Greer has covered this in detail in The Whole Woman. She has examined the evidence which shows that cervical screening has done nothing to save women's lives.
Women are still dying from cervical cancer. Although the rate of cervical cancer has been dropping , that is not because of screening, but because because it was actually dropping naturally before mass screening was invented, and continues to drop at the same rate.

Often mistakes are made in the laboratories, and there have been cases of women who actually had healthy cervixes being treated for cancer, and women who had cancer were missed, and ended up dying.

As I said, the point is not to actually save women's lives, but to get women to comply, to STFU and to be penetrated by gynelogical instruments.I don'T get screened, because I've looked at the statistics and found that, despite screening, women are still dying of cervical cancer so the margin for human error in the tests is too great.

Which brings me to another important question. WTF are men doing in gynecology anyway? I mean, WhyTF are they even there? In the room? Sticking bits of metal into women? Researching vaginas, when it's not their place to do so? THe funding should go to female scientists and doctors [but that's for another thread]

I haven't had a smear test for over ten years. WHen I had my first at 18 the results came back telling me I needed to go for a re-test for possible cancerous cells. I went back, had another check, the second time it came back clear (after me scaring myself to death). After doing research I learned that if you have had sperm or even your period (if you'd just finished it) can interfere with the findings, making it look as though there may be cancerous cells when there aren't.

WHat a joke. And the joke's on women. And I haven't been back since.

Can you please link me to a research that disputes the figures I posted up thread, please? I.e. have you actually come across a study that says that increased cervical screening rates had no positive influence on the rates of cervical cancer/ death rate from this cancer.

I very much would like to see it.

And obviously, there will be mistakes done, but how many mistakes versus how many cervical abnormalities correctly diagnosed?

Misandry:?Misandry is hatred (or contempt) of men or boys. Misandry comes from Greek misos (μῖσος, "hatred") and anēr, andros (ἀνήρ, gen. ἀνδρός; "man"). It is parallel to misogyny?the hatred of women or girls.

Your redefinition as a mere reaction seems a bit subservient to me, TBH.

Oh for heaven's sake. Just to take issue with one of the many points:

Yes, women should have the right to opt to be seen by female medical professionals, if that is their preference. But let's not pretend that all female HCPs are angels of sweetness and light. Some are lovely. But there are also female drs and nurses who take smears pretty much in the manner of a butcher manhandling a carcass. Conversely, there are male drs who are gentle, respectful and supportive.

What a load of cock.

Sorry, the greek codes don't cut and paste, ignore them.

Sakura, you are surely bright enough to realise that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Some women have been diagnosed of cancers they in fact did not have, and some women are not diagnosed with cancers they do have. Some people smoke like chimneys and die happily of old age at 96 while others never smoke and die young of lung cancer. Some people take an interesting cocktail of alcohol and drugs and drive without incident up the M1. But overall smoking is likely to damage the health of smokers, overall driving when high on drink and drugs is not safe for you or other road users, and overall smear tests enable a lot of cases of cervical cancer to be identified early and treated, with a resultant drop in death rates (not a drop to zero, no).

This is what happens when feminism is taken to far and I consider myself to be a feminsit. what the bloody hell is wrong with getting a smear test. the reason why breast cancer and cervical cancer have such media presence is just because it does kill women. men get prostate cancer. my mum just died from mouth cancer and after watching a horrible, slow decline, i am up for promoting any cancer screening in men and women.

On (the very recent origins of ) misandry from ADonis Mirror

While men have long enjoyed attacking ungrateful women as ?man haters,? the epithet seems more than a little bit silly when transposed onto the printed page?something demanded by the burgeoning market for so-called Men?s Studies materials. It certainly lacks the gravitas required to reflect the widespread injury and social disadvantages that many white males believe they endure on a daily basis. Thus a more scientific-sounding term was needed for ?the hatred of men? and antifeminists crafted one out of their own perverted imagination of antiquity: misandry.

Cobbled together from two generally recognizable Greek components, ?misandry? has the appearance of consequence and refinement. Words with such roots are privileged in our society. They are used by doctors and lawyers, not out of necessity, but as a matter of status: they can view their own image in that mirror of history, standing tall with the great men of the ages. The capital letters we afford to Classical Civilization is an artifact of both racism and sexism. That very same authority, unearned as it is, was harnessed in order to fashion the word misandry. As it is an unfamiliar term to most who encounter it, many automatically assume that it has sound intellectual underpinnings given our society?s expectations for such words and the biases that surround them. This is no accident.

Furthermore, the archaic roots misrepresent misandry?s status as a new word, a neologism: antifeminists want nothing more than to mislead the public into thinking the word has always existed. With the seed of that deception planted, they can then blame its esoteric status on a feminist conspiracy that quietly removed misandry from our vernacular, just as reports of abusive women and battered men are allegedly censored by the agents of Political Correctness. This tactic has actually met with a good measure of success: many who encounter ?misandry? for the first time are given cause to wonder why they have never before heard a word that is made to seem ?obvious? in nature by its proponents. By adding a veneer of Pentelic marble to ?man hater,? these men are able to act as if ?misandry? were an unearthed treasure waiting to be found and not a newly minted piece of plastic.

The word and its variations (misandric, misandrist, et. al) were first used only by the most militant of antifeminists, where even the most published and professional remained outliers in male society. One early adopter of ?misandry? was Warren Farrell, a man who once wrote on the benefits of incest for Penthouse magazine. Yet its constant repetition over the past decade has turned it from the battle-cry of the pathetic to a banal trivia question. It serves as the answer to ?what is the opposite of misogyny,? a rhetorical question often posed to the editors of online-dictionaries by readers, all seemingly possessed of unlimited quantities of mock-innocence. Misandry?s less combustible presentation has allowed it to surge ahead of competing antifeminist devices (?androphobia?) that have since fallen by the wayside.

This transformation has framed the term in a ?common sense? approach that many feminists, especially young ones, have difficulty discounting: if the word misogyny exists, logically and mathematically, there must be another side of that coin to restore balance. This tact has the advantage of highlighting ?rationality? as a masculine attribute. Those who refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of misandry, both as a word and as a sociological fact, are portrayed as effeminate and thus bereft of logic, no matter how detailed and thought-out their arguments might be. Feminists who employ the so-called ?soft sciences? of history and sociology in their rebuttals are easily disregarded by men who invoke ?hard science? on their own behalf: the Coin Defense involves mathematics, of a perverse kind, and is thus deemed ?objective? even though it is nothing of the sort.

As the Coin Defense is misandry?s best chance at achieving some measure of linguistic legitimacy, at least in the popular imagination, it has been necessary for men to pave over a number of inconsistencies. The word ?misanthropy? proved to be the largest stumbling block. As it was also a likely candidate for the ?opposite of misogyny,? men eagerly rewrote its definition, not just in our own language but in Ancient Greek as well. If misanthropy now means the ?hatred of people or humanity? and is unequivocally gender-neutral, it is a very recent innovation.

While the definition of misanthropy in dictionaries might have been changed from the hatred of ?mankind,? which has fallen out of favor due to the efforts of feminists, the general and historic sense of exactly who a misanthrope is has not changed one iota. From the dawn of time, nearly every person accused of being a misanthrope, or honored for it as an antihero, has been a male; as were those doing the accusing and honoring for that matter. It takes resources and power to publish nihilistic poetry or philosophy, to act in socially unacceptable ways without dire consequences, or to even own the property needed to play the part of the angry man on the hill. White women and people of color were historically excluded from the very possibility of being misanthropists in English speaking societies, whether by convention or by force of law.

Even after such strictures had begun to weaken, the label misanthropist still remained unattainable by white women and people of color as those in power naturally assumed that their dissatisfaction was aimed at them, rather than at humanity in general. It takes a fair amount of privilege to make the outlandish claim that one ?hates everyone equally,? a common defense made on behalf of both racists and sexists. It takes even more privilege to have others accept that claim at face value. Similarly, notable misanthropists throughout the ages had no shortages of wives, mistresses, servants, and slaves at their disposal: they achieved their notorious reputations not by their behavior towards their inferiors but towards those who mattered, affluent male society and the values it holds in esteem. It is apparent that misanthropy still means the hatred of mankind and not of humanity.

"Misandry OTOH, is a woman' reaction to the way women are treated as a class, by men."

No. This is absolute nonsense.

I'm actually really sad about this thread TBH. I think it plays right into the hands of those who accuse feminists of being reactionary man hating whack jobs.

So because people still die of cervical cancer, smear tests are pointless?

People still die in car crashes, does that make seatbelts useless?

People still die of infections - are all antibiotics useless?

You are not making any kind of coherent argument.

I don't this is femimism though! So therefore not "feminism taken too far". to me, feminism is recognising an inequality/injustice and asserting the right to equality/justice.

I ususally agree with Sakura's posts on feminism. This one has left me a bit confused but I think it's a case of looking for meanings in things rather than 'feminism taken too far'.

It's so sad that so many young women refuse to identify with feminism. And one major reason are posts like this.

Sakura, get a grip.

I agree with Reality.

you've just done all the reasonable and sane members of this community (who have spent the last few days defending themselves from accusations of misandry/extremism/talking bollocks) a HUGE disservice.

I'm an infrequent visitor to this board but I wouldn't take this as a feminist view. To me this is clearly about personal ishoos with smear tests.

another must-read is Barbara Ehrenreich's SMile or Die, which is all about the misogyny and misinformation that Breast cancer sufferers are forced to navigate. Men who fall sick are not patronized the way that women are.

Questions need to be asked about the way entire cultures regard women's bodies, compared to how they see men's.

Molly, if this is just about personal issues with smear tests, why is it that one of today's most prominent feminists, Germaine Greer, has written extensively on this subject.

As I said, thank you for crediting me with inventing this theory myself.... but my brains actually not that big!

Butlinsbabe

Young women don't identify with feminism because men don't like feminism, and because feminists are trashed in the media ( unless the "feminists" in question don't actual do anything that works against men's interests. So-called feminists who promote the sex-industry get enormous platforms in popular culture. Of course they do! THey'Re working in men's interests! For free!)

Sakura

I'm asking again for a link to studies showing that increased cervical screening has not decreased rates/deaths from cervical cancer in the last few decades.

I am not interested in what Germaine Greer has to say on the subject, but would rather like to see some solid research saying that smear tests are totally useless.

Thank you.

Anyway, why are people dissing young women? Not all of them fall for the feminists are man-haters trope. Some of them can, actually, see that society does wrong by women, and something needs to be done

From a quick google, it looks like Poland may do compulsory screening for various ungendered conditions too.

So, might this issue really be an artefact of a historically authoritarian regime trying to improve public health? No some sinister anti-women plot...

winny

Honestly, I can't be arsed hunting it down, but obviously Greer has referenced all the studies in book.
Feel free to read it.

OK - really which is worse. The thought that politicians (i.e. people in power) are thinking of bringing in compulsory cervical screening in an EU country (plus other restrictions to abortions) - and in the US repeated moves to try to make abortion as difficult as possible/ban it

or

Sakura's post???

So regardless of what you think of the post - which is an opinion from someone not in power . Please let's concentrate on what losing control over our bodies means for women as a group.

Surely others have read about the biological "fragility" of the Y chromosome? There is a lot of evidence for this. Mentioned all over the place - Dawkins etc.

The opinion that men often don't take care of their health - a generalisation for use - but probably applicable in some sectors of men (beer drinking/fatty foods = heart attacks etc).

Has anyone on this thread read anything about the medicalisation of birth/ "women's problems". See info on Hysteria.

IMO it's completely valid for us to look at why men are gynocologists. This doesn't mean that Sakura saying this will lead to instant unemployment for all male gynocologists. What's shocking is that it took so long for women to be allowed to practice medicine and that opportunities for career breaks and part time working at senior levels are difficult to manage in a medical career.

Really would it be so strange if in the future we got to a point where gynocology was 100% a female discipline and sure anything penis/testicles related was treated by male doctors? The benefits to women as a group could be amazing and far out weigh the disbenefits of future males who desire a glittering career in this area.

I have seen discussions that breast screening has no impact on outcomes etc.

Personally I do go for smear tests but seriously please everyone on this thread - imagine that YOU DO NOT WANT A SMEAR - but YOU ARE FORCED TO HAVE ONE.

I don't think that Sakura is trying to persuade us not to have smear tests - she is alerting us to possible problems with them whilst pointing out whether we have control over our own bodies or not is a key feminist issue. (Have I got that right Sakura?)

Goes off to buy copy of the whole women.

Grimma, don'T get your point. THe U.K has a long history of compulsory gynelogical screening for women.

Contageous Diseases Act

Ah, Forkful, thank you. The voice of reason.