The thing is you can put a different interpretation on your last statment macaroonmunch re cervical / prostate screening......
rather than saying that man are empowered to make their own decisions re their health whereas women have screening foisted upoin them - flip it !
Men could look upon it at as the medical profession favouring women . I mean us lucky women get both breast screening and cervical screening and they get nowt just for me.! Men - especially young men - ought to be campagning for testicular screening because they are the most vulnerable to cancer in that area. Should older men be screened for prostate cancer in the same way as women have mammograms ?
The reason they want women to get screened is to stop young women like the very public Jane Goody DYING and leaving her young children without a mother .. maybe that is why a gP will try to ensure that anyone declining the service is made fully aware of the risks.
Of course I know ( personally) that for some women it is a particularly sensitive area and that there should be awareness of it....... as there should be re tests involving the anus and other orifices as some people have unpleasant experiences involving them too. And it is not just a feminine issue !
Re the prostate check........ maybe it will get included in the "well men checks " that are starting to be offered to men over 50.
Both sexes can now access the test through the post for bowel cancer ..... now cheap and easy ........ anything that will be on offer to do widespread screening for nasties has to be cheap and easy to administer and is surely better than waiting till the symptoms are very obvious.
These tests apply equally to men and women.
KRITIQ .. wonderful post .... said much of what I wanted to.
a patriarchial environment does not necessarily mean it is mysogynist though.
Generally in medicine I can see the "misogynistic" elements more historically ...... men were doctors, women were nurses (or at home and pregnant). I dont think men hated women .... just saw them as being weaker physically ( most are) and mentally ( well in meaning that they actually liked being "looked after" ..... which a proportion of them did).
Yes a lot of the things that have been cited as horrific in psychiatry were done to women like lobotomies and ECT....... but these things were also done to men. I am old enough to remember seeing these done.
Women were put into institutions for being "mentally ill" in having a child out of wedlock ... some were so intitutionalised they could not cope "outside" and I remember some of them in their twilight years. But there were men too that were put into this assylum for conditions that today would be deemed "mild" because the profession as a whole is much more knowledgable and enlightened.
Ad's are of course given to women ... recognising that depression is an illness rather than them being dismissed as silly. Men often do not seek the help from gp's (tending to turn to drugs / drink or suicide instead) so no they will not statistically take as many ad's as women. PND is much better diagnosed these days too which will add to the statitics .( I remember 30 - 40 years ago when my mum was post birth and also lost babies .... her depression was not identified or treated. )
Many of the very things that gave women more control over their bodies have been provided by the mainly male medical profession
The medical profession is by no means perfect ...... but I just cannot see it as entirely misogynist as some posters seem to imply.