The recent thread started by a MRA....

[Hakluyt]

....Does anyone understand why it has been zapped? Surely we have just played straight into their hands?

As an example, white, middle-class Christian heterosexual men from a Western university going and collecting data about the culture of a remote tribe and presenting their (the academic's) interpretations as Scientific Fact about that culture

I had an amazing tutor for an African politics seminar once who mentioned in passing that when the first white explorers got to Africa and set about recording African culture, they automatically made a beeline for the older males in every settlement they encountered and asked them who was in charge...

Buffy Different point but I have always wanted to read a feminist history of medicine- I don't know if there is one out there?

So much harm has been caused to women by theories which are outdated now but must have hurt like like hell at the time. Refridgerator mothers causing autism, hysteria being thought causing MS until MRIs came along, virtually everything in mental health.

I once read a paper by a female doctor about which ME patients were likely to be diagnosed early and taken seriously (both things strongly implicated in the chance of recovery or improvement from the illness) and the best thing that you could be was an older male- and the worst thing- a young woman.

Women were also more likely to report humiliating experiences of not being believed on the route to diagnosis.

sucky.

Just for info, the refrigerator mother idea is still alive and well. I was told that I had cause DS's ASD because I had been unable to love him.

The rest of that appointment didn't go well for that psychologist.

Really? wow I am shocked. I thought that one had bitten the dust. Very sorry to hear that.

Meh. Luckily I have a bit of training in the area, so could point out the error of his ways.

One man said that one reason MRAs get stuck in arguments with feminists is that we have a whole arm of our movement engaged in the academics of the cause, producing studies and literature etc that we can use in our debates. And they don't.

I have found 4 papers from universities actually doing the opposite - decrying the MRA movement, discussing their strategies and tactics, and looking at ways of mitigating them .

The medical thing drives me nuts. Both the under diagnosis of certain issues which present differently on men and the medicalisation of thingslklike childbirth and PND because the overwhelmingly male medical industry (? Not the right word? Community?) had never stopped to actually look at/ask about what childbirth and the postnatal period are actually like.

Yes, the medicalisation of women's bodies as basically faulty isn't something you see MRAs acknowledging when they whine on about how women should campaign for better health care for men (instead of concentrating on ourselves). Nor the drugging of women into submitting to patriarchal lifestyle (valium, etc). Daly is good on this in Gyn/Ecology.

I remember we had a thread a while back on here about male suicide rates. I came to the conclusion that the higher actual death rate is partly down to men as a class being more violent plus less likely to have dependents that they are the main carers of. (Not saying there aren't other factors.)

I thought that as well recently you know. I was reading I think it was "The Mother Trip" and I've lost count of the amount of posts I've seen on here where women post how desperate and alone and depressed they feel and that they would be suicidal if it wasn't for the fact that they couldn't guarantee the safety and wellbeing of their children if they weren't there.

The rates show that women attempt suicide more often than men but men are more often successful which means a higher rate of suicide for men overall. But I wonder how many more suicidal women there are who don't attempt it because of worries about their children.

yes if a man has children he is far more likely to have someone else around to care for them

there is a "new" poster who posted a sexist comment on the scottish referendum thread in this section, i've just noticed. he talks about how much more women's health costs the NHS (which is obviously all women's fault, they will go around perpetuating the human race by having children and lifelong complications that come from that, the selfish cows, don't they know the burden they're putting on the taxpayer?? hmm??)

i'm sure this is a massive simplification, but it is my understanding that when the nhs was first set up, they massively underestimated the number of women who had significant longterm health problems. until that time, when people had had to pay for healthcare, women would put their husbands and children's health first. sometimes i believe their husbands might also have healthcare via their employer, but either way, if the man's health was a priority in terms of bringing in a wage, and of course women put their children's health first too.

so there was this hidden suffering among women that had never been accounted for, because unless it was acute or immediately life-threatening they had pushed on through it. so the nhs has always been on the back foot with women's health

i'm sure someone else will have much more indepth knowledge about this!

Oh that rings a bell! I wish I still had my notes from uni which were about the social welfare system in the 20th century. I'll see if I have any reading suggestions.

Dr. Noel Whiteside was the lecturer. She was brilliant. She's written a few books as well.

It would be interesting to know how suicide attempts and/or rates of women without dependants compare to the rates of attempted and successful suicide by men.

bertie this is a VERY quick search, and this is way out of my subject area so i have no means of assessing its quality, but i have found the following (not sure how much of this is freely available - i get access through work):

The social construction of gender and its influence on suicide: a review of the literature, Journal of Men's Health, 2008. they say:

"Marital and parental status

A relatively robust finding in the suicide literature is the greater risk of suicide among the widowed, separated and divorced, and those living alone, compared with married adults [68] and [76]. However, there are important differences between women and men in this association, with higher risks experienced by non-married men compared with non-married women [55] and [68]. Divorce is a significant risk factor for suicide for men, but not women [54], [77] and [78]. Widowhood is also a greater risk factor for suicide for men, especially among the young and the very old [68] and [79].

Why might marital status be more protective for men compared with women? It is worth noting that marriage is known to reduce risk behaviours such as heavy drinking [80], and a range of factors associated with socially constructed gender roles play a part in the way marriage protects men from harm. Constructions of gender mean that marriage, which offers emotional and social integration, is particularly important for men who have fewer alternative close relationships [38] and [78]. Men are more vulnerable to suicide following the break-up of a marriage or death of a spouse because they are less likely to be socially connected, while negative emotions such as pessimism, anxiety, uncertainty and sadness following a personal setback such as a relationship break-up have a more marked effect [38]. In the United States and other developed Western countries, divorce may be particularly devastating for men because they are mainly the ones who lose their home, children and family, leading to feelings of resentfulness and anger while reducing their self-esteem [78].

Being a parent also has an association with suicide risk but again this association is gendered. A number of studies have reported that having a young child protects women against suicide, but that the effect is less marked for men [2], [3] and [81]. This may be because family roles within hegemonic masculinity focus on economic success and the status of a good breadwinner rather than caring responsibilities. For women social constructions of femininity include family roles and a caring orientation and this may offer women benefits when they fulfil such stereotypes. Conversely, rates of suicide among women may increase if childlessness is viewed as a transgression of perceived gender roles or if pregnancy outside marriage is stigmatised [2]."

so they are speculating whether having children is associated with more positive feelings and that is suicide preventive, rather than that a mother might feel the responsibility of making sure they are cared for after suicide of the parent, which would prevent them committing suicide

that article also notes that in china (at that time) women had higher suicide rates than men. i wonder why that might be?

yeslove, Complaints and Disorders: Sexual Politics of Sickness
by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English
is a pretty good starting point for a history of women and medicine - they've written more on similar subjects too.

oh great thanks Super excellent.

I thought it might also have something to do with men more likely to use guns in their suicides and are therefore more likely to be successful. Not sure how evidenced that is.

But also divorce and custody cases make sense. I should imagine losing access to your kids is pretty devastating whilst having the responsibility of them would keep you from actually committing the deed. I've had some low times but the question "what would DS do without me" always put the idea of suicide out of the realms of possibility.