Start the Week - Radio 4

[truthisarevolutionaryact]

A great programme this morning with a look at medical issues and how women's needs are completely ignored by medical research. Such a joy to hear unashamed use of accurate scientific language and consistent understanding of the word woman, biology etc. Only Andrew Marr sounded ignorant using gender when he meant sex but the others were too polite to challenge him. The wonderful Caroline Criado Perez was one of the contributers. Why am I surprised that the BBC produced a scientifically and biologically accurate programme about women?

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00055m9

Loved how Caroline Criado Perez resolutely stuck to “sex differences”. It was an interesting discussion.

I heard Andrew Marr use 'gender' in the trailer at 8.30ish and was hoping someone would pick him up on it in the programme itself. Haven't listened to this yet but will do and come back.

It's well worth a listen Latin. An unexpected positive start to the week.

Caroline has recently been condemned as a TERF, you'll all no doubt be shocked to discover.

Men trying to silence an intelligent, articulate woman who knows the difference between men and women, who understands science and biology and who centres women in her feminism by calling her a TERF? Colour me surprised.

I’ve heard Caroline Criado Perez talk about Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Amazon link, on another programme, and am determined to make a gift of it to as many men as I can. It’s very sobering and worrying.

It's very sobering and worrying

I agree.

Why isn't Caroline's research being talked about far and wide, especially in Govt departments. Laws need to be made, so these important differences stop being ignored.

I'd also love to hear a TRA talk about this book. Could we have a webchat?

It is very worrying. Sadly this incompetent government are in the grip of the lobby groups and are busy dismantling all government statistics, laws and child safeguarding relating to sex on the basis that being a woman is a feeling inside a delusional man's head.

I think she’s brilliant!

She was on a Mumsnet webchat two weeks ago. I thought she was brilliant this morning. I really really hope those guests go off for coffee and have a really good chat through these things - what a difference they could all make. Too much to hope?

I just loved it, super interesting.

I was a bit concerned about the other woman suggesting that research should be suppressed in case misogynists or racists misuse it.

What kind of research were they saying should be suppressed coyoacan?

Nicola sturgeon has talked v positively about the book. And someone was trying to crowd fund to send a copy to every mp.

I haven't read it yet but I've only seen good things about it.

I caught a bit of this but there was still a women trying to downplay sex differences and say they ‘don’t rise to the level of dimorphism’ even though they were talking about things like PMS and morning sickness (as well as heart attacks) and seemed to miss the point.

Had a quick look at Perez’s book on Amazon. First line of the review: ‘Discover the shocking gender bias that affects our everyday lives’. Hope that’s not in the blurb on the cover.

I've only heard 2/3 of this so far but was disappointed with Angela Saini downplaying some sex differences and using the waffle word "gender" rather than sex. I have her book Inferior where she did a lot of research in to the differences between males and females (I don't recall her saying gender instead of sex there) and debunked a lot of the male brain female brain stuff that transactivists love, saying there was a huge amount of overlap and there were more similarities than differences between the sexes.
That may be where she was coming from with saying some differences were due to organ size between males and females rather than a sex difference.
That doesn't explain the heart attack difference though, and it was interesting that Perez mentioned the money spent on researching and treating erectile dysfunction because low libidos and low testosterone levels in women is under researched and few clinicians have an interest in it. I suspect for most women their libido levels are unrelated to their hormone levels and it's more to do with relationship issues/ feeling touched out with young kids/ fatigue etc, but when I've had female patients with low libidos and low testosterone levels (which have to be very low to be below the normal female minimum for a lab) no-one was interested. Transdermal testosterone is used in America in women pre and postmenopausally but not licensed here. I'm not sure how much research has been done on its use in premenopausal women with low testosterone but suspect the answer is not much unlike the huge amounts of money spent on male sexual dysfunction.

What kind of research were they saying should be suppressed coyoacan?

I think I may have misinterpreted that, actually.