…because aren’t they more or less just men anyway, apart from that thing they do every month?
Six months ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece about why we didn’t know much, if anything, about the impact of the COVID-19 vaccines on women’s menstrual cycles. And the majority of women were naturally not surprised.
Throughout the global vaccination drive, it’s taken us through to September 2021, following hundreds of thousands of reports worldwide, for any kind of study to begin simply entertaining the idea that there may be a link between menstrual side effects and the vaccine.
This isn’t something women were warned about, because it wasn’t something even looked into during trial research, and was therefore not fully understood. In fact, women are frequently excluded from medical trials due to the potential for menstrual changes, which in turn could, I suppose…impact data results by… acknowledging that women’s bodies do something different from men’s…and can therefore respond differently…?(!)
For the past 18 months the world has been suspended in a bubble of fear — even the thing that is supposed to liberate us from this fear is still undeniably scary. A lot of women have struggled and debated about the vaccine, because there’s so little representation of what it means for their bodies. And for those who went ahead, the unexpected, under examined impact on their cycles understandably fueled vaccine anxiety for those around them.
The pathetic argument for why this happened goes something along the lines of: the lack of clarity was supposed to encourage more women to get vaccinated, because the mention of menstrual changes could instead lead to vaccine hesitancy.
So not only were women underrepresented in the trials — they were knowingly lied to throughout the vaccine rollout, but I suppose this was for their own protection (I imagine men didn’t believe women could think rationally enough through the inevitable hysteria to handle understanding the side effects); women were denied awareness, instead left to be caught off guard; they were dismissed by medical professionals when they raised concerns consistently for months; and instead, women had to turn to each other to find answers, confirmation, reassurance.
There is and always has been a systemic problem in how women are viewed throughout the medical field, which is ultimately a dire extrapolation from their undervalued importance in society.
The absurdity is, you cannot intentionally exclude women from trials and surveys because you are aware of the likelihood of different results relative to menstrual cycles and symptoms, and at the same time, be shocked, dismissive and degrading when women come forward with menstrual irregularities that you deliberately overlooked because you, Doctor Science Man, do not menstruate.
Not only does science (read: everything) fail to fully acknowledge women’s bodies, but it actually has the gumption to suggest women don’t know their own bodies.
How anyone can say any trial or study, regardless of field, is complete, reliable and representative when around half the population of the entire planet is deliberately excluded, is nothing short of, for lack of a better word, bullsh*t.
It’s a reflection of how women matter so little in society that their bodies and the blessed, beautiful, powerful, unique processes they undergo from which we all enter this world, are universally and continuously overlooked— even in research that aims to explore impacts and effects on … the human body.
And this applies to more than just the medical arena:
The male-dominated global establishments do not trust women to understand their own bodies, let alone make decisions for them (I’m looking at you, Texas), and instead base their own decisions about what’s best for women on things that under-represent and disregard the uniqueness of those very bodies.
