Person Lists 18 Alarming Facts That Show How “Our World Was Not Built For Women”
If you ever feel like being a woman in this world is somehow hard, it may be because it is. What does it mean for a woman to live in a world that’s predominantly designed by men? Does it make women less visible and less heard? These are crucial questions that we don’t really have the answers to straight away.
But Karly Hou, a sophomore at Harvard in computer science, math, and economics, has recently posted an illuminating thread on Twitter that has shed some light on the current state of gender bias which, in many cases, is not so obvious. “Our world was not built for women,” Karly made a strong statement before proceeding to list all eighteen disturbing examples of how it’s hostile to female identities.
From simple things like smartphones and cars to military equipment and recommended drug dosages, these are the things most of us have been taking for granted. Maybe, until now?
Karly Hou, a sophomore at Harvard, has recently shared an illuminating thread on how the way the world is designed is hostile towards women
And she listed these disturbing examples of how our world wasn’t built for women
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
The world population is projected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050, an increase of more than 25% from the current 2020 population of 7.8 billion. While more than half of this 7.8 billion are women, the heads of governments, corporations, and other influential voices are those of males.
Image credits: kbarley66
Many feminist researchers claim that this is the case because the “default male” is the figure our world is designed around. According to one such author, Caroline Criado Perez, the male that serves as a stand-in for “human” may have very real and often damaging consequences.
From longer wait times at the loos to phones that simply don’t fit female hands, these are some of the annoying things women have to find their ways around. Some though can be truly lethal, like protective clothing that wasn’t built according to female proportions, or misdiagnosing heart diseases in female patients.
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
But the default male problem is much greater than just manifesting in daily activities or objects. Turns out, it’s something that permeates the very language we use to talk about such things. According to feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, the #MeToo campaign has achieved what the law couldn’t.
“Culturally, it is still said ‘women allege’ or ‘claim’ they were sexually assaulted. Those accused ‘deny what was alleged.’ What if we changed the emphasis and said that survivors ‘report’ and the accused ‘alleges’ or ‘claims’ it didn’t happen?” Prior to #MeToo, society has privileged the male accused while framing women’s reports as suspect.
Image credits: kbarley66
The problem takes us to the point that gender bias is an unconscious matter that we are all “infected by” from an early age. Feminism is part of the process to “unlearn it,” but it needs more radical shifts in thinking while we frame the default male concept as inherently problematic.
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
Image credits: kbarley66
More women shared their observations on things that were meant for men
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Image credits: tacosyUnacoca
The worst for me is how medicine has always been focused on men. (I know that this was mentioned I just hate it). Women are rarely studied and diseases that only affect women are barely researched. Doctors still have the idea that women are "hysterical" if they describe pain; studies showed that women need to express much more pain to get the same painkillers than men and that often are prescribed with anti anxiety medication instead of getting a diagnositic. A perfect example is endometriosis; it is as common as diabetes but because it only affects women it was barely researched. The average time for a diagnosis is between 7-10 years because women are not believed when they say that they are in pain and because most doctors arent educated in menstrual problems. It took me 10 years to get a diagnostic and one to get a treatment. In total I have visited 13 doctors between GPs and Gyns and only one ever treated me with decency.
Don't get me started about mental health. Women are often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. My friend got first dismissed as hormonal and sensitive, then "just" depressed and anxious. Took her literal years to get the right diagnosis - schizoaffective disorder.
When me and my brother got tested for autism, he got diagnosed with it, while I was told I just have anxiety. My family is actually pretty sure I have autism too, as well as my mom. Mom said that I didn't get diagnosed because they use the symptoms for MALE autism on everyone and didn't use FEMALE symptoms for girls. It's wrong.
That's so true. I was diagnosed with borderline, because my ex was abusing me (in doc mind it was my fault). Or rather than helping, they're just saying "stress less", or asking if you're not on your period. Please... 🙄
I don’t want any man/male to avoid seeking help or getting their annual physical because they think it’s a sign of weakness. If it’s due to affording healthcare, then we have failed as a society by protecting the interests of those who have money and in power over peoples’ health. Normalize men seeking help for mental illness, make your voices heard so that we can correct this problem. That’s not the same as drowning out the voices of others who need help. Make space to include more people, of all backgrounds, in traditionally one group dominated fields.
Yeah. It is funny how when we have physical diseases they diagnose with mental ones. But when we have mental ones they ignore them.
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What was said in the article about medical research only doing tests on men because “scientists considered female hormones too complicated to study” just chaps my ass. It’s been known since the ‘90s that the warning signs of heart attack in women are way different than the classic “numb left arm” in men. Medical researchers gave that exact same excuse why those differences were never researched. W T Actual F? That is the EXACT reason why they SHOULD study how women experience heart attacks, and other diseases!!! FFS, the fact that we experience health conditions differently than men, but those differences have not been as thoroughly researched, published, and taught in med school as men whose physiology never-changes, is probably the root of the evil disservice doctors, especially male doctors, do to women who complain of pain and other concerns. We’re NOT hysterical, hypochondriac, or just trying to get some attention—-we’re in excruciating pain, Dr Asshole, for f**k’s sake!
They even as far as doing a experiment about ovarian cancer WITH MEN!!!!
@Doggo Froggo go ahead, I dare you to find things not designed with men in mind. I'll be waiting until I die.
Also, feel free to share the link to that article.
Helping victims of abuse are things we should do, regardless of their gender. What does that have to do with directing some people to look into and fix the problems that affect half the human population? Are you afraid of being inconvenienced by the loss of privilege? If you never had special privilege before, what are you losing? You’re more likely to gain an ally when women/females can contribute their share financially, empathize with you when equal opportunities are open to them, use their experiences to add more depth to different fields, and etc...
(1) Oh no, I did not feel insulted at all. I think there are people who ruin things for others. Misusing a terminology and appropriating it can diminish its importance, see mansplaining. Sometimes the other person is just a jerk who happens to be male.— It’s not always about losing privilege, sometimes it’s about someone being unwilling to be slightly inconvenienced to correct a problem, or even drowning out someone’s call for help/change with whataboutisms or by dismissing it.—Some men do get overlooked by the attention given to solving this inequality, but nothing is going to change if we just slap equality on it. There needs to be actual work to fix it. Frankly, I think we’re capable of including men in what is traditionally seen as issues that plague women.
(2) The more hands on deck, the quicker we solve this..through coordination and communication. It’s very challenging and takes a lot more work and effort to be inclusive of peoples’ experiences. I am humbled everyday. I’m glad that you came back and explained yourself and took a second look at my comment. I don’t think the special treatment enjoyed by a small population is enough to offset the current paradigm, but it is sickening when they take advantage and ruin it for everyone.
Women are just as capable and guilty of propagating and cementing misogynistic behaviors. The women who are not experiencing oppression and discrimination benefit from keeping other women from the same privileges. Some people benefit from tearing and keeping others down while they exploit the gains made by women and other marginalized groups. We hear men’s problems quite a bit more now too, and I’m grateful for that. Have you considered that the problems of men in previous generations were highlighted and addressed too, but it was called a human issue. Now, where do you find issue with my first comment?
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Um... chairs. Seating in general, in fact.
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easy peazy - tampons and other articles like that :P. Hope you keep living though.
CPR? Women don't get heart attaacks! .... And yes on the rest. And it's often female MDs, too, as I found out ----- I'm female, got my MD, and the women were parrotting the Old Man Mantra to get ahead. UGH. So glad I odn't practice medicine. I'd want to strangle colleagues too much if I did....
Same. I am a biologist and female researchers told me the same bullshit about why we should only do research with males.
women have to adjust their pain and iron medicine when on their periods cuz doctors never give right dosage
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So feeling this right now. My preliminary hormone blood work (after finding a tumor on my pituitary) showed low testosterone and low growth hormone. But my endo doesn't seem concerned and all the research online seems to say that treating low testosterone in women is just too hard since there isn't much research on the topic so most doctors won't even address it.
It seems that there is so little information about what are the correct level of hormones. I suggested a few times to meassure my natural hormones to see what is the one that is wrong with me. And apparently that is a crazy thought. It would make sense to do it so you could decide with hormonal treatment is the best for usm
Yes, I was about to mention endo - is critically underdiagnosed, and we live our lives in pain, thinking it is normal and we must deal with it. I'm sorry to hear it took you so long to get diagnosis. I got mine in just 2 years, I was lucky to visit a doctor, who specialzed in treating endo.
Yeah it ruins a persons life. I hate it. I am glad that you got diagnosed "early" :)
This is a systemic failure of the medical profession. It is being addressed but it's disgusting that it took this long to take it seriously.
For example i am a man and suffer from cluster headaches since i was a teen boy.The average time for diagnosis is long and very often misdiagnosed.Old researches used to say its a primarily a man's disease appearing from 20-40 years old with ratio of 7:1 and rarely appears on youth.As a result i was misdiagnosed for 9 years till i reached 20.From the same stupid doctor whom i was telling i have ch.The symptoms where even the same with a poster on his waiting room for different kinds of headaches but he couldnt get past his reading on obsolete information on his books and diagnose what was in front of his eyes.The old researches have been updated somewhat but all these was simply due to the denial and bad practice of a doctor following the wrong book and not his training and reality.Not a discrimination to youth or gender.Its a wider problem.How many doctors you think for example would be able to even recognize a completely new disease and acknowledge it that its new?
@Ingion1, with respect, I got my MD, am female, and do not practice (I'm a researchy person), and training consisted largely of two things: Textbook knowledge, and application thereof in real situations. Supervised in my day, and still today, by mostly male doctors, who were trained mostly if not entirely by male doctors, in a system that used males as the "index" for all illnesses and health indicators. That sounds fairly like a system (medical educatoin) full of sexism. And it absorbs into the female students/doctors, too. In *your* case, you were an outlier, and a GOOD doctor knows that the guidlines are just that ------ guidelines! In my case, my endometriosis showed up *after* a "typical onset age*. Seven years of he**, and then I got, "You're old enough to just wait it out till menopause." Yeah. All kinds of fun. Oh, and yes, we DO get trained to not bleieve patients. We're superior, educated, and they're hypochondriacs or addicts or attention-seekers. No joke, alas.
It is really sad that your disease took so long to be diagnosed but how this has anything to do with the topic at hand? We arent talking about new and rare diseases we are talkung about very common diseases that dont get treated because doctors dont know enough or dont believe women.
@Ingion 1, the training on how to think is, sadly, biased int hat direction in part b/c of sexism (women are always complaining over nothing, worrying over nothing. but men complaining should be taken more seriously) so right there, disbelief of one or the other is "built into" the training. It's nto explicit, as in "Your Patients are Idiots Course 404", but it's in there. Mentors teach it, professors talk about it, etc. ________ @Ozacoter, it has to do with the differences in how even women are trained to think women are (fill in blank) versus men being (fill in blank), and how in medicine that's a very bad thing for patients. On point enough? Shoo. Oh, and myd isease isn't RARE.
@Leo Domitrix i dont know why the site doesnt give me an option of reply to your comment but hopefully you might see this here.I could understand a training to establish whether someone is hypochondriac or addict or attention seeker and direct each of them accordingly as these are problems within fields of medicine themselves.But to be trained not to believe patients doesnt make sense to me.The right of patient and obligation of a doctor to diagnose for example doesnt compromise with drug seeking behaviour as there should be steps.I ve gone to E.R. myself once seeking only oxygen high flow for ch already diagnosed and was tossed out in excruciating pain as drug addict.The humiliation and sense of abandoned in pain and suffering is something still hurts to remember.Even if i was a drug addict,hypochondriac and attention seeker and not having cluster headaches.Doesnt make sense to me
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'' because women are not believed when they say that they are in pain'' This doesnt make sense in any standards of modern or otherwise medicine.I can agree with many doctors not being enough educated or specialized so they misdiagnose a patient,but saying a doctor doesnt believe a patient when he/she says is in pain or discomfort isnt a gender thing but simply a matter of a bad individual doctor.You won't find any guideline in medicine which says dont believe what the patient says to you but all say pay attention to what patient says and filter their words through your medical training.There is a reason why so many words have been invented just to describe pain.Throbbing,stabbing etc.To simply put that medicine is sexist when its a matter of bad practice from individual doctors is wrong.It has nothing to do with medicine as science itself.And many diseases have been put in a stall due to no progress in other fields or a breakthrough in discovery.
It is the sad thruth. Its not that they teach doctors to not believe women, sexism is much more subtle. But the majority of doctors still believe that women have a low pain tolerance (which is not true) and think that their pain is due to them being "hysterical". To give you two examples. I first went to the doctor when I was 19 because my periods were so painful that I used to faint. My doctor did not even examined me, he told me "you just need to relax". After ten years to fight I got my diagnosis (despite having textbook symptoms). My new GP despite of the diagnosis told me that she wouldnt give me painkillers "because a paracetamol should be enough" (endometriosis can be as painful as birth sometimes imagine what a paracetanol can do to me...). My FIL went to the same doctor for a moderate hip pain (he could walk perfectly while when I am in real pain cant). She didnt argue and gave him painkillers so strong that he needed to stay at home three days because he couldnt function with them. This are only two examples our of eleven years of fighting for ny disease and 13 doctors...
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So you know NOTHING. Endo is non-curable and DEADLY desease too. Just imagine endometriosis tumor in your brain or lung. And it can just go BOOM any time - like a ticking time bomb. I have one in my long - it basically makes me drown in blood when I menstruate.
At the risk of getting downvoted in oblivion, I must say that this why we need more women in STEM studies than in gender studies. More women engineers/designers/etc would mean better clothing, equipment, and facilities.
If anybody downvotes you, it’s probably a man who’s scared shitless of competing with a woman—-he knows he’ll lose, because he really isn’t qualified and/or was a D student in school (whereas the woman was most likely both highly qualified and an A student), and has been getting by ONLY because he’s part of the “old boys network”.
A woman scorned hath no fury like a man whose masculinity has been threatened.
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Really, Kath? STEM is devoid of women because they are all too busy learning social studies. This is an old and tired mantra reeking of putrid, yeasty 3rd-wave feminism. This has been proven that women, having been given the full, free choice, DO NOT CHOOSE STEM. Check the UK if you want proof. Oh, and military gear? Get with it, ladies, the enemy infantry, fuelled on drugs and built like ogres are NOT going to stop ripping your body to pieces with bullet-holes because your breasts don't fit in the BP vest or the pants don't make your body-shape "pop". PS not a "D" student, just someone who works for gender EQUALITY, but thank you for performing the stock-standard 3rd-wave move.Creating a presumption that someone will "lose an argument" simply because they disagree with you or downvote you "is probably a man, scared shitless" is such a 3rd-wave feminist subjective view that it has been, and still is made fun of by other, rational women. You've nailed 3rd-wave feminism.
Nice thought. I'm in STEM. I'd guess about half the women I know in medicine preach the Old Guy mantras b/c that's how you get "ahead"....
Exactly. Most of my doctors have been women and they were as sexist and uneducated as the male ones.
For sure! I think we need more women like Marie Curie, Mary Anning, Ada Lovelace, and Elizabeth Blackwell. (There are actually so many other woman scientists that I can't list right now :P) A woman clothes designer would design with her life experience... probably equaling better pockets. Why should men have the best pockets? A woman engineer has probably had to wait in a long line for a bathroom before. She could observe this problem and build bigger bathrooms. Everything you said is true and I completely agree with you. Upvote from me.
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I left a teaching career, went back to high school at age 40 (to upgrade my maths and sciences) and decided to become a Space Engineer because of this one-sided approach! That was in the Before Times, so I've been using lockdown to learn astro-photography/stargazing and how to fix my own appliances!
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Why would you get downvoted for a lucid, rational comment? Oh yeah, this is another "all men suck!" post. Nevermind.
Nothing about this was meant to suggest that men suck. You just want to be a victim.
This post is among the most effective post on gender that boredpanda has ever presented. We need to see more of this and keep it at the forefront.
Completely agree! This needs to be more widely researched and more people need to be aware that 50% of the population are not catered for!
And still look at all the sexist entitled idiots being offended because they dont want to admit that men might be privileged in our society.
I’ve literally never been so angry after reading BP, and I was here during the Trump administration. This is disgusting
This post was directly ripped from some person on Twitter. With some text rehashing the twitter posts. Typical lazy bored panda content with the person who 'put it together' taking the credit. Oh the irony. If you really want to give credit for this post then go and tell the person on Twitter who actually wrote it.
The worst for me is how medicine has always been focused on men. (I know that this was mentioned I just hate it). Women are rarely studied and diseases that only affect women are barely researched. Doctors still have the idea that women are "hysterical" if they describe pain; studies showed that women need to express much more pain to get the same painkillers than men and that often are prescribed with anti anxiety medication instead of getting a diagnositic. A perfect example is endometriosis; it is as common as diabetes but because it only affects women it was barely researched. The average time for a diagnosis is between 7-10 years because women are not believed when they say that they are in pain and because most doctors arent educated in menstrual problems. It took me 10 years to get a diagnostic and one to get a treatment. In total I have visited 13 doctors between GPs and Gyns and only one ever treated me with decency.
Don't get me started about mental health. Women are often misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. My friend got first dismissed as hormonal and sensitive, then "just" depressed and anxious. Took her literal years to get the right diagnosis - schizoaffective disorder.
When me and my brother got tested for autism, he got diagnosed with it, while I was told I just have anxiety. My family is actually pretty sure I have autism too, as well as my mom. Mom said that I didn't get diagnosed because they use the symptoms for MALE autism on everyone and didn't use FEMALE symptoms for girls. It's wrong.
That's so true. I was diagnosed with borderline, because my ex was abusing me (in doc mind it was my fault). Or rather than helping, they're just saying "stress less", or asking if you're not on your period. Please... 🙄
I don’t want any man/male to avoid seeking help or getting their annual physical because they think it’s a sign of weakness. If it’s due to affording healthcare, then we have failed as a society by protecting the interests of those who have money and in power over peoples’ health. Normalize men seeking help for mental illness, make your voices heard so that we can correct this problem. That’s not the same as drowning out the voices of others who need help. Make space to include more people, of all backgrounds, in traditionally one group dominated fields.
Yeah. It is funny how when we have physical diseases they diagnose with mental ones. But when we have mental ones they ignore them.
This comment has been deleted.
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This comment has been deleted.
What was said in the article about medical research only doing tests on men because “scientists considered female hormones too complicated to study” just chaps my ass. It’s been known since the ‘90s that the warning signs of heart attack in women are way different than the classic “numb left arm” in men. Medical researchers gave that exact same excuse why those differences were never researched. W T Actual F? That is the EXACT reason why they SHOULD study how women experience heart attacks, and other diseases!!! FFS, the fact that we experience health conditions differently than men, but those differences have not been as thoroughly researched, published, and taught in med school as men whose physiology never-changes, is probably the root of the evil disservice doctors, especially male doctors, do to women who complain of pain and other concerns. We’re NOT hysterical, hypochondriac, or just trying to get some attention—-we’re in excruciating pain, Dr Asshole, for f**k’s sake!
They even as far as doing a experiment about ovarian cancer WITH MEN!!!!
@Doggo Froggo go ahead, I dare you to find things not designed with men in mind. I'll be waiting until I die.
Also, feel free to share the link to that article.
Helping victims of abuse are things we should do, regardless of their gender. What does that have to do with directing some people to look into and fix the problems that affect half the human population? Are you afraid of being inconvenienced by the loss of privilege? If you never had special privilege before, what are you losing? You’re more likely to gain an ally when women/females can contribute their share financially, empathize with you when equal opportunities are open to them, use their experiences to add more depth to different fields, and etc...
(1) Oh no, I did not feel insulted at all. I think there are people who ruin things for others. Misusing a terminology and appropriating it can diminish its importance, see mansplaining. Sometimes the other person is just a jerk who happens to be male.— It’s not always about losing privilege, sometimes it’s about someone being unwilling to be slightly inconvenienced to correct a problem, or even drowning out someone’s call for help/change with whataboutisms or by dismissing it.—Some men do get overlooked by the attention given to solving this inequality, but nothing is going to change if we just slap equality on it. There needs to be actual work to fix it. Frankly, I think we’re capable of including men in what is traditionally seen as issues that plague women.
(2) The more hands on deck, the quicker we solve this..through coordination and communication. It’s very challenging and takes a lot more work and effort to be inclusive of peoples’ experiences. I am humbled everyday. I’m glad that you came back and explained yourself and took a second look at my comment. I don’t think the special treatment enjoyed by a small population is enough to offset the current paradigm, but it is sickening when they take advantage and ruin it for everyone.
Women are just as capable and guilty of propagating and cementing misogynistic behaviors. The women who are not experiencing oppression and discrimination benefit from keeping other women from the same privileges. Some people benefit from tearing and keeping others down while they exploit the gains made by women and other marginalized groups. We hear men’s problems quite a bit more now too, and I’m grateful for that. Have you considered that the problems of men in previous generations were highlighted and addressed too, but it was called a human issue. Now, where do you find issue with my first comment?
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Um... chairs. Seating in general, in fact.
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easy peazy - tampons and other articles like that :P. Hope you keep living though.
CPR? Women don't get heart attaacks! .... And yes on the rest. And it's often female MDs, too, as I found out ----- I'm female, got my MD, and the women were parrotting the Old Man Mantra to get ahead. UGH. So glad I odn't practice medicine. I'd want to strangle colleagues too much if I did....
Same. I am a biologist and female researchers told me the same bullshit about why we should only do research with males.
women have to adjust their pain and iron medicine when on their periods cuz doctors never give right dosage
This comment has been deleted.
So feeling this right now. My preliminary hormone blood work (after finding a tumor on my pituitary) showed low testosterone and low growth hormone. But my endo doesn't seem concerned and all the research online seems to say that treating low testosterone in women is just too hard since there isn't much research on the topic so most doctors won't even address it.
It seems that there is so little information about what are the correct level of hormones. I suggested a few times to meassure my natural hormones to see what is the one that is wrong with me. And apparently that is a crazy thought. It would make sense to do it so you could decide with hormonal treatment is the best for usm
Yes, I was about to mention endo - is critically underdiagnosed, and we live our lives in pain, thinking it is normal and we must deal with it. I'm sorry to hear it took you so long to get diagnosis. I got mine in just 2 years, I was lucky to visit a doctor, who specialzed in treating endo.
Yeah it ruins a persons life. I hate it. I am glad that you got diagnosed "early" :)
This is a systemic failure of the medical profession. It is being addressed but it's disgusting that it took this long to take it seriously.
For example i am a man and suffer from cluster headaches since i was a teen boy.The average time for diagnosis is long and very often misdiagnosed.Old researches used to say its a primarily a man's disease appearing from 20-40 years old with ratio of 7:1 and rarely appears on youth.As a result i was misdiagnosed for 9 years till i reached 20.From the same stupid doctor whom i was telling i have ch.The symptoms where even the same with a poster on his waiting room for different kinds of headaches but he couldnt get past his reading on obsolete information on his books and diagnose what was in front of his eyes.The old researches have been updated somewhat but all these was simply due to the denial and bad practice of a doctor following the wrong book and not his training and reality.Not a discrimination to youth or gender.Its a wider problem.How many doctors you think for example would be able to even recognize a completely new disease and acknowledge it that its new?
@Ingion1, with respect, I got my MD, am female, and do not practice (I'm a researchy person), and training consisted largely of two things: Textbook knowledge, and application thereof in real situations. Supervised in my day, and still today, by mostly male doctors, who were trained mostly if not entirely by male doctors, in a system that used males as the "index" for all illnesses and health indicators. That sounds fairly like a system (medical educatoin) full of sexism. And it absorbs into the female students/doctors, too. In *your* case, you were an outlier, and a GOOD doctor knows that the guidlines are just that ------ guidelines! In my case, my endometriosis showed up *after* a "typical onset age*. Seven years of he**, and then I got, "You're old enough to just wait it out till menopause." Yeah. All kinds of fun. Oh, and yes, we DO get trained to not bleieve patients. We're superior, educated, and they're hypochondriacs or addicts or attention-seekers. No joke, alas.
It is really sad that your disease took so long to be diagnosed but how this has anything to do with the topic at hand? We arent talking about new and rare diseases we are talkung about very common diseases that dont get treated because doctors dont know enough or dont believe women.
@Ingion 1, the training on how to think is, sadly, biased int hat direction in part b/c of sexism (women are always complaining over nothing, worrying over nothing. but men complaining should be taken more seriously) so right there, disbelief of one or the other is "built into" the training. It's nto explicit, as in "Your Patients are Idiots Course 404", but it's in there. Mentors teach it, professors talk about it, etc. ________ @Ozacoter, it has to do with the differences in how even women are trained to think women are (fill in blank) versus men being (fill in blank), and how in medicine that's a very bad thing for patients. On point enough? Shoo. Oh, and myd isease isn't RARE.
@Leo Domitrix i dont know why the site doesnt give me an option of reply to your comment but hopefully you might see this here.I could understand a training to establish whether someone is hypochondriac or addict or attention seeker and direct each of them accordingly as these are problems within fields of medicine themselves.But to be trained not to believe patients doesnt make sense to me.The right of patient and obligation of a doctor to diagnose for example doesnt compromise with drug seeking behaviour as there should be steps.I ve gone to E.R. myself once seeking only oxygen high flow for ch already diagnosed and was tossed out in excruciating pain as drug addict.The humiliation and sense of abandoned in pain and suffering is something still hurts to remember.Even if i was a drug addict,hypochondriac and attention seeker and not having cluster headaches.Doesnt make sense to me
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'' because women are not believed when they say that they are in pain'' This doesnt make sense in any standards of modern or otherwise medicine.I can agree with many doctors not being enough educated or specialized so they misdiagnose a patient,but saying a doctor doesnt believe a patient when he/she says is in pain or discomfort isnt a gender thing but simply a matter of a bad individual doctor.You won't find any guideline in medicine which says dont believe what the patient says to you but all say pay attention to what patient says and filter their words through your medical training.There is a reason why so many words have been invented just to describe pain.Throbbing,stabbing etc.To simply put that medicine is sexist when its a matter of bad practice from individual doctors is wrong.It has nothing to do with medicine as science itself.And many diseases have been put in a stall due to no progress in other fields or a breakthrough in discovery.
It is the sad thruth. Its not that they teach doctors to not believe women, sexism is much more subtle. But the majority of doctors still believe that women have a low pain tolerance (which is not true) and think that their pain is due to them being "hysterical". To give you two examples. I first went to the doctor when I was 19 because my periods were so painful that I used to faint. My doctor did not even examined me, he told me "you just need to relax". After ten years to fight I got my diagnosis (despite having textbook symptoms). My new GP despite of the diagnosis told me that she wouldnt give me painkillers "because a paracetamol should be enough" (endometriosis can be as painful as birth sometimes imagine what a paracetanol can do to me...). My FIL went to the same doctor for a moderate hip pain (he could walk perfectly while when I am in real pain cant). She didnt argue and gave him painkillers so strong that he needed to stay at home three days because he couldnt function with them. This are only two examples our of eleven years of fighting for ny disease and 13 doctors...
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So you know NOTHING. Endo is non-curable and DEADLY desease too. Just imagine endometriosis tumor in your brain or lung. And it can just go BOOM any time - like a ticking time bomb. I have one in my long - it basically makes me drown in blood when I menstruate.
At the risk of getting downvoted in oblivion, I must say that this why we need more women in STEM studies than in gender studies. More women engineers/designers/etc would mean better clothing, equipment, and facilities.
If anybody downvotes you, it’s probably a man who’s scared shitless of competing with a woman—-he knows he’ll lose, because he really isn’t qualified and/or was a D student in school (whereas the woman was most likely both highly qualified and an A student), and has been getting by ONLY because he’s part of the “old boys network”.
A woman scorned hath no fury like a man whose masculinity has been threatened.
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Really, Kath? STEM is devoid of women because they are all too busy learning social studies. This is an old and tired mantra reeking of putrid, yeasty 3rd-wave feminism. This has been proven that women, having been given the full, free choice, DO NOT CHOOSE STEM. Check the UK if you want proof. Oh, and military gear? Get with it, ladies, the enemy infantry, fuelled on drugs and built like ogres are NOT going to stop ripping your body to pieces with bullet-holes because your breasts don't fit in the BP vest or the pants don't make your body-shape "pop". PS not a "D" student, just someone who works for gender EQUALITY, but thank you for performing the stock-standard 3rd-wave move.Creating a presumption that someone will "lose an argument" simply because they disagree with you or downvote you "is probably a man, scared shitless" is such a 3rd-wave feminist subjective view that it has been, and still is made fun of by other, rational women. You've nailed 3rd-wave feminism.
Nice thought. I'm in STEM. I'd guess about half the women I know in medicine preach the Old Guy mantras b/c that's how you get "ahead"....
Exactly. Most of my doctors have been women and they were as sexist and uneducated as the male ones.
For sure! I think we need more women like Marie Curie, Mary Anning, Ada Lovelace, and Elizabeth Blackwell. (There are actually so many other woman scientists that I can't list right now :P) A woman clothes designer would design with her life experience... probably equaling better pockets. Why should men have the best pockets? A woman engineer has probably had to wait in a long line for a bathroom before. She could observe this problem and build bigger bathrooms. Everything you said is true and I completely agree with you. Upvote from me.
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I left a teaching career, went back to high school at age 40 (to upgrade my maths and sciences) and decided to become a Space Engineer because of this one-sided approach! That was in the Before Times, so I've been using lockdown to learn astro-photography/stargazing and how to fix my own appliances!
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Why would you get downvoted for a lucid, rational comment? Oh yeah, this is another "all men suck!" post. Nevermind.
Nothing about this was meant to suggest that men suck. You just want to be a victim.
This post is among the most effective post on gender that boredpanda has ever presented. We need to see more of this and keep it at the forefront.
Completely agree! This needs to be more widely researched and more people need to be aware that 50% of the population are not catered for!
And still look at all the sexist entitled idiots being offended because they dont want to admit that men might be privileged in our society.
I’ve literally never been so angry after reading BP, and I was here during the Trump administration. This is disgusting
This post was directly ripped from some person on Twitter. With some text rehashing the twitter posts. Typical lazy bored panda content with the person who 'put it together' taking the credit. Oh the irony. If you really want to give credit for this post then go and tell the person on Twitter who actually wrote it.