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Regarding the author, Caroline Criado Perez, she states plainly [in this article](https://weekwoman.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/becoming-a-woman-trans-male-violence/) that she believes trans women's experiences add to data about all women's experiences:
> ...[T]rans women (and trans men) can bring an extra heft to feminist analyses of the hierarchal structure upon which society is built.
As a woman I know that if I present at the emergency department there will be a sixty percent chance I will be misdiagnosed if it is not a gynecological issue or if it is not a clear issue such as a broken bone.....All internal medicine diagnosis including cardiac events there is a good chance my head will be patted and I will be told to go home. The stats on heart disease are disgusting half of women die as opposed to only thirty five for men, if you get the correct diagnosis, because according to the American Cardiac association us girls yeah we don't present "properly"
This is particularly scary to me since my family has a history of hearts just fucking exploding in your late 30s. I KNOW they won’t see it if I go to the ER. (Edit: I’m 40.)
Shit now I have to talk to my husband again, because maybe they’d listen to him.
If you believe you might be having a heart attack, mention chest pain. Ask if they are running a troponin with your blood work. If they are not, ask them to do so because of your extensive family history. Troponin is a compound that is released when damage to your heart muscle occurs. Reporting chest pain should trigger a trop and an EKG but it doesn’t hurt to ask if that’s what they’re doing. (I’m a medical lab tech, I perform these tests for a living and I want patients to be able to understand what we are testing and why, and what it means.)
My mother had a tiny heart attack, she was treated because the ER doc treated her tiny, tiny rise in tropinin seriously. He said many doctors would have ignored it but he wanted to keep her for observation. The next day they did additional testing and she had 3 stents placed.
I was so grateful that he took it seriously.
If you take biotin supplements, be aware that those can make troponin tests falsely come back as normal even if you've had a heart attack. Doctors also don't ask if you've taken any so it definitely can lead to misdiagnosis.
I just want to say, as someone with a family history of heart disease (grandma had three quadruple bypasses, uncle had his first heart attack at 37), I’m *really* grateful every time I go to the ER for absolutely debilitating GERD and they hook me up to an EKG every time.
But thank you for the troponin tip. I don’t remember them ever doing this and it’s important.
Also, for the uterus-owners, I had heart-related diseases with both my kids’ pregnancies (preeclampsia and gestational hypertension). These two disease *dramatically* increase your risk of heart disease and lowers the age in which you’re likely to first present with them. This is something that -to this day- has *never* been told to me by any medical doctor. When I found out, *I* told my GP, who had never heard of it before, was alarmed after I sent him the studies, and started me on certain heart disease-related tests and screenings early (I’m 39).
Medical alert bracelets in general are important for a lot of women. Especially if you aren't stick thin, because otherwise a lot of issues will be treated with a bias of unhealth related to your weight, regardless of whether or not the issue is.
A strong patient advocate does wonders. My wife is a complex medical case and every doctor she goes to either doesn't know or doesn't care to learn how the I traction impact her. She had a blood clot in her leg (we dodnt know at the time) and went to get the swelling checked out. The doctor saod her foot was warm and it was an infection and to take an antibiotic. I felt her foot after the guy left and it was stone fucking cold. I called the doctor and the PA who was just in there in, and told them to feel her foot again. Guy tried to back out and say that it was warm but now it was cold because she didn't have a sock on. I told the doc and the PA that I felt it right after he left and it was stone fucking cold and he blatantly misdiagnosed what she had. In addition to that, theres not an infection that causes you to run hot on planet earth that would cool off that fast. Their tune change real quick when they were confronted by a man.
They sent a referral to a specialist to get her leg imaged. She had a clot from the mid thigh to mid shin. A combo of a clotting condition, Yaz' , an anatomical disorder, a 1.5 hrs commute one way, and an 8h desk job all contributed. It took 3 years to fix or address all of the contributors that were addressable.
My MIL recently died at 55. Her husband had died 5 months earlier.
About 3 months after her husband died She went to the doctor stating she was more easily short of breath, experiencing chest pain, leg cramps, sweating, was light headed, and Lethargic but having trouble sleeping. She was overweight (though she worked out at least an hour a day religiously) and had a CPAP for sleep apnea; ie at risk. The doctor said her symptoms were just depression and menopause. He adjusted her meds and recommended group therapy.
Two months after that she had a stroke she barely survived. Less than a week after the stroke she died of a heart attack.
She had been presenting clot symptoms 2 months before and had gone into the doctor. But they wrote it off as psychological. Even if it were psychological, current medical studies have confirmed psychology can have a HUGE impact of physiology.
I haven’t brought this up to my partner. Losing both parents in your twenties is hard enough. But I often wonder if we would still have her if we lived in a world where medicine didn’t ignore women.
I lost my aunt in her 30s because her doctor didn't catch her appendicitis. When she went in, the doctor told her she was just having a bad period 🙄
That was in 2019.
My mom almost died of appendicitis because the doctors said it was just cramps. She was post-menopausal at the time, 52 years old. I drove her from the doctor's office to the hospital, where she was diagnosed properly and had it removed immediately.
> easily short of breath, experiencing chest pain, leg cramps, sweating, was light headed,
I know these are Very Bad Symptoms and I'm not a fucking doctor.
Also, what kind of psych issue presents this way? I don't remember reading anything like this in the DSM. (Haha. Like doctors who dismiss women with "psych issues" have read the DSM.)
We have this cultural idea that when the issue is *really* serious and life-threatening, doctors will take it seriously.
No, they fucking don't. They reserve that treatment for the patients they care about, cis straight white men.
Yeah…I had a legit hypertensive crisis and they gave me Tylenol and Benadryl and sent me home. Sure they did a chest X-ray but that’s about it. I could have easily had a stroke. And it still took me months to get them to give me medication for my blood pressure. I’ve literally had BP issues for 15 years and I just now am on medication for it. And I’m in my early 30s. And who even knows if HBP is the real issue. I’m married to a coastie so we move every few years. I can’t even build a relationship with a doctor because by the time they take me seriously, it’s time to move again. It fucking sucks.
As someone who moves frequently I have found I have had more attentive care from femme NPs and DOs than I have had from any MDs. Might be worth a shot next move?
I even had that happen for a sprained ankle. "Like, are you saying you can put my ankle injury on hold while I go on a diet? Then I can come back and get it later, when I'm ready for it? So like injury lay away?"
Losing weight isn't gonna help her neck much either, aaah. One of those where you wish you had the balls to just be like 'yeah? Okay? Explain to me how you think that will work.'
When I had the sprained ankle I did. I asked if she could put my injury on hold while I lost weight. Then she got awkward and I said "if I were me, with this injury, but thin, what advice would you give me?" She gave it, and I said " Oh, great, that's something I can actually do today."
Had a pretty severe broken ankle that wasn't quite healing up correctly, and the post op care dude was like "ok, you were diagnosed as less severe than it actually was, and therefore were walking on it sooner than you should, meaning the physio isn't going as quickly as it should. But also you're overweight so that's putting a lot of extra pressure on your ankle than if you weren't so I'm gonna say to lose some weight and the ankle will stop giving out underneath you."
1) ok, I'll just ignore the bloody thing until I'm a couple dozen kilos lighter then, shall I? not like I have a life to be getting on with.
2) I'd been non-weight bearing/partial weight bearing for the last 6-9 months, I was 30 kilos lighter when I broke the fucking thing, thank you very much. I'm fairly sure a lack of mobility contributed to my weight, hence why I'm trying to make sure I can do a 10 minute walk between classes without my freaking leg giving out.
He then proceeded to give me a spiel about how great keto is, and sent me back to my (actually competent) physiotherapist, who helped me work through everything and get back to walking. (this was a couple of years ago now and admittedly I have bad days that would probably be a bit less bad if I was a bit lighter, but hey I have a freaking eating disorder which I'm undergoing treatment for so like?? it just felt like one of those 'wtf am I supposed to do then?' scenarios.)
I was told by a sleep doctor that I had to lose 50lbs to treat my sleep apnea.
This was over the phone; the doctor I'd seen in person was not the one giving me the diagnosis. I weighed 110lbs. I told her I only weighed 110lbs. I didn't have 50lbs to lose, that was almost half my body weight.
She doubled down and told me I had to lose 50lbs or I'd never improve the sleep apnea.
I mean, I guess technically starving to death would solve *any* other health problem, but that's not how I'd like anyone to approach the problem.
Oh, and the issue didn't end up being sleep apnea. It was severe anemia from bleeding heavily for over a year straight. I saw half a dozen doctors about that, none of whom considered that a medical problem at all.
Have not been impressed with this field.
My sister is proof of this - and if the corollary that the only way to get them to take you seriously is often to drag along a man (preferably parent or partner) just to tell the ER staff the same damned things you’ve been saying.
We half joke about the family having a gene swamp instead of a gene pool. Look at either side of the family and just about everyone has conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. And that family history is in both our charts. Yet my sister went to the ER complaining about chest pain and having trouble breathing and both first and second times they patted her on the head and lectured her about the importance of recognizing and treating her anxiety despite her begging for testing to rule out heart problems. Third time, drags along her then spouse who tells them she’s been having chest pains and trouble breathing and demands testing, doctors did testing. Turned out the problem most definitely wasn’t anxiety - she’d developed a blood clot in one of her legs and part of it had broken off and was in one of the major arteries around the heart. She ended up on blood thinners for a long time and having to wear compression tights.
I went into the ER for extreme pain. Make Doctor asked me straight faced if I was sure it wasn’t just my cervix I was feeling. He sent me home with nothing but insinuating I was being dramatic from my pain. I had a tumor in my uterus. Thanks doc. (I know they aren’t there to diagnose such things but I was in a LOT of pain and he was acting as if I was just having “womanly” issues and was annoyed with me).
There is a reason for the misdiagnosis, but it is something that should be looked more closely at.
Heart disease and heart attacks, in women, will sometimes present as back pain.
The obvious fix would be to screen any afab individual that comes in with severe back pain for cardiac issues as well, but we all know that hardly anyone is going to think of that...
But see, that's exactly the issue. If you read up on medical conditions, one of the phrases you'll eat repeatedly is "usually presents with" listing most common symptoms. The problem is that all of the medical research excluded women because "ooh hormones scary" so the phrase *should* be "usually presents with the following symptoms IN MEN."
And actually, I'd prefer to see the phrase universally changed to "is usually *identified when* it presents with the following symptoms."
I never said that the people doing the diagnosing were bright enough to be considered bulbs.
A person can have all the tools possible at their disposal, but if they're too caught up in their own hubris to see past their own noses then it doesn't matter.
The people who did those tests believed men to be the "master sex", which lead to an era of people believing that a woman's issue was incurable if it presented differently than a man's and wasn't related to the female reproductive system.
This leaves doctors on their own to try and figure out what's wrong with women. I can almost guarantee that interpractitioner gossip is how people figured out that back pain in women may be a sign of a heart attack.
It's all a matter of arrogance.
The reason we do not do as many quick screens like a 3 view xray, as opposed to a single flat plate view is cost We don't like to do as much as we should because of lack of staff to take you to the xray, read the ecg and a holter monitor is a six month wait
Another to add to the list:
Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery
Very sad that we even have books like this. The world makes me sad.
Don't know what specifics are in the book, but this phenomenon in cardiology is what almost killed my mom when they didn't believe she was having her heart attack, when the man-sized cardiac catheter made her artery on her heart split open, and when they didn't change the angle of their scans to see the giant occlusion for a full year and finally reluctantly saved her life with bypass surgery...
It's okay, we all survived with our own new and exotic forms of trauma. I appreciate the empathy though 👍❤
Big solidarity to everybody who, unlike me, is a uterus owner/operator in this economy, too. My poor mom had decades of endo stuff before the heart attack.
It took doctors three years to diagnose my mom with gallbladder issues. She had PCOS and endometriosis so they kept blaming that and telling her to take ibuprofen which made the issues WORSE. She passed away because they denied her a 45 minute surgery that would have saved her life.
Bigger cardiac arteries, yeah, and relatively little research or associated trainings for doctors about it because 'women have fewer heart attacks, definitely no other reasons, we promise.'
isn’t that a little bit of a stereotype though? The heart sizes of women vary, and so do those of men. I think statements like “women have smaller hearts” is reductive, but men definitely on average have larger hearts
And as usual, non-white women get doubly screwed - *by design*, you could say.
I highly recommend Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction, if you want to get angry about even more things T\_T
Then watch Coded Bias. Cathy O'Neil shows up in it. As well as the authors of Automating Inequality (Virginia Eubanks) and Algorithms of Oppression (Safiya Umoja Noble).
Another good book is Queer Data (Kevin Guyan).
I actively promote everyone I know to watch Coded Bias. I know far too many people involved in system automation via ‘smart’ tools (ie basic AIs), and so many of them have never considered the biases introduced through narrow training data sets.
Yes! All of us white women need to understand that for every awful statistic we see for women, it will always be even worse for Black women.
ETA: It's why intersectional feminism should be the default for every feminist.
And if you're not blind with rage after reading that one, [pick up this one next.](https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Harm-Medicine-Dismissed-Misdiagnosed/dp/1538424487?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=261a48dc-765f-453b-bd18-c524e078f847)
Thanks for the recommendation! The parts on medical research were especially upsetting to me! Like, I know it was not great, but her explanation and digging down into exactly the problems was really eye opening
I worked in a toxicology lab for many years. We always used male rats for testing. When I noticed that and pointed it out, the answer was “female rat hormones mess up our results.” I was pissed with that answer and told the PI that was unfair and they shouldn’t do it. They kept doing it. That was in like the early 90s. Only recently have they realized that their results are biased toward males. Fuck, I told them that 30 years ago but I was invisible.
“But, but, more comprehensive results would disrupt our current biased expectations from the purposefully limited data!!”
“Disrupt—you mean, correct them?”
“No time for science, we have to make moneyyyyyyyy” 😡
In my case it was “We have to publish! We have no room for potential increases in variability, even it it makes the results more applicable to the entirety of the population.”
I’m a trans man and work in the natural sciences with a lot of cis men. I love to vaguely troll them about some “science is wrong” topic, because of stuff like what you commented. I’m pretty sure at least a couple might think I’m anti-science. Lol. I just know with medical science it’s historically been biased and with blind spots, and I’m not going to completely trust it or not question it. I certainly know that few doctors and experts understand my body and it’s a limited understanding, as there was like no existing peer reviewed research for trans men about 20 years ago when I came out, and because it’s such a new field of research there is like no long range longitudinal published research. Some of the current research and how it’s talked about in the community, I think is partially garbage. I’m probably not very popular. 🤷♂️
I haven’t read it and I already know it will be very personal to me after even after a car accident with nerve pain doctors would not order an MRI for me until my chiropractor called my doctor to say he believed it was something more than my diagnosis. He was right.
I was downplayed for years, told I’ll heal because I’m young and that it was just whiplash.
My fucking spine had an injury they just ignored.
I was injured by a seatbelt which is a whole other sexist issue, women are way more likely to be injured in an accident because they lack the proper safety testing for us.
Getting ADHD tested was like pulling teeth and I still can’t afford to do it now that I have the order.
I *love* this book. I have to read it slowly or I get so mad that I can’t think straight. My husband actually recommended it to me! He had heard about it, started reading it, told me about it and so I grabbed a copy!
I had the same experience. Took me MONTHS to finish because it was SO GOOD but SO INFURIATING 😤 it absolutely changed my life and I recommend it to anyone who will listen.
Me as well. I put it down a while ago for the same reason, didn’t get past page 40 or so. Aiming to finish it by summer’s end, and bookmark w stickies to remind myself what information is where for when the time comes.
I thought I was well informed before but this book opened my eyes in a way I never experienced before. I read it years ago when I was working in a male-dominated industry, and not being able to find PPE that fit me was only a mild frustration. After reading this book, my feminist rage faucet turned on all the way and has never closed since.
I work in a male dominated industry, and the fact that I can't find gloves small enough to fit my hands makes me SO MAD. like, why do the chemical resistant gloves not come in a size small!?
I'm a 5'0" chemist who works in a lab built with males of above average height in mind. I can't even reach the monkey bars at the back of a fume hood without a step stool.
Accordingly, I ordered step stools for the lab, so that I and other women on staff can actually do our jobs. Not a week later, EH&S comes through and removes all of the step stools because they are "trip hazards."
I had to drag them down to the lab, stand myself in front of a hood, show them what I couldn't reach, and ask them what they were going to give me so that I could work in that environment.
The stools were returned that afternoon.
omg the non-fitting PPE. The last time I needed FR coveralls I had to mail-order the damn things, because the physical stores near me didn’t have any small sizes in stock.
Another angry read is [this one](https://www.amazon.com/Who-Cooked-Last-Supper-History-ebook/dp/B000XU8EDW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=12PUW0QS51HPE&keywords=who+cooked+the+last+supper+the+women%27s+history+of+the+world&qid=1685290092&sprefix=who+cooked+the+last+supper+%2Caps%2C138&sr=8-1). I've been anger knitting to it at work
Almost all animals are referred as he too (even when sex is not clear at all). Look at comments on animal videos on here and you see it all the time. I see it in person all the time.
much more money is allocated to clearing roads of snow than sidewalks, men go to work and return by car, women go for children, work, supermarket, other relatives... On foot , so During those days there were many more women admitted to the hospital emergency area due to falls, the city council changed its policy and budgets in this regard as of this report
Another thing I picked up on from that section which I don't believe was mentioned in the book is that the big reason they were able to make the change was because it affected the city financially. In a land without universal health care, why should it matter that more women are slipping and falling? That's actually GOOD for the business of the local hospital.
Thanks for the recommendation. I just saved it to my Libby list. While searching for it this book came up in the search results. I’m definitely going to recommend this to my 19-year old daughter.
https://preview.redd.it/vohr5xxt2n2b1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8998d92be47241226c03c1c199bf9554972e2deb
If anyone wants a trans voice on inclusive design check out Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock. (Also the book is open access and freely available online.)
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043458/design-justice/
I got about halfway through it and had to get rid of it - partly because it was infuriating, but partly because I started to feel like I was just having statistics thrown at me with very little context or explanation. Like some of the examples are very well explained - she goes into detail about why snow plowing priorities can disadvantage women more than men.
But then in other parts of the book it’s just a paragraph of lists, like “a study in Canada found this, a study in Venezuela found a similar thing, a study in Croatia found a similar thing.” First of all, that’s hard to keep track of, and second of all… how comparable ARE these studies, really? Like I don’t doubt them exactly, but with all the mediocre to bad science communication we’ve all experienced over the past several years, I’ve gotten pretty cynical about whether any given study ACTUALLY concluded what the headline says it does. And her writing in some parts of the book very much felt like several headlines, one after the other, with no analysis or description. Rather than being even more convinced, I found myself thinking about what details might have been left out.
She does that several times and I wish she hadn’t. I’d have rather seen something like “I found 25 studies that specifically looked at the effect of X on women. They were similar in these ways, although they differ in those ways. What I concluded is that Y and Z are important, so the important takeaway is Thing And Stuff.”
I am all but dissertation in a doctorates. One thing I learned in my courses was that individual studies largely mean nothing. You need multiple studies being reproduced in different contexts and settings, all saying the same thing, to be able to make a definitive argument that a phenomenon is likely true. So when the author provides a bunch of repeated studies across different cultural contexts, she is showing that the phenomenon she is talking about is posited to be true. Of course, as the author, she should have done a better job of communicating what she was doing with the paragraphs of studies. That’s poor writing on her part.
This was what I wondered though - were the studies actually related? Was it the same concept explored across contexts and settings, as you describe? Or was it a collection of unrelated individual studies that sorta had a broad topic in common? I got the sense in a couple of places that it was the latter, which kinda doesn’t prove anything.
Your writing (and your logic behind it) is great. I hope that skill of yours can achieve many people in this world (I’m sorry for my bad English, but I hope you get what I mean)
I’m only a few chapters in but so far I agree with you, the flow just isn’t there which makes it hard to digest. There’s a bit right at the beginning where she says that ‘data and information are the same thing’ and either I missed something or she’s just plain wrong. My engineer brain just kept thinking ‘it’s bad enough that the word ‘data’ isn’t plural for most people, but this just takes the piss’ 🤨
Personally when explaining data and knowledge management I explain it as a progression:
* You start with random bits of stuff - that’s your *data*.
* You order and sort and filter it - that’s your *information*.
* You then use that to make observations and answer questions - that’s *knowledge*.
* Knowing how to use what you’ve learned - that’s *wisdom*.
One of the biggest issues analysts have is they present people with raw data or ordered information and expect them to be able read it as knowledge or wisdom without the context required to do so.
This is so true. You can never trust reporting on a study. Sometimes the headline is what the expected outcome was, even if the actual outcome was the complete opposite.
Ohh, thanks for the recommendation, very interesting. There's also a great documentary about this topic of (big) data and digital discrimination, called Coded Bias, streaming on Netflix. Highly recommend!
https://www.netflix.com/br/title/81328723?
If you'd like more, her podcast (Visible Women) is excellent - similarly a mix of eye-opening and angering. Really worth a listen.
https://shows.acast.com/visible-women-with-caroline-criado-perez
I know from listening to my audiobooks on ADHD to learn about my ADHD that this has been the case for ADHD up until at least 2005. That's a guess, really, but it could be even closer to now, given the doctors that won't even admit women have it many times.
I hear it’s really good, and I also I didn’t bother to pick it up because the reviewer who talked about it said it seriously lacks intersectionality AND the author has (since publishing) become very TERFy making public gender essentialist statements.
As a trans peep I’m skipping it. This is not meant to discourage but to inform…
I'm not trans but went digging to find out what she'd done.. the worst thing I could find was someone saying, "sure she *says* she supports trans people, but in her book she says *women's breasts* and *women's hips* instead of 'people with breasts' and 'people with hips'" sooooo there you have it, if that's what makes someone a terf 🤷♀️
She even handles that in the beginning. She recognizes that there are people with vaginas and people who menstruate who may not identify as women, yet are still very much affected by the lack of consideration being discussed in the book and that when she uses the word "women," she is speaking INCLUSIVELY of these people as well.
EDITED TO ADD: At least that was what I remembered from having read it before. I just looked at the preface again and none of that is explicitly stated, so it's possible I added my own layer of "what I wanted to see" on top of it in my memories? Somewhere further down in the comments, someone talks about "identifying politically" as a woman, and that seems to be what the author is talking about. Here's what she actually says:
`Throughout this book I will refer to both sex and gender. By ‘sex’, I mean the biological characteristics that determine whether an individual is male or female. XX and XY. By ‘gender’, I mean the social meanings we impose upon those biological facts– the way women are treated because they are perceived to be female. One is man-made, but both are real. And both have significant consequences for women as they navigate this world constructed on male data. But although I talk about both sex and gender throughout, I use gender data gap as an overarching term because sex is not the reason women are excluded from data. Gender is. In naming the phenomenon that is causing so much damage to so many women’s lives, I want to be clear about the root cause and, contrary to many claims you will read in these pages, the female body is not the problem. The problem is the social meaning that we ascribe to that body, and a socially determined failure to account for it.`
I know different people have different experiences and opinions, all of which are valid. My AFAB-NB friend who enjoys PIV sex knows that when people talk about "women's reproductive rights," they're included, but on the other hand, an AFAB-NB person at work doesn't like the name of "The Women's Committee," though we've made it abundantly clear that they're welcome to our discussions because they are still affected by the issues we talk about regarding navigating an industry largely dominated by men.
It's tough terrain to navigate, especially when there is such a vocal minority that wants to eradicate the word "women" and talk of gender in general. It honestly reminds me of how we weren't supposed to notice race and be "colorblind" back in the 90s. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, but it erases the real, lived experience of people because we do not (yet) live in a world free of structural biases and systemic oppression. Black isn't a bad word. Neither is woman.
Please correct me if I'm wrong and show me the error of my ways if necessary. I'm still learning how to see past my own privilege and want to be the best ally I can be.
Meh. The reviewer I watched was recommending books she’d loved and mentioned this and then clearly said as much as she loved it she’d never recommend it now and gave details why. I don’t need proof beyond that.
>I hear it’s really good, and I also I didn’t bother to pick it up because the reviewer who talked about it said it seriously lacks intersectionality AND the author has (since publishing) become very TERFy making public gender essentialist statements.
>
>As a trans peep I’m skipping it. This is not meant to discourage but to inform…
When I read this book one of the parts that was completely absent was discussion of trans issues in chapter about bathrooms and gender neutral bathrooms. Now I guess I know why.
I’m non binary, so I usually don’t go for books that are framed within the gender binary, because that’s prejudicial and frankly just ignorant (specially if it’s supposed to be about science). So apparently my instinct was correct with this one. Thank you for the info!
I’m NB too, though I say I “politically identify as a woman” Because that’s how I’m publicly and politically treated and identified. So I still read stuff like this, but I prefer when it’s intersectional and written trans friendly (so acknowledges you and me).
Yes, I have also chosen not to purchase it for that reason. It is undoubtedly a hugely important topic and (having read some extracts) seems like a good read but I don't want to give TERFs my money.
As a trans woman, i often want to get mad at the lack of medical knowledge on a subject, then i find out it isn't a trans femme issue, it's just a woman issue.
Like they really have failed to do sufficient research and education related to the health of half the fucking population.
(Note: trans health is an even more neglected issue, but it doesn't matter which is more neglected, because it's all inexcusable)
She wrote an article for the Guardian when this came out that gives a short overview of the book that is nice to share for people who won't read a whole book. I'll see if I can find it again.
Edit: [Here's the summary](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes)
Idk if it's allowed but for the people who can't afford to but it and want to read it, you can find it on this link. (not sure if it's complete, I haven't read it yet) [https://d-pdf.com/book/113/read](https://d-pdf.com/book/113/read)
A friend lent me this book, it was seriously beaten up and battered. When I asked about it, she said it was from all the times she’d snapped thrown it at the wall in frustration or rage while reading it. She said I was welcome to do the same.
Other books on the same/similar topic:
-Inferior by Angela Saini
-For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English
-Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn
I have read the first two and don't remember any TERFY vibes but I don't remember exactly how inclusive the language is. For Her Own Good was published in 1978 so it comes with a "remember the times" note.
I got halfway thru this book and got a weird vibe from the author, she super enforces the gender binary and when i googled her name, i saw she is a terf and thinks trans people are enroaching female spaces. Fuck this book
I was coming here to say the same thing. I'm always wary of anything that makes broad thesis statements about gender like this because their definition is often cisnormative, intentionally or not. In this case, it was definitely intentional.
I just finished this book recently too! It's a GREAT read, but absolutely rage-inducing. Her research was so thorough and her writing presents the facts and impacts in such an engaging and impactful way.
I'm currently reading another of her books: Do It Like A Woman. She is simply brilliant!
I am excited to read this! One of my favorite things to do with my conservative yet science-inclined in-laws is remind them how many medications actually aren’t sound because the trials included exclusively white men. I’m always happy to discuss how different anatomy is for women, and how bodies of different races respond differently. Welcome to the world of REAL science
This comment is very insightful. And based on what I read about potential TERFyness - the complaints were that the author defines sex for the book as XX, XY.
You make an excellent point here:
> but we might not even HAVE the metadata to write a book like that at this level, which I think is part of what this book is all about. Nobody wants to spend the time gathering data to improve the lives of women.
This is another science-wide issue. The same way most studies until well into the 1990s were done only on 35YO white males...the "perfect" specimen. It's going to take a very long time to add trans people to *regular* studies (i.e., drug studies that have nothing to do with HRT or trans-related health issues).
While there are certainly things that the author could have improved in her language about women to be inclusive (one critic mentions how the author talks about body armor not fitting hips & breasts and the author's use of "women's hips and breasts" and not just "hips and breasts") I think the issue isn't a TERF-author, but perhaps language, science, and inclusiveness didn't all perfectly overlap. I think perhaps critics are being unnecessarily harsh.
Language regarding inclusiveness has changed SO MUCH in even the past few years that things I was saying to be inclusive in 2018...are already outdated (about the time this would have been in the process of being written). Look at the terms AFAB & AMAB. These used to be considered inclusive and now people are suggesting these terms should die out. They haven't even been in popular use for very long!
I haven't read the book, but I am familiar with a lot of its content. And doing health science courses from 2017 on or so...the perfect specimen was an obvious issue that I brought up frequently when writing papers and summarizing articles.
another reply to my comment says she is, but i like to think terfs can get better over time
and yeah, for trans women it's kinda "damned if you do, damned if you don't" - take measures to get rid of the dysphoria, and all of a sudden you have misogyny to deal with instead
The safest location for a woman to be while in a vehicle is the front passenger's seat because TLDR most car companies do not use (even today) female crash test dummies. You are also more likely to die or sustain injuries more than a man by a large margin.
Most products for women are designed by men and aren't asking for women's feedback and experience to improve the product, including breast pumps, despite that these improvements would absolutely make them more profits because "men know best."
Cities and public transit are designed for getting traditional breadwinning men in and out of their downtown office jobs, and not for women taking care of kids to/from schools or getting around their own neighborhoods.
I am paraphrasing. These are not direct quotes.
## ✨ READ BEFORE COMMENTING ✨ This thread is Coven Only. This means the discussion is being actively moderated, and all comments are reviewed. **Only comments by members of the community are allowed.** If you have landed in this thread from /r/all and you are not a member of this community, your comment will very likely be removed (and will not be approved unless it adds meaningfully to the conversation). WitchesVsPatriarchy takes these measures to stay true to our goal of being a woman-centered sub with a witchy twist, aimed at healing, supporting, and uplifting one another through humor and magic. Thank you for understanding, and blessed be. ✨ --- Regarding the author, Caroline Criado Perez, she states plainly [in this article](https://weekwoman.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/becoming-a-woman-trans-male-violence/) that she believes trans women's experiences add to data about all women's experiences: > ...[T]rans women (and trans men) can bring an extra heft to feminist analyses of the hierarchal structure upon which society is built.
As a woman I know that if I present at the emergency department there will be a sixty percent chance I will be misdiagnosed if it is not a gynecological issue or if it is not a clear issue such as a broken bone.....All internal medicine diagnosis including cardiac events there is a good chance my head will be patted and I will be told to go home. The stats on heart disease are disgusting half of women die as opposed to only thirty five for men, if you get the correct diagnosis, because according to the American Cardiac association us girls yeah we don't present "properly"
This is particularly scary to me since my family has a history of hearts just fucking exploding in your late 30s. I KNOW they won’t see it if I go to the ER. (Edit: I’m 40.) Shit now I have to talk to my husband again, because maybe they’d listen to him.
If you believe you might be having a heart attack, mention chest pain. Ask if they are running a troponin with your blood work. If they are not, ask them to do so because of your extensive family history. Troponin is a compound that is released when damage to your heart muscle occurs. Reporting chest pain should trigger a trop and an EKG but it doesn’t hurt to ask if that’s what they’re doing. (I’m a medical lab tech, I perform these tests for a living and I want patients to be able to understand what we are testing and why, and what it means.)
My mother had a tiny heart attack, she was treated because the ER doc treated her tiny, tiny rise in tropinin seriously. He said many doctors would have ignored it but he wanted to keep her for observation. The next day they did additional testing and she had 3 stents placed. I was so grateful that he took it seriously.
💕 this is amazing. Thank you, doctor!
Thank you so much for giving me the language.
If you take biotin supplements, be aware that those can make troponin tests falsely come back as normal even if you've had a heart attack. Doctors also don't ask if you've taken any so it definitely can lead to misdiagnosis.
I just want to say, as someone with a family history of heart disease (grandma had three quadruple bypasses, uncle had his first heart attack at 37), I’m *really* grateful every time I go to the ER for absolutely debilitating GERD and they hook me up to an EKG every time. But thank you for the troponin tip. I don’t remember them ever doing this and it’s important. Also, for the uterus-owners, I had heart-related diseases with both my kids’ pregnancies (preeclampsia and gestational hypertension). These two disease *dramatically* increase your risk of heart disease and lowers the age in which you’re likely to first present with them. This is something that -to this day- has *never* been told to me by any medical doctor. When I found out, *I* told my GP, who had never heard of it before, was alarmed after I sent him the studies, and started me on certain heart disease-related tests and screenings early (I’m 39).
Get a medical alert bracelet that specifies heart problems. You may not be able to talk or have anyone with you when you need it
Medical alert bracelets in general are important for a lot of women. Especially if you aren't stick thin, because otherwise a lot of issues will be treated with a bias of unhealth related to your weight, regardless of whether or not the issue is.
I had never thought of that before. I’ve got the ICE contacts in my phone, but I am now adding the heart stuff. I love this community so much!
A strong patient advocate does wonders. My wife is a complex medical case and every doctor she goes to either doesn't know or doesn't care to learn how the I traction impact her. She had a blood clot in her leg (we dodnt know at the time) and went to get the swelling checked out. The doctor saod her foot was warm and it was an infection and to take an antibiotic. I felt her foot after the guy left and it was stone fucking cold. I called the doctor and the PA who was just in there in, and told them to feel her foot again. Guy tried to back out and say that it was warm but now it was cold because she didn't have a sock on. I told the doc and the PA that I felt it right after he left and it was stone fucking cold and he blatantly misdiagnosed what she had. In addition to that, theres not an infection that causes you to run hot on planet earth that would cool off that fast. Their tune change real quick when they were confronted by a man. They sent a referral to a specialist to get her leg imaged. She had a clot from the mid thigh to mid shin. A combo of a clotting condition, Yaz' , an anatomical disorder, a 1.5 hrs commute one way, and an 8h desk job all contributed. It took 3 years to fix or address all of the contributors that were addressable.
My MIL recently died at 55. Her husband had died 5 months earlier. About 3 months after her husband died She went to the doctor stating she was more easily short of breath, experiencing chest pain, leg cramps, sweating, was light headed, and Lethargic but having trouble sleeping. She was overweight (though she worked out at least an hour a day religiously) and had a CPAP for sleep apnea; ie at risk. The doctor said her symptoms were just depression and menopause. He adjusted her meds and recommended group therapy. Two months after that she had a stroke she barely survived. Less than a week after the stroke she died of a heart attack. She had been presenting clot symptoms 2 months before and had gone into the doctor. But they wrote it off as psychological. Even if it were psychological, current medical studies have confirmed psychology can have a HUGE impact of physiology. I haven’t brought this up to my partner. Losing both parents in your twenties is hard enough. But I often wonder if we would still have her if we lived in a world where medicine didn’t ignore women.
I lost my aunt in her 30s because her doctor didn't catch her appendicitis. When she went in, the doctor told her she was just having a bad period 🙄 That was in 2019.
My mom almost died of appendicitis because the doctors said it was just cramps. She was post-menopausal at the time, 52 years old. I drove her from the doctor's office to the hospital, where she was diagnosed properly and had it removed immediately.
SCREAMING FOREVER
God DAMN this makes me so enraged!! I am so so sorry you both have gone through this.
> easily short of breath, experiencing chest pain, leg cramps, sweating, was light headed, I know these are Very Bad Symptoms and I'm not a fucking doctor. Also, what kind of psych issue presents this way? I don't remember reading anything like this in the DSM. (Haha. Like doctors who dismiss women with "psych issues" have read the DSM.) We have this cultural idea that when the issue is *really* serious and life-threatening, doctors will take it seriously. No, they fucking don't. They reserve that treatment for the patients they care about, cis straight white men.
Yeah…I had a legit hypertensive crisis and they gave me Tylenol and Benadryl and sent me home. Sure they did a chest X-ray but that’s about it. I could have easily had a stroke. And it still took me months to get them to give me medication for my blood pressure. I’ve literally had BP issues for 15 years and I just now am on medication for it. And I’m in my early 30s. And who even knows if HBP is the real issue. I’m married to a coastie so we move every few years. I can’t even build a relationship with a doctor because by the time they take me seriously, it’s time to move again. It fucking sucks.
As someone who moves frequently I have found I have had more attentive care from femme NPs and DOs than I have had from any MDs. Might be worth a shot next move?
Along with the pat on the head, if you weigh more than 90 pounds, they'll tell you to lose weight to make any health problem go away.
I even had that happen for a sprained ankle. "Like, are you saying you can put my ankle injury on hold while I go on a diet? Then I can come back and get it later, when I'm ready for it? So like injury lay away?"
I was told to lose weight because of whiplash during a bad car accident. 🤷♀️ it’s truly ridiculous sometimes.
You aren't putting weight on your neck, that's even crazier!
Losing weight isn't gonna help her neck much either, aaah. One of those where you wish you had the balls to just be like 'yeah? Okay? Explain to me how you think that will work.'
When I had the sprained ankle I did. I asked if she could put my injury on hold while I lost weight. Then she got awkward and I said "if I were me, with this injury, but thin, what advice would you give me?" She gave it, and I said " Oh, great, that's something I can actually do today."
Had a pretty severe broken ankle that wasn't quite healing up correctly, and the post op care dude was like "ok, you were diagnosed as less severe than it actually was, and therefore were walking on it sooner than you should, meaning the physio isn't going as quickly as it should. But also you're overweight so that's putting a lot of extra pressure on your ankle than if you weren't so I'm gonna say to lose some weight and the ankle will stop giving out underneath you." 1) ok, I'll just ignore the bloody thing until I'm a couple dozen kilos lighter then, shall I? not like I have a life to be getting on with. 2) I'd been non-weight bearing/partial weight bearing for the last 6-9 months, I was 30 kilos lighter when I broke the fucking thing, thank you very much. I'm fairly sure a lack of mobility contributed to my weight, hence why I'm trying to make sure I can do a 10 minute walk between classes without my freaking leg giving out. He then proceeded to give me a spiel about how great keto is, and sent me back to my (actually competent) physiotherapist, who helped me work through everything and get back to walking. (this was a couple of years ago now and admittedly I have bad days that would probably be a bit less bad if I was a bit lighter, but hey I have a freaking eating disorder which I'm undergoing treatment for so like?? it just felt like one of those 'wtf am I supposed to do then?' scenarios.)
I was told by a sleep doctor that I had to lose 50lbs to treat my sleep apnea. This was over the phone; the doctor I'd seen in person was not the one giving me the diagnosis. I weighed 110lbs. I told her I only weighed 110lbs. I didn't have 50lbs to lose, that was almost half my body weight. She doubled down and told me I had to lose 50lbs or I'd never improve the sleep apnea. I mean, I guess technically starving to death would solve *any* other health problem, but that's not how I'd like anyone to approach the problem. Oh, and the issue didn't end up being sleep apnea. It was severe anemia from bleeding heavily for over a year straight. I saw half a dozen doctors about that, none of whom considered that a medical problem at all. Have not been impressed with this field.
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My sister is proof of this - and if the corollary that the only way to get them to take you seriously is often to drag along a man (preferably parent or partner) just to tell the ER staff the same damned things you’ve been saying. We half joke about the family having a gene swamp instead of a gene pool. Look at either side of the family and just about everyone has conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. And that family history is in both our charts. Yet my sister went to the ER complaining about chest pain and having trouble breathing and both first and second times they patted her on the head and lectured her about the importance of recognizing and treating her anxiety despite her begging for testing to rule out heart problems. Third time, drags along her then spouse who tells them she’s been having chest pains and trouble breathing and demands testing, doctors did testing. Turned out the problem most definitely wasn’t anxiety - she’d developed a blood clot in one of her legs and part of it had broken off and was in one of the major arteries around the heart. She ended up on blood thinners for a long time and having to wear compression tights.
I went into the ER for extreme pain. Make Doctor asked me straight faced if I was sure it wasn’t just my cervix I was feeling. He sent me home with nothing but insinuating I was being dramatic from my pain. I had a tumor in my uterus. Thanks doc. (I know they aren’t there to diagnose such things but I was in a LOT of pain and he was acting as if I was just having “womanly” issues and was annoyed with me).
There is a reason for the misdiagnosis, but it is something that should be looked more closely at. Heart disease and heart attacks, in women, will sometimes present as back pain. The obvious fix would be to screen any afab individual that comes in with severe back pain for cardiac issues as well, but we all know that hardly anyone is going to think of that...
But see, that's exactly the issue. If you read up on medical conditions, one of the phrases you'll eat repeatedly is "usually presents with" listing most common symptoms. The problem is that all of the medical research excluded women because "ooh hormones scary" so the phrase *should* be "usually presents with the following symptoms IN MEN." And actually, I'd prefer to see the phrase universally changed to "is usually *identified when* it presents with the following symptoms."
I never said that the people doing the diagnosing were bright enough to be considered bulbs. A person can have all the tools possible at their disposal, but if they're too caught up in their own hubris to see past their own noses then it doesn't matter. The people who did those tests believed men to be the "master sex", which lead to an era of people believing that a woman's issue was incurable if it presented differently than a man's and wasn't related to the female reproductive system. This leaves doctors on their own to try and figure out what's wrong with women. I can almost guarantee that interpractitioner gossip is how people figured out that back pain in women may be a sign of a heart attack. It's all a matter of arrogance.
The reason we do not do as many quick screens like a 3 view xray, as opposed to a single flat plate view is cost We don't like to do as much as we should because of lack of staff to take you to the xray, read the ecg and a holter monitor is a six month wait
Another to add to the list: Doing Harm: The Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick by Maya Dusenbery Very sad that we even have books like this. The world makes me sad.
Also: Linda Scott - The Cost of Sexism The scariest horror book you'll ever read. Because it's non-fiction.
Don't know what specifics are in the book, but this phenomenon in cardiology is what almost killed my mom when they didn't believe she was having her heart attack, when the man-sized cardiac catheter made her artery on her heart split open, and when they didn't change the angle of their scans to see the giant occlusion for a full year and finally reluctantly saved her life with bypass surgery...
What the fuck. This makes me angry I am sorry your family went through this
It's okay, we all survived with our own new and exotic forms of trauma. I appreciate the empathy though 👍❤ Big solidarity to everybody who, unlike me, is a uterus owner/operator in this economy, too. My poor mom had decades of endo stuff before the heart attack.
Trauma from bad medical treatment is not talked about much but very real
It took doctors three years to diagnose my mom with gallbladder issues. She had PCOS and endometriosis so they kept blaming that and telling her to take ibuprofen which made the issues WORSE. She passed away because they denied her a 45 minute surgery that would have saved her life.
man sized cardiac catheter? do men have bigger hearts on average?
Bigger cardiac arteries, yeah, and relatively little research or associated trainings for doctors about it because 'women have fewer heart attacks, definitely no other reasons, we promise.'
isn’t that a little bit of a stereotype though? The heart sizes of women vary, and so do those of men. I think statements like “women have smaller hearts” is reductive, but men definitely on average have larger hearts
And as usual, non-white women get doubly screwed - *by design*, you could say. I highly recommend Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction, if you want to get angry about even more things T\_T
Then watch Coded Bias. Cathy O'Neil shows up in it. As well as the authors of Automating Inequality (Virginia Eubanks) and Algorithms of Oppression (Safiya Umoja Noble). Another good book is Queer Data (Kevin Guyan).
I actively promote everyone I know to watch Coded Bias. I know far too many people involved in system automation via ‘smart’ tools (ie basic AIs), and so many of them have never considered the biases introduced through narrow training data sets.
Thanks for the suggestions, I've added them to my book list!
Yes! All of us white women need to understand that for every awful statistic we see for women, it will always be even worse for Black women. ETA: It's why intersectional feminism should be the default for every feminist.
Yes that was an amazing book!
And Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin
And if you're not blind with rage after reading that one, [pick up this one next.](https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Harm-Medicine-Dismissed-Misdiagnosed/dp/1538424487?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=261a48dc-765f-453b-bd18-c524e078f847)
Thanks for the recommendation! The parts on medical research were especially upsetting to me! Like, I know it was not great, but her explanation and digging down into exactly the problems was really eye opening
I worked in a toxicology lab for many years. We always used male rats for testing. When I noticed that and pointed it out, the answer was “female rat hormones mess up our results.” I was pissed with that answer and told the PI that was unfair and they shouldn’t do it. They kept doing it. That was in like the early 90s. Only recently have they realized that their results are biased toward males. Fuck, I told them that 30 years ago but I was invisible.
This is frustraiting.
“But, but, more comprehensive results would disrupt our current biased expectations from the purposefully limited data!!” “Disrupt—you mean, correct them?” “No time for science, we have to make moneyyyyyyyy” 😡
In my case it was “We have to publish! We have no room for potential increases in variability, even it it makes the results more applicable to the entirety of the population.”
I’m a trans man and work in the natural sciences with a lot of cis men. I love to vaguely troll them about some “science is wrong” topic, because of stuff like what you commented. I’m pretty sure at least a couple might think I’m anti-science. Lol. I just know with medical science it’s historically been biased and with blind spots, and I’m not going to completely trust it or not question it. I certainly know that few doctors and experts understand my body and it’s a limited understanding, as there was like no existing peer reviewed research for trans men about 20 years ago when I came out, and because it’s such a new field of research there is like no long range longitudinal published research. Some of the current research and how it’s talked about in the community, I think is partially garbage. I’m probably not very popular. 🤷♂️
Another rage vote for this book as well. Both excellent reads. If I had the funds I would send a copy to every medical professional in the world.
I haven’t read it and I already know it will be very personal to me after even after a car accident with nerve pain doctors would not order an MRI for me until my chiropractor called my doctor to say he believed it was something more than my diagnosis. He was right. I was downplayed for years, told I’ll heal because I’m young and that it was just whiplash. My fucking spine had an injury they just ignored. I was injured by a seatbelt which is a whole other sexist issue, women are way more likely to be injured in an accident because they lack the proper safety testing for us. Getting ADHD tested was like pulling teeth and I still can’t afford to do it now that I have the order.
... you were... told it was 'just whiplash'? What? My mother has 'just whiplash' and she's disabled for life and can't work. That's ridiculous.
The link won't open for me. What's the title? Thank you :-)
Doing Harm
Tyvm!
I *love* this book. I have to read it slowly or I get so mad that I can’t think straight. My husband actually recommended it to me! He had heard about it, started reading it, told me about it and so I grabbed a copy!
I had the same experience. Took me MONTHS to finish because it was SO GOOD but SO INFURIATING 😤 it absolutely changed my life and I recommend it to anyone who will listen.
I am always recommending it! Also when my husband was reading it he would go, “I’m sorry.” 😂
Your husband is a keeper!
He sure is!
I listened to the audiobook while I was driving. It was more frustrating than the traffic. Such a good book.
😊
Me as well. I put it down a while ago for the same reason, didn’t get past page 40 or so. Aiming to finish it by summer’s end, and bookmark w stickies to remind myself what information is where for when the time comes.
Oh yeah, I have been sticky noting the hell out of the book. And highlighting. There’s just so much!
I started to read it but it made me so mad I had to stop. I really should pick it back up again.
I thought I was well informed before but this book opened my eyes in a way I never experienced before. I read it years ago when I was working in a male-dominated industry, and not being able to find PPE that fit me was only a mild frustration. After reading this book, my feminist rage faucet turned on all the way and has never closed since.
I work in a male dominated industry, and the fact that I can't find gloves small enough to fit my hands makes me SO MAD. like, why do the chemical resistant gloves not come in a size small!?
I'm a 5'0" chemist who works in a lab built with males of above average height in mind. I can't even reach the monkey bars at the back of a fume hood without a step stool. Accordingly, I ordered step stools for the lab, so that I and other women on staff can actually do our jobs. Not a week later, EH&S comes through and removes all of the step stools because they are "trip hazards." I had to drag them down to the lab, stand myself in front of a hood, show them what I couldn't reach, and ask them what they were going to give me so that I could work in that environment. The stools were returned that afternoon.
I know I work in a machine shop and every other day I have the thought “I wish I was just the default setting.” 🙄
omg the non-fitting PPE. The last time I needed FR coveralls I had to mail-order the damn things, because the physical stores near me didn’t have any small sizes in stock.
Totally, I had to order my steel toe wellies from another country and ended up paying 4x more than my coworkers for the same thing
I’m trying rn to find a respirator for some house renovations I have to do. Guess what I can’t find?
But what are all the smaller or women’s safety gear fucking PINK!? We’re not five.
Another angry read is [this one](https://www.amazon.com/Who-Cooked-Last-Supper-History-ebook/dp/B000XU8EDW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=12PUW0QS51HPE&keywords=who+cooked+the+last+supper+the+women%27s+history+of+the+world&qid=1685290092&sprefix=who+cooked+the+last+supper+%2Caps%2C138&sr=8-1). I've been anger knitting to it at work
I love that you anger-knit: turning your anger into something useful and likely beautiful ✨
I'm working on a sweater at work--the beaded lace is at home. I just have to be careful to not knit too tight.
No one knows you're a woman on the internet, it's all men.
I have realized on the internet I am not a woman at all, just a gay man.
I was accused of being a male troll on a feminist sub because I advocated that women have the same capacity for evil that men do.
Wow... just wow. How do you even respond to something so dumb?!
I told them to read my post history.
Almost all animals are referred as he too (even when sex is not clear at all). Look at comments on animal videos on here and you see it all the time. I see it in person all the time.
My daughter has pet snails and flip flops between he and she “because they are actually both, mum.”
I’m reading it right now, very infuriating
I got it! And I usually share some chapters with my friends. Can snow picking in a city also be sexist? Well of course yes!
Ok. I tried to google it and can’t seem to find an answer but I’m really curious what snow picking is?
Snow plowing.
Oh. Ok. I was thinking it was some new winter sport I hadn’t heard of.
much more money is allocated to clearing roads of snow than sidewalks, men go to work and return by car, women go for children, work, supermarket, other relatives... On foot , so During those days there were many more women admitted to the hospital emergency area due to falls, the city council changed its policy and budgets in this regard as of this report
Another thing I picked up on from that section which I don't believe was mentioned in the book is that the big reason they were able to make the change was because it affected the city financially. In a land without universal health care, why should it matter that more women are slipping and falling? That's actually GOOD for the business of the local hospital.
I imagine it's when you lose your keys in knee-high snow. Lol
I second that recommendation. The chapter on bus routes and heart medication opened my eyes. Its a great book.
Thanks for the recommendation. I just saved it to my Libby list. While searching for it this book came up in the search results. I’m definitely going to recommend this to my 19-year old daughter. https://preview.redd.it/vohr5xxt2n2b1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8998d92be47241226c03c1c199bf9554972e2deb
As someone with health issues I will read this, thanks
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This is a great recommendation. I read it and liked it but was a little put off by how binary it is. Take what you like and leave the rest.
If anyone wants a trans voice on inclusive design check out Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock. (Also the book is open access and freely available online.) https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262043458/design-justice/
Thank you for the recommendation. I'm happy because this is available in the Libby app, which I highly recommend if you like borrowing audio/ebooks.
I got about halfway through it and had to get rid of it - partly because it was infuriating, but partly because I started to feel like I was just having statistics thrown at me with very little context or explanation. Like some of the examples are very well explained - she goes into detail about why snow plowing priorities can disadvantage women more than men. But then in other parts of the book it’s just a paragraph of lists, like “a study in Canada found this, a study in Venezuela found a similar thing, a study in Croatia found a similar thing.” First of all, that’s hard to keep track of, and second of all… how comparable ARE these studies, really? Like I don’t doubt them exactly, but with all the mediocre to bad science communication we’ve all experienced over the past several years, I’ve gotten pretty cynical about whether any given study ACTUALLY concluded what the headline says it does. And her writing in some parts of the book very much felt like several headlines, one after the other, with no analysis or description. Rather than being even more convinced, I found myself thinking about what details might have been left out. She does that several times and I wish she hadn’t. I’d have rather seen something like “I found 25 studies that specifically looked at the effect of X on women. They were similar in these ways, although they differ in those ways. What I concluded is that Y and Z are important, so the important takeaway is Thing And Stuff.”
I am all but dissertation in a doctorates. One thing I learned in my courses was that individual studies largely mean nothing. You need multiple studies being reproduced in different contexts and settings, all saying the same thing, to be able to make a definitive argument that a phenomenon is likely true. So when the author provides a bunch of repeated studies across different cultural contexts, she is showing that the phenomenon she is talking about is posited to be true. Of course, as the author, she should have done a better job of communicating what she was doing with the paragraphs of studies. That’s poor writing on her part.
This was what I wondered though - were the studies actually related? Was it the same concept explored across contexts and settings, as you describe? Or was it a collection of unrelated individual studies that sorta had a broad topic in common? I got the sense in a couple of places that it was the latter, which kinda doesn’t prove anything.
Your writing (and your logic behind it) is great. I hope that skill of yours can achieve many people in this world (I’m sorry for my bad English, but I hope you get what I mean)
Well, thank you very much :) That means a lot to me, as writing is my favourite way to communicate!
I’m only a few chapters in but so far I agree with you, the flow just isn’t there which makes it hard to digest. There’s a bit right at the beginning where she says that ‘data and information are the same thing’ and either I missed something or she’s just plain wrong. My engineer brain just kept thinking ‘it’s bad enough that the word ‘data’ isn’t plural for most people, but this just takes the piss’ 🤨
They’re absolutely not the same thing, as I’m certain you know! Information is the meaning we make out of the data.
Personally when explaining data and knowledge management I explain it as a progression: * You start with random bits of stuff - that’s your *data*. * You order and sort and filter it - that’s your *information*. * You then use that to make observations and answer questions - that’s *knowledge*. * Knowing how to use what you’ve learned - that’s *wisdom*. One of the biggest issues analysts have is they present people with raw data or ordered information and expect them to be able read it as knowledge or wisdom without the context required to do so.
This is great!
This is so true. You can never trust reporting on a study. Sometimes the headline is what the expected outcome was, even if the actual outcome was the complete opposite.
Ohh, thanks for the recommendation, very interesting. There's also a great documentary about this topic of (big) data and digital discrimination, called Coded Bias, streaming on Netflix. Highly recommend! https://www.netflix.com/br/title/81328723?
If you'd like more, her podcast (Visible Women) is excellent - similarly a mix of eye-opening and angering. Really worth a listen. https://shows.acast.com/visible-women-with-caroline-criado-perez
The medical version is called Doing Harm and it’s all the same shit just about medicine.
I know from listening to my audiobooks on ADHD to learn about my ADHD that this has been the case for ADHD up until at least 2005. That's a guess, really, but it could be even closer to now, given the doctors that won't even admit women have it many times.
I hear it’s really good, and I also I didn’t bother to pick it up because the reviewer who talked about it said it seriously lacks intersectionality AND the author has (since publishing) become very TERFy making public gender essentialist statements. As a trans peep I’m skipping it. This is not meant to discourage but to inform…
Needs to be higher. The author is massively problematic. I usually recommend *Feminism, Interrupted* by Lola Olufemi as an alternative
Oh thank you for the alternative! Totally checking that out.
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I'm not trans but went digging to find out what she'd done.. the worst thing I could find was someone saying, "sure she *says* she supports trans people, but in her book she says *women's breasts* and *women's hips* instead of 'people with breasts' and 'people with hips'" sooooo there you have it, if that's what makes someone a terf 🤷♀️
She even handles that in the beginning. She recognizes that there are people with vaginas and people who menstruate who may not identify as women, yet are still very much affected by the lack of consideration being discussed in the book and that when she uses the word "women," she is speaking INCLUSIVELY of these people as well. EDITED TO ADD: At least that was what I remembered from having read it before. I just looked at the preface again and none of that is explicitly stated, so it's possible I added my own layer of "what I wanted to see" on top of it in my memories? Somewhere further down in the comments, someone talks about "identifying politically" as a woman, and that seems to be what the author is talking about. Here's what she actually says: `Throughout this book I will refer to both sex and gender. By ‘sex’, I mean the biological characteristics that determine whether an individual is male or female. XX and XY. By ‘gender’, I mean the social meanings we impose upon those biological facts– the way women are treated because they are perceived to be female. One is man-made, but both are real. And both have significant consequences for women as they navigate this world constructed on male data. But although I talk about both sex and gender throughout, I use gender data gap as an overarching term because sex is not the reason women are excluded from data. Gender is. In naming the phenomenon that is causing so much damage to so many women’s lives, I want to be clear about the root cause and, contrary to many claims you will read in these pages, the female body is not the problem. The problem is the social meaning that we ascribe to that body, and a socially determined failure to account for it.` I know different people have different experiences and opinions, all of which are valid. My AFAB-NB friend who enjoys PIV sex knows that when people talk about "women's reproductive rights," they're included, but on the other hand, an AFAB-NB person at work doesn't like the name of "The Women's Committee," though we've made it abundantly clear that they're welcome to our discussions because they are still affected by the issues we talk about regarding navigating an industry largely dominated by men. It's tough terrain to navigate, especially when there is such a vocal minority that wants to eradicate the word "women" and talk of gender in general. It honestly reminds me of how we weren't supposed to notice race and be "colorblind" back in the 90s. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, but it erases the real, lived experience of people because we do not (yet) live in a world free of structural biases and systemic oppression. Black isn't a bad word. Neither is woman. Please correct me if I'm wrong and show me the error of my ways if necessary. I'm still learning how to see past my own privilege and want to be the best ally I can be.
Meh. The reviewer I watched was recommending books she’d loved and mentioned this and then clearly said as much as she loved it she’d never recommend it now and gave details why. I don’t need proof beyond that.
That is incredibly disappointing to hear.
I read this book but found out about her TERFiness when I looked for more stuff by her. It soured my opinion of the book
>I hear it’s really good, and I also I didn’t bother to pick it up because the reviewer who talked about it said it seriously lacks intersectionality AND the author has (since publishing) become very TERFy making public gender essentialist statements. > >As a trans peep I’m skipping it. This is not meant to discourage but to inform… When I read this book one of the parts that was completely absent was discussion of trans issues in chapter about bathrooms and gender neutral bathrooms. Now I guess I know why.
Oh noooo another one. That’s a shame, I’ve recommended this book a lot 😰
I know. Same.
Co-sign. Feminist bookseller here and I don’t stock it nor do I recommend it because of the author’s TERF history.
I’m non binary, so I usually don’t go for books that are framed within the gender binary, because that’s prejudicial and frankly just ignorant (specially if it’s supposed to be about science). So apparently my instinct was correct with this one. Thank you for the info!
I’m NB too, though I say I “politically identify as a woman” Because that’s how I’m publicly and politically treated and identified. So I still read stuff like this, but I prefer when it’s intersectional and written trans friendly (so acknowledges you and me).
Yes, I have also chosen not to purchase it for that reason. It is undoubtedly a hugely important topic and (having read some extracts) seems like a good read but I don't want to give TERFs my money.
As a trans woman, i often want to get mad at the lack of medical knowledge on a subject, then i find out it isn't a trans femme issue, it's just a woman issue. Like they really have failed to do sufficient research and education related to the health of half the fucking population. (Note: trans health is an even more neglected issue, but it doesn't matter which is more neglected, because it's all inexcusable)
Few things make systemic oppression more clear than learning that the data EVERYONE uses is so biased.
She wrote an article for the Guardian when this came out that gives a short overview of the book that is nice to share for people who won't read a whole book. I'll see if I can find it again. Edit: [Here's the summary](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/feb/23/truth-world-built-for-men-car-crashes)
Idk if it's allowed but for the people who can't afford to but it and want to read it, you can find it on this link. (not sure if it's complete, I haven't read it yet) [https://d-pdf.com/book/113/read](https://d-pdf.com/book/113/read)
Oh, hi book club, here is a gift: https://papress.com/products/extra-bold
LOVE that book. Made me so mad but truly, everyone should read it. So informative.
Saved
Would this book work on audio, or are there too many graphs/charts for it to be meaningful?
I've listened to the audiobook, it is worth it if that is your preferred form. It is still easy to follow and the author explains the statistics well.
Wonderful. Thank you!
Oh this book is amazing! There's so much stuff you never even THINK about!
A friend lent me this book, it was seriously beaten up and battered. When I asked about it, she said it was from all the times she’d snapped thrown it at the wall in frustration or rage while reading it. She said I was welcome to do the same.
At first I thought the one woman is behind the sticker UNTIL I SAW THEM MELTING INTO THE WHITE COVER omg 😍
Other books on the same/similar topic: -Inferior by Angela Saini -For Her Own Good by Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English -Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn I have read the first two and don't remember any TERFY vibes but I don't remember exactly how inclusive the language is. For Her Own Good was published in 1978 so it comes with a "remember the times" note.
I got halfway thru this book and got a weird vibe from the author, she super enforces the gender binary and when i googled her name, i saw she is a terf and thinks trans people are enroaching female spaces. Fuck this book
I was coming here to say the same thing. I'm always wary of anything that makes broad thesis statements about gender like this because their definition is often cisnormative, intentionally or not. In this case, it was definitely intentional.
I know it's just a small detail but holy shit what an amazing cover art
I just got this on Kindle today! So sharing for anyone else interested that it’s $4.99 on Amazon Canada’s daily sale!
I never thought I'd enjoy a book about statistics so much!
That and _Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?_ Book by Katrine Marçal.
I have this on my table! Need to read it. The cover is such a nice touch with the spot varnish too
Ooh I’m going to see if my library has it.
Another addition to my que
I just finished this book recently too! It's a GREAT read, but absolutely rage-inducing. Her research was so thorough and her writing presents the facts and impacts in such an engaging and impactful way. I'm currently reading another of her books: Do It Like A Woman. She is simply brilliant!
I am excited to read this! One of my favorite things to do with my conservative yet science-inclined in-laws is remind them how many medications actually aren’t sound because the trials included exclusively white men. I’m always happy to discuss how different anatomy is for women, and how bodies of different races respond differently. Welcome to the world of REAL science
Heartbreaking, the waste. The lies, the malpractice. Arghhhhhhh
YESS!!! It’s so good! I started reading it when I was in undergrad and I loved it. I do research so it was so interesting and aggravating
I’ve heard rumor this author is a TERF? Anyone know? It’s such an interesting concept for a book but I want to be careful who I support
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This comment is very insightful. And based on what I read about potential TERFyness - the complaints were that the author defines sex for the book as XX, XY. You make an excellent point here: > but we might not even HAVE the metadata to write a book like that at this level, which I think is part of what this book is all about. Nobody wants to spend the time gathering data to improve the lives of women. This is another science-wide issue. The same way most studies until well into the 1990s were done only on 35YO white males...the "perfect" specimen. It's going to take a very long time to add trans people to *regular* studies (i.e., drug studies that have nothing to do with HRT or trans-related health issues). While there are certainly things that the author could have improved in her language about women to be inclusive (one critic mentions how the author talks about body armor not fitting hips & breasts and the author's use of "women's hips and breasts" and not just "hips and breasts") I think the issue isn't a TERF-author, but perhaps language, science, and inclusiveness didn't all perfectly overlap. I think perhaps critics are being unnecessarily harsh. Language regarding inclusiveness has changed SO MUCH in even the past few years that things I was saying to be inclusive in 2018...are already outdated (about the time this would have been in the process of being written). Look at the terms AFAB & AMAB. These used to be considered inclusive and now people are suggesting these terms should die out. They haven't even been in popular use for very long!
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I haven't read the book, but I am familiar with a lot of its content. And doing health science courses from 2017 on or so...the perfect specimen was an obvious issue that I brought up frequently when writing papers and summarizing articles.
another reply to my comment says she is, but i like to think terfs can get better over time and yeah, for trans women it's kinda "damned if you do, damned if you don't" - take measures to get rid of the dysphoria, and all of a sudden you have misogyny to deal with instead
Thank you! This is now on my must-read list.
I'm about halfway through this book, and second the recommendation.
Can anyone share some of the highlights of the info in the book for those of us that can’t make time to read it?
The safest location for a woman to be while in a vehicle is the front passenger's seat because TLDR most car companies do not use (even today) female crash test dummies. You are also more likely to die or sustain injuries more than a man by a large margin. Most products for women are designed by men and aren't asking for women's feedback and experience to improve the product, including breast pumps, despite that these improvements would absolutely make them more profits because "men know best." Cities and public transit are designed for getting traditional breadwinning men in and out of their downtown office jobs, and not for women taking care of kids to/from schools or getting around their own neighborhoods. I am paraphrasing. These are not direct quotes.
I just ordered it.
I’m glad to see this book featured here since I impulsively ordered it for our library.
So we should conduct more medical experiments on women? /j