TwistedCrafter

From the host of Medicine or Myth? and Embarrassing Bodies Down Under. Night sweats, hot flushes, anxiety, insomnia, exhaustion, itchy skin, low libido, painful sex. Any of these sound familiar? Ninety per cent of women experience these symptoms some time between the ages of 40 and 60, but shhhhh...just suck it up, princess. And nobody mention the M word. Menopause and perimenopause (the hormonal roller-coaster years leading up to a woman's last period) are among our last taboo subjects.

For as long as medicine has been a practice, women's bodies have been treated like objects to be practiced on: examined and ignored, idealized and sexualized, shamed, subjugated, mutilated, and dismissed. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences.