A Dyke A Broad, # 1
Sparkly pink delusions, the male default body, and my secret crush on...
Happy Friday!
This week, instead of figuring out how to follow some of Anne Applebaum’s really useful advice in A Citizen’s Guide to Defending Democracy, I decided to distract myself from the impending U.S. election by grousing about the sparkly pink delusions of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
It’s important, I know, getting checked out. And has saved lives, including some I know.
BUT…
All that stereotypically feminine hoohah also gives the misleading impression that that’s all we need to worry about as females. Our tits and cunts. No matter that in the U.S., anyway, it’s a heart attack that’s gonna kill us (especially if Trump wins again). Seemingly, the same thing that kills males.
I say seemingly, because our coronaries are not at all the same as they are for men—because our hearts aren’t. Not their size or how they work, including the rate of electrical impulses. In fact, after poking through Caroline Criado-Perez’s book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, I learn that everything we know about male bodies can really only be applied to—other males, regardless of gender identity. (Elizabeth Pollitzer says there is growing evidence that “cells differ according to sex irrespective of their history of exposure to sex hormones.”)
Nevertheless, as Criado-Perez points out repeatedly using plenty of examples that I will now steal, scientists just can’t shake the idea that the standard human body is male, and females just some kind of defective knock-off, no matter how many times researchers like Sherry Marts and Sarah Keitt (2004) show that male and female humans have so many sex differences in almost every tissue and organ system in our bodies that only using male models in research is actively harming women.
So sixteen years after that study, and a generation after activists fought the CDC to redefine AIDS to include women’s symptoms, the little people in white lab coats are still mostly using male animals in preclinical studies, and men in clinical studies. And text books. And the definition of diseases.
And women, well… women aren’t even the research subjects for things geared towards women. One report showed 88 percent of studies on female prevalent diseases mostly used male animals. And in 2015 when Sprout Pharmaceuticals decided to run an additional trial for their “female Viagra” they did it with 23 men and 2 women.
With this kind of thinking, the females of the species are medical guinea pigs screwed all down the line, from (mis)diagnosis to medication, surgery, hardware, all developed for the male body.
Now you know why you had such a bad reaction to that medication. Or the dosage is off. Or why it doesn’t work at all. Thanks, lads.
So get your tits checked out, but keep an eye on your heart, too. And your colon which, by the way, does not develop cancer in the same places as men.
As for coronaries, be aware that seven out of eight women just have a little shortness of breath, chest pressure, nausea, maybe jaw or back pain. None of that atypical hysterical pearl-clutching men get up to.
If you need a break from this heart and soul-destroying year, read this joyful piece about my new role model and eternal crush Isabella Rosellini. ISABELLA I LOVE YOU.
Coming next week, a look at my election night survival pack, and why France’s Public Service Announcements will never in a million years get anybody to wear masks.
Be a pal, and get your friends to
Disgruntledly yours,
Kelly the Cogswell
Isabella is a GODDESS!!!!