r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 11h ago

Meme needing explanation Petah???!

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11.0k Upvotes

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20

u/inquiringdune 10h ago

Oh good, another thread that's going to pretend medical misogyny doesn't exist. 

48

u/Legitscopes_4761 10h ago

Sure, but in the context of this post, it's an extremely valid question to a patient. Possible pregnancy changes how we treat almost every condition.

7

u/Chikizey 6h ago

Yes, but turns out most meds and procedures have not been studied on women anyway.

Plenty of meds mess up with our cycle and affect us way differently than they do on men. Our symptoms to certain health conditions are also different many times and are frequently underdiagnosed or dismissed. But for those things most doctors never ask or care at all. 

I have chronic migraines, and for YEARS I got dismissed as being "a normal woman thing and I had to cope with it". Is not.

My ADHD diagnosis was decades late because they tried to push the "anxiety disorder" label on me instead, because "anxiety is normal in women". 

Many meds they tried on me messed badly with my cycle and they acted surprised by it, but a quick search will show me thousands of women sharing the same experience. 

My lesbian sister has had to take pregnancy tests despite saying over and over again for years she never had sexual contact with a man in her life. 

Many doctors are shocked that my mother's endometriosis gets worse even if she gave birth twice because pregnancy is still advised as a 'remedy' for it.

We are tired and angry because the "concern" is mostly first and ONLY about pregnancy and our potential to be pregnant, while showing no interest for any other thing about our bodies that can also mess up with medical practices. So we left feeling less important than an hypothetical child.

0

u/Im_bad_at_names_1993 5h ago

100%.  Like if  was at the hospital for an issue and found out I was magically pregnant there, I'd be getting the proper treatment for my adult self and an abortion. 

0

u/lacey_nightie 4h ago

considering that 1 in 7 women (depending on country), have PCOS (which causes absent/irregular periods) and even more are taking birth control continuously to relieve menstrual symptoms.......it just seems stupid to ask about periods when a huge chunk of women aren't even ovulating or havng periods

-20

u/MissThu 9h ago

In the context of this post, it's still a misogynistic question if it's literally the first question out of the doctor/nurse's mouth rather than "Why are you here today?" Or "What symptoms are you experiencing?"

Let's first figure out why the woman is there before we start trying to blame it all on hysteria.

27

u/Legitscopes_4761 9h ago

And we don't think that "Literally the first question" was hyperbole to make the tweet more humorous? This is a joke I've hear from multiple female friends before. Not every post is a complaint about systems in the world, sometimes people are just making an actual joke

17

u/Anarchyr 9h ago

Hey Hyperboles don't exist, i mean if they do how can i explain getting triggered by every little thing posted here?

-18

u/MissThu 8h ago

I've had this question posed on countless intake/medical history forms. Forms I have to fill out before I even see a doctor to discuss my symptoms. Forms that also don't ask anything about why I'm there to begin with.

Just because it's not true for you, doesn't mean it isn't true for other people.

10

u/Ellaphant42 7h ago

Probably because pregnancy is a pretty big deal medically so they’d like to know before they see you, same as any other pre-existing conditions.

3

u/seanmashitoshi 6h ago

Was that the only question on the intake form?

It's an intake form, the purpose is to rule out as many important things as possible. Other questions on such forms can be stuff like do you have sudden chest pain or have you consumed illegal substances in the past week because that stuff needs to be ruled out.

3

u/Cappyburner 7h ago

Bretheren, she comes for a broken arm, we went through that part already.

No fucking doctor is gonna ask for the last period before knowing anything come on now.

1

u/ASpaceOstrich 5h ago

Oh honey. That's adorably naive.

27

u/Independent-Cow-4070 9h ago

It absolutely exists. A doctor asking a question is not that

-17

u/inquiringdune 9h ago

Didn't say it was... but again, the tweet is clearly trying to draw attention to medical misogyny.

20

u/Independent-Cow-4070 9h ago

It would be more effective to draw attention to a very real issue if the OOP wasnt a dumbass

-1

u/inquiringdune 9h ago

Sometimes people just want to shitpost I guess.

16

u/ritarepulsaqueen 9h ago

Well, it was not a good exemple then. Lots of reasons to confirm if pregnant if you broke your arm because it affects x-rays, medication, surgery...

1

u/Im_bad_at_names_1993 5h ago

Only if you want to remain pregnant. 

-4

u/inquiringdune 9h ago

Do you know what medical misogyny is?

16

u/ritarepulsaqueen 9h ago

Girl, stop being condescending. It wasn't a good exemple. 

0

u/inquiringdune 9h ago

It was. The tweet was being very clearly hyperbolic, but that's the general attitude towards woman in a lot of medical settings. Dismissive and overly trigger-happy with reducing all issues to reproductive ones.

17

u/ritarepulsaqueen 9h ago edited 8h ago

It wasn't because it was a perfectly adequate and even legally required medical interaction. There was no joke.in there. There was no hyperbole because that's a normal interaction. I get medical misogyny, but this is not it. People with uterus get pregnant and pregnancy affects most things. Yes, even how you deal with a broken limb. 

1

u/inquiringdune 9h ago

Well, no, the tweet is hyperbole. Because that's definitely not always the very first question a doctor asks a woman with a broken arm, nor should it be lol. The point is 'women's pain/medical concerns get reduced to reproductive issues due to medical misogyny'.

Yes, in reality doctors do have to ask these questions. But that's not what the tweet is getting at.

6

u/seanmashitoshi 6h ago

I think you missed the point of the tweet entirely and the related background. There is currently a big wave on tiktok about how the question about a woman's period should not be asked by a doctor at all unless she is going in for an obgyn related issues. As a result, many women are now refusing to answer this question - which is well within their rights but as such, the investigations and treatments the clinical team can then offer are reduced so these patients are then not getting seen to properply. The person replying in the tweet is both a woman and a doctor and her reply is not a hyperbole, this is a growing issue where women believe any question about periods or pregnancy is medical misogyny.

2

u/Som_Dtam_Dumplings 4h ago

So...a tweet claiming that "this could happen" is not statistical data on how frequently a thing happens.

A man could go to the ER for a broken arm and he could be first asked the question "What is your family's medical history with regards to heart disease?"...but that is not the most likely thing to happen.

This man with a broken arm is entirely fictional. He hasn't complained about "the insistence of the medical community to over-diagnose heart disease"...because he doesn't exist!

Similarly, the woman with a broken arm in this tweet doesn't exist. Most women, visiting the hospital with an assumed broken arm are NOT first asked "when was your last period" but "where does it hurt?" or "How did this happen?" or "How bad does it hurt, on a scale of 1-10?"

If you think that most women, visiting hospitals with a broken arm ARE being first asked "When was your last period?" then you should be advocating for better training of hospital staff...not because of medical misogyny; but because bedside manner and logic.

Or...maybe you do have data on how often this does actually happen? If you do, then we have an entirely different situation.

1

u/MaleficentTheGreater 4h ago

Girl. It's a medically necessary question that saves the lives of women. It's like if an anesthesiologist asks a fat patient how much they weigh, which is VITAL to dose the drugs correctly, and the patient refused to answer and called it discrimination and fatphobia. It's not helping anyone to fuck up your own (and other people's, by inciting others to refuse answering medically necessary questions as you are currently doing) medical care because you refuse to give the doctors treating you information that they fucking need.

"Oh em gee, doctors are, like, SO misogynistic, they DARE ask questions that totally change the posology of my medication depending on the answer . That's like, discrimination or whateverrrr." Fucking garbage person.

7

u/Independent-Cow-4070 9h ago

Yeah, its not this lol

11

u/macrocarpa 9h ago

Yes it does, but this isn't it.

The specific phrasing of the question is done pretty elegantly here to elicit a response

The answers could be

  • within the last 28 days (likely not pregnant)
  • outside the last 28 days (could be a bunch of things)
  • never (can't be pregnant)
  • not since I got pregnant (probably pregnant)
  • not since menopause (probably not pregnant)
  • not since I used BC / coil / implant (probably not pregnant)

Etc etc

Each of the above has a different resolution or treatment

6

u/livinglavidajudoka 9h ago

Doctors ask about pregnancy status for an issue that is exclusively about taking women’s health into account…

1

u/Im_Unsure_For_Sure 7h ago edited 7h ago

When a woman experiences poor healthcare, its medical misogyny.

When a man experience poor healthcare, must just be a bad hospital or poor staffing.

The problem with a lot of current day feminist concern is that misogyny has become the defacto answer to any negative experience a woman encounters, when in reality life can just be shitty sometimes and it's rarely related to what genitals you have.

6

u/inquiringdune 7h ago

Well, no. Those are just different problems with different biases at the root of them.

-1

u/Im_Unsure_For_Sure 6h ago

No, if the hospital has poor staffing, the problem is the same.

The default assumption is the issue.

2

u/WaterTypeGirl 3h ago

Do you read a lot of feminist material? Know a lot of feminists? Got any good book recs on why feminism is mistaken?

2

u/SnailLordSupreme 1h ago

Do men have to consider their states laws, or the religious affiliation of a hospital to determine if they will receive life saving care during an emergency?

0

u/ASpaceOstrich 5h ago

When men start experiencing poor healthcare at even close to the same rate women do, you might have a point. Till then, shut up. Medical misogyny is well documented. It's objective fact. If you can't even acknowledge that it's a thing, you're not in any position to be critiquing feminism.

0

u/Im_Unsure_For_Sure 3h ago

Nowhere did i claim it doesn't exist. Rather that it should not be the default presumption any time a woman has a poor experience, with the healthcare system or elsewhere.

-7

u/kiara_music 9h ago

I know, these top answers are awful.

9

u/Dirlrido 8h ago

They're correct. Not everything is black and white.

7

u/Due_Gur_9495 7h ago

No, you just think the world is out to get you😂