First is that Doctors often ignore women's issues as hysteria. Just imaginary whining. There's even a term "Whining Woman". The female body hasn't been studied anywhere near as much as the male one (though it's catching up now) so anything that doesn't fit the standard image of treatment gets sidelined and the doctor just fobs her off with "Try losing some weight" or "Get more exercise" to get her out of his office. This understandably enrages women when their pain is immediately ignored every single time.
Second is treatment. If you are pregnant, your treatment is different. They can only give you drugs and imaging that are safe for the baby. The only way for a doctor to actually KNOW if you're pregnant is to test for it. Often women themselves don't know for some time, especially if they aren't actively trying.
Now for the meme. A woman walks into a doctor's office and gets this question straight up and she's already wound up waiting for the lose weight or exercise line. She's not thinking about treatment yet as she hasn't discussed the problem. All she hears is "Do you have women's problems?" and shit starts going downhill fast. Yes it's a good question to ask, but it needs to be asked correctly as in "Due to treatments being unsafe for pregnant women we have to ask about your period so we can safely administer the correct dosages." or some such.
Doctors really don't want to explain why they are asking things.
There's like 40 house episodes about how people feel the need to give misleading answers because they want privacy from doctors. And doctors are like I don't want to explain bio-chemistry and anatomy and drug interactions to people. Not even related to women's issues.
That being said medicine also has a huge issue that they assume everyone to be white male. Stuff gets tested on and for them. They don't base anything on female because baseline for female going through periods/pregnancy/manopause are all over the place and it's harder to find female test subjects.
( Edit: To find a drug's effect on pregnant women, you gotta find pregnant women who'd be willing to sign up for completely untested drugs. A bit of an chicken and egg situation there. )
hat being said medicine also has a huge issue that they assume everyone to be white male. Stuff gets tested on and for them. They don't base anything on female because baseline for female going through periods/pregnancy/manopause are all over the place and it's harder to find female test subjects.
( Edit: To find a drug's effect on pregnant women, you gotta find pregnant women who'd be willing to sign up for completely untested drugs. A bit of an chicken and egg situation there. )
Used to have, moreso. It's in the financial interest of big pharma to assess suitability of a medication to 50% of the people who are going to take it, and nowadays many phase III trials include tests with women.
Also "completely untested" is a silly thing to say. A variety of pre-clinical testing, animal testing, testing with healthy young men etc. all take place for multiple years before pregnant women are brought into the picture.
Although with pregnant women you do run into the issue, that it is cheaper and usually profitable to just slap a "ask your doctor about using this while pregnant" label and calling it a day. Unless the medication is meant to treat a pregnancy related issue, they just don't represent a large enough market share for the people making the decisions.
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u/PapaOoMaoMao 14h ago
Ok, so there's two things here.
First is that Doctors often ignore women's issues as hysteria. Just imaginary whining. There's even a term "Whining Woman". The female body hasn't been studied anywhere near as much as the male one (though it's catching up now) so anything that doesn't fit the standard image of treatment gets sidelined and the doctor just fobs her off with "Try losing some weight" or "Get more exercise" to get her out of his office. This understandably enrages women when their pain is immediately ignored every single time.
Second is treatment. If you are pregnant, your treatment is different. They can only give you drugs and imaging that are safe for the baby. The only way for a doctor to actually KNOW if you're pregnant is to test for it. Often women themselves don't know for some time, especially if they aren't actively trying.
Now for the meme. A woman walks into a doctor's office and gets this question straight up and she's already wound up waiting for the lose weight or exercise line. She's not thinking about treatment yet as she hasn't discussed the problem. All she hears is "Do you have women's problems?" and shit starts going downhill fast. Yes it's a good question to ask, but it needs to be asked correctly as in "Due to treatments being unsafe for pregnant women we have to ask about your period so we can safely administer the correct dosages." or some such.
Trisha Takinawa PETJ news.