Peoplewithperiodpain
The BBC goes into contortions to avoid saying that it’s only female people who can have pain from menstruation.
A new study will seek to identify changes in the brain when teenagers experience period pain and whether it is linked to developing chronic pain in later life.
In what is described as a world first, researchers at the University of Oxford will conduct a trial of 11 to 20-year-olds using a range of tests including MRI scans. Half of the 120 volunteers recruited into the RoADPain project will suffer from period pain and half will not.
It’s just bizarre to word it that way. It’s not generalized “teenagers” or “11 to 20-year-olds” who can have period pain. It’s girls/women. They know that of course, and they carefully don’t say it.
There’s one slip-up.
“I think it’s really important that we take period pain seriously,” she said. “About 30% to 40% of teenagers and young women will have periods that are so painful that they can’t go to work, can’t go to school, can’t do their normal activities.
“If we can reduce the risk of people developing chronic pain in the future, that would be so much easier than trying to treat it once it’s developed.”
Oops, how did that “young women” get in there? How embarrassing.
Dr Coxon said she felt it was time to change the narrative that all period pain is normal.
“Some people do experience period pain that is having a severe impact on their life and us telling them just to get on with it is never going to be helpful,” she said. “And if we keep that narrative going it’s just going to be harmful and lead to much more distrust in the system.”
Sigh.
You know what leads to distrust in the system? Lying about basic biology.
You’d think they’d know this. It’s not an innocent mistake; it takes effort to reword things in order to avoid using The Forbidden Words. Did they really think nobody would notice? Do they think everyone is going to follow their usage of Newspeak, that everyone would bow down, salute, and obey? Not bloody likely. What do they get out of this activism apart from reputational self-destruction? “BBC” is now synonymous with “institutional capture.” It is now a well-known fact that the BBC cannot be trusted when reporting on this issue. How can that distrust not but spread to the entire corporation? Did they bargain on that when they decided to become trans “allies”?
They think they aren’t lying. They think this is a new understanding of biology.
There is a meme going around with a chart explaining the basic points about X and Y chromosomes determining sex, and noting that some people are offended by this. Below this image is lengthy text from an endocrinologist talking about why this is wrong and misguided and bigoted. This double meme is being shared by people to bolster their opinion of themselves as the ones on the side of science, the ones with the real facts. A damn endocrinologist has supported their position, clearly that’s all that is necessary.
There is a huge difference between 30-40% of teenagers and 30-40% of teenage girls. This statistic is simply wrong. If you want to be sciency and all that, you need to get your statistics right.
Will the study be comparing girls with period pain, with boys without? Because the wording allows for that. And such a study would be less than illuminating.
When the very reason that research into period pain hasn’t been researched is that it only happens to girls and women, it is doubly insulting for them to imply that they’re only doing the research now because it’s possible that it’s generic ‘people’ who are suffering; i.e. those who have always been people: men.
If they had ever bothered to speak with us they’d know that horrific period pain doesn’t cause chronic pain; it’s caused by the same things which do cause chronic pain – things like endometriosis (another female-only, so under-researched, disorder) and connective tissue disorders (also suffered by a female-dominant cohort).