Tag: Feminism

What I learnt at Clue last week #Periodically 14
Nearly everyday I learn something new from the cycle tracking app Clue. Usually it’s about my own body, a new trend the app has noticed, a connection I thought was a coincidence that actually might be cycle related, or a fact that the app provides in its educational features. Last week however, I was lucky enough to make it to two of Clue’s events, as the blossoming company organised a week of talks in London.

Tuesday at Facebook London

On Tuesday evening I went to Facebook’s London HQ for a talk entitled ‘Hormones and the Cycle’ and on Wednesday I went to a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session on ‘Sex and the Cycle’. The events were brilliant and provided an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life, with one common interest – a desire to learn more about the menstrual cycle. The events were hosted by Clue’s Ambassador Program Manager, Maddie Sheesley, and its Researcher and Science & Education Manager, Anna Druet. This pair of brilliant FemTech advocates both fought the corner for how powerful education about reproductive health can be – teach a girl about her body and you can change the world.

Runway East for Lunch on Wednesday

So without further ado, here are a few things I learnt at Clue this week, that I didn’t know before.
- PMS as a concept that was coined before we even knew about hormonal fluctuations in the menstrual cycle, and yet we still use the same information to talk about and categorise it. Clue have written about the rarely discussed positive effects of PMS.
- I knew that the cervix moved throughout the cycle (as I terrifyingly discovered when I was learning how to use the menstrual cup). What I didn’t know was that it moves up and down throughout your cycle, an occurrence that can improve, or at least change, how sex can feel. What’s more, the combined pill (that’s the standard birth control pill) stops the cervix from moving up and down, it potentially lowers slightly during a placebo week. There are also reports of cervical orgasms – who knew?!
- Perhaps most interesting for me and my own health was learning that research strongly suggests that chronic pain is worse towards the end of the luteinising phase of one’s cycle – the run up to a period. I clarified at the event, was this reproductive chronic pains or all chronic pain? It is all chronic pain. So when I wrote a few weeks ago that ‘whatever the problem is, it is either worsening or being worsened by my menstrual cycle’ I was right on the money. Even if it’s my kidneys, my bladder, my bowels or elsewhere, it was always going to get worse around my period because pain tolerance goes down. Imagine how useful that knowledge would have over the last year if I’d had it. Knowledge of self is POWERFUL.
- Some research has suggested that a low risk of pregnancy can cause people to enjoy sex more – explaining potential peaks of sex drive near menstruation. I certainly know a lot of people that can attest that low risk of pregnancy is sexy.
- Very early research suggests that the clitoris grows 1/5 of its size during ovulation. That is bonkers!
- The level of Oestrogen in combined pills has been dropping over the years. Now they start low and build up if necessary.
- Each time you’re late taking the combined pill the follicle grows slightly. So if you consistently, occasionally forget to take the pill on time, it can eventually lead to ovulation. That is terrifying (but also kind of cool).
- The Progesterone Only Pill (POP/Mini-Pill) stops pregnancy by changing the consistency of your cervical fluid to block sperm. I was on the mini-pill for two years and only now do I know how it works.
- Emergency contraceptives aren’t all equally effective at every point in your cycle – also terrifying and not common knowledge.
- Most methods (or all, I’m unsure) of tracking ovulation are retrospective – we can’t yet predict when that moment is going to happen.
Interestingly, many of the questions from the audience started with ‘I recently came off the pill…’ or similar. So it’s not just something I’m imagining, there is the demand for a contraceptive shake-up. The events did remind me how valuable and life-changing hormonal contraception can be, but if you ask me, there has to be a better way. One of my favourite things about Clue is that the data you input is used in research into the menstrual cycle, so while there’s so much more to learn, at least my data is helping the cause (I hope!)

To keep up with what I’m doing, follow me on Twitter or Instagram for beautiful photos of my lunch with a side of condoms. Thanks, Clue!
October 2, 2017
Does being ‘anti-pill’ make me a bad feminist? #Periodically 13

As discussed at great length (sorry) in A Tale of Two Pills I consider my relationship with hormonal contraceptives to be over. It is an unpopular opinion, one I’ve struggled to conclude myself for a long time.

In my world, the pill has always been seen as this great feminist tool. It sat on its pedestal throughout my childhood promising independence, reproductive freedom, sexual liberation and professional advancement. All my feminist icons raved about it, my sisters took it, my friends’ acne had been cleared, boobs had flourished, pain had lessened and my school despised it – by the time I was a teenager it was the most attractive piece of candy I had ever laid my eyes on. It symbolised maturity and being a strong, no nonsense woman. Until of course, I started taking it.

Last week I read Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control by Holly Grigg-Spall. I’ve been following Holly’s stuff for a couple of years or so now, but it took my longer than I care to admit to get to the book itself. While I can’t say I agree with everything suggested in Sweetening the Pill there were dozens and dozens of moments where I found myself saying ‘so it’s not just me!’

“The pill is a rejection of femaleness. In swallowing the tablets women are swallowing the negative connotations that are attached to female biology,” Page 34.

When you strip the pill back of all the obvious benefits our doctors, and in America, the pharmaceutical companies rave about, you begin to realise that what the pill actually offers is a cure to femaleness. Hormonal acne? Take the pill. Horrible PMS? Take the pill. Heavy bleeds? Pill. Time of work due to menstruation? Pill! Period pain? Pill. And that’s before they start saying ‘hey you don’t need a period at all’ (to which the answer is the mini pill, implant or injection).

“In lowering the hormonal levels and flattening out the fluctuations the pill takes away the natural peak of libido women experience in connection with ovulation and sometimes pre-menstruation,” page 50.

I think the most poignant moment of Sweetening the Pill for me was the idea that when you try to suppress the natural lows of a menstrual cycle, you also inadvertently begin to suppress the natural highs. Menstrual cycles are (duh!) cyclical – that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Good skin and hair days are often just as common as bad ones, randy days can be just as common as days when you don’t want anyone to come near you. In fact, your cycle can work for you, it’s not always a question of fighting it. Problem is, we don’t get to know how our cycle works. It can take up to six years for a menstrual cycle to mature, I was on the pill just over two years after I started my period and it took a year to become regular after I came off the pill. For many women, life on the pill is all we really know and the withdrawal from it can be so scary that it frightens us back onto the pill.

It’s scary because when you start to think about it, you can’t not think about it. Why are we taking a pill every day when we’re only actually fertile for a few days every cycle – ought we not limit our scope a bit?

As the book discusses at the length, the ‘anti-pill’ rhetoric has always been dominated by the Religious Right. It’s what put me off. I always assumed being opposed to the pill meant be anti-feminist, sexist and backwards. Thinking that people who spoke against the pill must be religious nuts was an opinion I held for a long time. It remains an unpopular opinion. When I talk to others about my experience with the pill I’m always sure to add the disclaimer ‘not that I’m at all suggesting you stop taking the pill,’ when actually I think that might be exactly what I’m suggesting.

“FAM is absolutely not the same thing as the ineffective Rhythm Method, which tries to predict fertility based on the length of past cycles. Don’t believe those who tell you that FAM doesn’t work; women using it can achieve effectiveness rates as high as the pill – 99.4 percent.” Toni Weshler quoted in Sweetening the Pill, page 157.

What women, like myself, who have had issues with hormonal contraceptives need to do is demand more options, non-hormonal ones. Being done with hormonal birth control is not the same thing as being done with birth control. The book talks a lot about the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). I had always associated it with the Rhythm Method, unsurprisingly preached about at my catholic school, that has been proven time and time again, not to work as a contraceptive method. Learning how FAM is different was really interesting, and it’s definitely something I’ll be looking into in the future. It’s fascinating to see how FAM and Femtech are beginning to offer an alternative.

When the pill was released women had to stand up to their doctors to get the pill, today they must fight to get off it,” page 61. #RELATABLE

I want more options for female reproductive rights and I think we have the technology to find them – the research just isn’t happening as much as it should be, YET. Rejecting the pill from my own life hasn’t been an anti-feminist act but rather, it has been a feminist act of defiance for the benefit of my own quality of life, and the quality of life of other people in similar situations. In Sweetening the Pill Holly makes reference to hoards of other articles, journals and books, many of which I have now added to my reading list. Sadly, a lot of the evidence for hormonal birth control making women depressed, feel different (worse) and less libidinous is anecdotal and is rarely taken seriously. I’m hopeful that the more anecdotal evidence we report to our doctors, the more likely it will be that quantifiable research projects will take place.

September 18, 2017
Recovery & do I Regret Having the Laparoscopy? #Periodically 12

I am now over three weeks post-laparoscopy. I’ve started working, from home happily, and I could be doing a lot worse. But for the sake of record, I thought I better write about how everything’s healing up.

Badly, is the answer.

In my blog about the surgery itself I included this picture of my stomach’s ‘transformation’.

Unfortunately, I think shared my before and after photos a little prematurely. Ten days after the surgery my belly button, for want of a less disgusting word, exploded. Quite literally. But it was a bank holiday weekend and we were on the way to a party, so I slapped on a plaster and carried on. Towards the end of the party my belly button was so incredibly itchy, and as I changed the plaster I discovered the explosion had continued. Hoping it would go away I stuck another plaster on and continued with my life.

I’ll spare you the close up, the live show made my sister gag, #sexy, but here’s how much worse it is from two days post-op.

The Tuesday after the bank holiday I decided it was looking too suspicious and so I went to see a nurse at my new/old GP. She poked it a bit and said it wasn’t infected, covered it with an iodine gauze and said don’t shower or take the plaster off until I see you on Friday.

Friday rolls around slowly with a lot of itching, moaning and stinging. When the nurse and the doctor remove the plaster, hoping to see a nice, dried up wound, they instead find three blisters where the lower half of the wound had been. ‘Huh, I’ve never seen that before’ is yet another thing I had never hoped to hear about my body.

Still not convinced that this new mass growing out of me, like something from Alien, was infected, the doctor umed and ahed before saying ‘it’s the weekend – give her some antibiotics’. So the weekend went by with me being pumped full of penicillin, taking awkward half body showers, all while the delightful wound continued to blister and get redder and angrier.

Another Tuesday later I’m back at the doctors being inspected and prodded. Still not thinking its infected, the doctor concluded it must be some sort of ‘skin reaction’ and so then I was prescribed Fucidin H (an antibiotic + steroid combo) to rub on this, the world’s most disgusting wound. During this appointment the doctor asked about my pain and pushed on my abdomen. Since my files haven’t correctly transferred from Swansea, trying to explain ‘yes it hurts but it often hurts anyway’ was a little longwinded.

As I write this I’ve returned from the doctors again where this time two doctors had a gander. It looks like I have hyperkeratosis, meaning that the skin is out overgrowing itself. The result is that I might have a bit more of a scar than expected.

SO THE PHYSICAL RECOVERY IS GOING GREAT. Anything too strenuous still hurts, jumping and such, and long walks conjure up some stomach pain on top of the preexisting pelvic pain so that’s nice. Meanwhile the other wound is acting quite proper and is healing up nicely. An actual nice surprise was that my cycle hasn’t been effected by the surgery at all. My period came rather promptly and behaved fairly normally.

Given the increasingly bizarre situation of my belly button my mum said to me the other day ‘I wish you’d never had this laparoscopy’. I’ve been mulling that sentence over for a few days now. Do I regret having the surgery? After all, it didn’t find the cause of my pain and it has temporarily deformed and possibly permanently scared my abdomen.

I can’t bring myself to regret having the surgery. Firstly, it was never really a choice. I was handed from doctor to doctor and they said ‘hey next step is surgery’ and I said ‘hey OK’. It was never an active decision, it was medical practice and advice. Every single one of my symptoms points, or pointed, towards my reproductive health. Checking my uterus out surgically when an ultrasound had displayed nothing, was the next logical step. In fact at that point in time, it was the only step. Now that we know my reproductive health is in tip top condition, we can re-giggle my symptoms and look at my body in a ‘well we know it’s not that so could it be…’ kind of way. The final reason is that to wish I’d never had the surgery achieves literally nothing. I’ve had it, it happened, we know what we know. I wish I knew more, but I don’t BUT I will. Of course it’s frustrating, but powering on is the only fruitful attitude to have.

Besides, no one ever really saw my belly button anyway – I’ve never been one for crop tops.

September 11, 2017