Women's bodies are always controlled,
and they're the ones that are controlled with reproduction.
So the pill is the female pill.
We still don't have a male pill.
We still don't have a male pill. And if we did, would we trust them to take it?
That's the kind of argument. So let's trust the women to do it because we know the
women are reliable, kind of thing.
And because we embody the child as the child grows, then
naturally, we're the one who then carries it around all the time after it's been born.
And so I think it has all kinds of knockon effects
for just putting women in a particular place.
Yeah, if there's only a reliable male
contraceptive pill, I think-- yeah, I think men would take the pill. Because they want
to have sex without pregnancy, I think.
I actually think that's terrifying.
I think having the pill, even though it's not
a great option, sometimes, I think it's
one of the areas where women feel they have some kind of control over their body. So if
that wasn't an option for women, I think that's a real kind of scary power shift.
I think about the menopause. I've been reading about that recently.
And this natural process that happens to women has
been medicalized for decades now. It's been
a subject of much attention from pharmaceutical companies, because they can make a lot of
money out of hormone replacement. So you get things like, our ovaries are failing, and
things are in decline. And actually, it's just a normal biological process.
It does have some symptoms for some women that are very unpleasant. But this idea
that it's unnatural and needs to be controlled, is something that's very powerful.
And again, personally, I'm experiencing leading up to the menopause at the moment.
So I'm going through this. And it's something that, even though it's kind of like now we
can medicalize it, we can treat it, we can, as you say, treat this natural event.
Actually, what would be more helpful is to have wider understanding about the impact of it.
We don't really want to talk about periods.
That's why period adverts or sanitary towel adverts have--
Blue water.
blue blood, not real blood. And there's this sense that it's this hidden,
scary thing, I think, still. I was listening to Women's Hour, and they were talking about gushing.
And I had never heard that being talked about in a kind of public forum. And
there is this idea that women's health is unspeakable and kind of hidden and shameful still.
Although we're much more open in many ways, there are still particular aspects of
women's bodies that we don't talk about. And I think the problem that I have is then
that doctors have so much power over us, that they have the specialist knowledge by our bodies,
and we don't actually even understand our own bodies very well. Because it's not
taught to us very well. And our hormonal cycles are a source of great knowledge, if you understand
them. But if you don't, they're just something very scary and something that can be held
up against you by a man. Well, you're behaving like that because your hormones are crazy today.
Your real emotions very much dismissed.
So if you could click your fingers and solve
something today for women and women's health, what would it be?
Do you know, I think one of the best solutions to-- it's all to do with the patriarchal
society that we live in, isn't it? Mm-hmm.
And I think one of the best solutions would be just to somehow magically give all
men periods, as well.
And then they would experience it. They'd experience the pain.
They'd experience the disruption. They'd experience not being able to wear certain clothes or
go to certain places or not being able to leave the house if they're gushing. The world
might change quite radically.
I was watching Fleabag recently,
and she talks about how women's bodies are sites of pain from very early on.
And I think we should celebrate the fact that we're kind of free from bleeding every month. And actually
free from male sexual attention might not be such a bad thing.
I think if it was men that had periods instead of women, I think for one, it would
be seen as less of a sign of fertility and more of a sign of power. And it would be used
in competition with other men and a way to compare themselves, as opposed to other women, as well.
There would be a leave for the men,
like say, four-day leave for your period. And that wouldn't be part of your sick leave.
It would just be leave for that purpose. reckon if men had periods, particularly
around them being young adolescents, it will be kind of a rite of passage, a bit like the
bar mitzvah. It will be like the equivalent of you becoming a man. And it'll be something
that would be, I think, among the youth, something that you might be actually quite proud of
and you'll talk about a lot. And it will be really celebrated. They'll
be parallels between, oh, it's the blood coming out of you, and like war, and really kind
of masculine, traditional ideas of violence and power from the past. So I think if men
had periods, it would be kind of moving towards that way of thinking.
If I could click my fingers and solve something today for women's health, I think
it would definitely be mental health, in relation to body image and diet culture. I think there
is a lot to be said for that.
And I think if that could be improved, I think that would change people's lives.
Just in the media, less objectifying women as a whole,
and just appreciate who they are beyond how they look.
If I could click my fingers and solve one thing to do with women's health today,
I would basically change the access to abortions. I think at the moment, we have to speak to
two doctors. There's a big social stigma around it. It should be as easily accessible as,
say, the morning-after pill.
If I could click my fingers and solve
something with women's health, I would make more affordable options for couples that couldn't get pregnant.
I think for me, it's still about
reproductive control, and being from Northern Ireland, the fact that women in Northern Island
still do not have the right to access abortion. Even for cases extreme that are about foetal
abnormalities that mean the child will not survive, you still have to travel to England
or Scotland to achieve that. So I think we still, have a long way to go.
And the control that is exerted over women's bodies is something we need to fight against.
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