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When an idealized cisgender male body is used as a so-called standard, it’s easy to view the female body as flawed. This is a core tenet of the patriarchy.
There is some research that suggests women in cultures that don’t use the word menopause may suffer less during their menopause transition. This doesn’t mean that changing a word will change whether a woman has hot flushes or vaginal dryness, but perhaps when a society publicly embraces menopause as a change as opposed to a dreadful disease there are downstream effects.
Erasing menopausal women from history is literally reducing women to the functioning of their uterus and ovaries. When something feels off balance I replace the word “women” with “men” to see how it sounds. If it sounds reasonable I’m more likely to consider the hypothesis worthy of further evaluation, but if we would never speak about men that way, then there’s going to be a lot of side eye on my part.
Some researchers have postulated that the physical act of heterosexual sex delays menopause. The hypothesis boils down to the penis being so mighty that it can drive hormonal changes that influence ovarian aging. I don’t find the data compelling.
By the time a woman enters her menopause transition she has likely absorbed a lifetime of toxic messaging about her size and shape. Too fat or too thin. Too big or too small. At times it feels like the essence of being a woman is to be in a constant state of apologizing for your body.
It’s a penis, not a magic wand.
The reality of women’s sexuality has been fictionalized to serve a patriarchal script and medicalized to support pharmaceutical industries.
