The Sydney Feminists

Women, transgender and non-binary people's relationships with the medical system have historically been fraught .  Many of them have left medical appointments feeling unheard, belittled, humiliated or like they are prone to hyperbole.  In order to change our collective relationship, interaction and engagement with the medical system to serve rather than hurt, it is important to understand why our relation to medicine has been problematic for us.  This piece will illustrate the ‘why’ through the lens of women’s experiences. However, transgender and nonbinary people face a multitude of additional healthcare issues. In order to do this topic justice, I will consider it more in-depth in a subsequent post. Image Description: Photo of a nurse taking someone's blood pressure. The photo is taken from above and set against a light blue background. Both of the nurse's arms are outstretched, while only one of the patients is. The nurse is holding the patient's el...

In 2009, I developed a tendency towards migraines. Since then, I have lived in four different countries with entirely different laws on medicine. Some drugs that are banned in one country aren’t in another and vice versa. For over ten years, I’ve searched for an effective replacement for my original migraine medication. During this time, a whisper of a question turned into a deafening demand: why is it so difficult to treat an ailment as common, yet incapacitating, as a migraine? The fact is, migraines affect one in five women. This statistic is disproportionate to the number of men who suffer from migraines (one in fifteen). Migraine research is rarely sex-specific, even though hormone levels affect migraine tendencies and can differ based on sex. The stigma around migraines - ridicule, doubt and disbelief by friends, family and colleagues – might be different if 20% of the male population suffered from these debilitating attacks. Yet migraines remain one of the most underfunde...