Guest Post by Amber Steele, University of Cambridge
There have been a couple of stories in the press recently touting a study by Joanna Spencer and colleagues suggesting that PMDD may be genetic. I had a cursory look through the paper and read the article. Changes in dendritic branching of neurons in the limbic system across the menstrual cycle, owing to changes in estrogen, has been well documented in the female mice and rat. Additionally, changes in neuronal activity and accompanying receptor activity is also well document during periods of hormone change, again in the female mice and rat models. Individual differences in how this change occurs and the fact that it can be linked to differences in genes make sense. It seems that Spencer et al., have identified one of probably many genes that mediates these differences. This is not the first time that a gene of this kind has been identified or implicated. For example, Susan Girdler at Chapel Hill has done some interesting work on PMDD and suggests a genetic i.e., differing protein response to a hormone, difference in response to progesterone that might, in part, explain symptoms associated with PMDD.
The fact that Spencer et al., found a relationship to anxious behavior does not say anything conclusively about PMS or PMDD. It only states that if you have this variant then your levels of anxiety may change as estrogen fluctuates.
The news article is exploiting the findings from the Spencer study to construct a simplistic view of varying responses to hormone change within and across women. I suppose the author of the news article thought it might be interesting to examine the debate on whether or not there is a “clinically disordered” state during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle in some women and whether it should be recognized officially. While it may do this, it also perpetuates misunderstandings and stereotypes about women’s hormones and their emotional states.
Amber Steele is a graduate student at the University of Cambridge with a biomedical background. She is writing a thesis is on wellbeing over the menstrual cycle and how it relates to hormonal “biomarkers” cortisol and progesterone.
If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you likely saw the new Dodge Charger ad “Man’s Last Stand.” If not, drop what you are doing and watch it right this minute and sound the gender panic alarm!
There’s a crisis!
Masculinity is endangered! The women are taking over!
Men are-day in and day out–emasculated by the nagging, demanding, self-centered women in their lives and their trivial concerns (vampire lust! hairless sinks! fruit for breakfast! civility toward family members!)
It is so bad out there, apparently, that men need to recapture their manliness by “driving the car (they) want to drive.” (I don’t know what’s more offensive here, women-as-problem or car-as-solution)
The blogosphere and its environs is a-buzz with the work of MacKenzie Fegan who found, in her words, the commercial uh….“oft-putting”. She posted this response. Not sure I would have chosen the same complaints to highlight, but I did cheer with this dig:
“I will get angry and you will ask if it’s that time of the month.”
Crisis? If only there were oneand that tired old excuse for not taking women seriously was on the way out!
That’s the report from this arts blogger at the New York Times. Yesterday, doctors from the Methodist Center for Performing Arts Medicine of the Methodist Hospital in Houston held a daylong symposium on the management of medical problems among musicians specifically and performing artists more generally. Performing-arts medicine is a relatively new specialty, and frankly, I’m not surprised by the need for it. (I know a drummer who has ongoing neck and back problems caused – or at least aggravated – by his art.)
But I was surprised to see a blanket recommendation that female vocalists use oral contraceptives to suppress menstruation. According to Keith O. Reeves, the deputy chief of Gynecology at the Methodist Hospital and a professor at Weill Cornell, premenstrual syndrome “brings vocal fatigue, decreased range, loss of power and loss of some harmonics.” Continuous use of synthetic hormones is quite an extreme remedy for an illness without a clear definition or etiology.
But apparently menopause is much harder on the vocal folds – our intrepid blogger can’t even tell us:
As for menopause, you don’t want to know. As Dr. Reeves quotes the great mezzo-soprano Christa Ludwig, “It was a hell of some years.”
A recent press release from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists announces that Hormonal Contraceptives Offer Benefits Beyond Pregnancy Prevention. This is in the same vein as similar articles published over the years about “non-contraceptive benefits of the pill” – a laundry list of the many benefits women may obtain by using hormonal contraception. It’s not clear how they should be used by practicing obgyn’s. One use is certainly as additional talking points to convince women who are cautious or reluctant to replace their body’s own menstrual physiology with a pharmaceutical product.
I haven’t been able to read the full document (for some reason my university access seems to only find the first page of the full document), but it appears that, like previous reviews I have read, it is a biased list, including benefits but not risks. Perhaps what is most in common is the sense that a spontaneous menstrual cycle is somehow suspect, that fluctuations over time are unnatural, and that pharmaceutical control is a good solution. Continue reading...
Dear Amy: My girlfriend wants to “talk” again. She is currently experiencing her monthly cycle.
Can I ask her to wait until this is over? She usually gets a bit worked up and later apologizes.
I do not want to come across as inconsiderate. Based on past discussions, I’m sure she wants to talk about our future together. This is important but shouldn’t it be done when she is a little more balanced?
If you agree, can you offer a caring way to frame this statement of concern to talk at a later time?
— Matt
Poor considerate Matt. He doesn’t want to hurt his girlfriend’s feelings by telling her that he doesn’t take her feelings seriously. What would you tell him, re:Cycling readers? Ask Amy advises him to patronize and belittle her.
Dear Matt: You might think: “Let’s have this conversation at a time when I don’t think your head will spin around and fall off.”
What you should say is, “I want to talk to you, too, honey — because this is important. But for now, why don’t you enjoy these flowers? Oh, and by the way, have you lost weight?”
Amy further suggests that Matt do her the kind favor of letting her know that she’s moody: “You should also talk about her hormonal issues. Many women, myself included, don’t quite realize the patterns in our monthly moods until someone else lovingly points them out to us.”
I can’t help but recall Joan Chrisler’s comments about over-diagnosis of PMS and PMDD (which are both associated with high levels of relationship and family stress): “We’re conditioned to want a pill. Instead of something you might need more, like a nap or a divorce, or the ERA.”
I often hear women state that men would be uncomfortable if they overheard our discussion of menstruation. Many women work to keep men out of the menstruation conversation. But… surprise! Men are ready to participate. And very often, I hear men say that they want to learn more about menstruation. In studies by Jane Ussher and Jane Perz they found that women in lesbian relationships that are more egalitarian, empathetic and satisfying have different PMS experiences than women whose male partners misunderstand their PMS symptoms. That is partially because their lesbian partners understand the experiences of menstruation, even if they do not share the same symptoms. Imagine, straight ladies, if a male partner were also aware of your PMS symptoms through the information you impart? And that through this conversation and hopefully, through different behavior on his part, you could potentially change your PMS experience?
Or…what if he understands those symptoms through his own experience?! Last year, Angelique Smith, then a student at Marymount Manhattan College in a course called Social Construction and Images of Menstruation (co-taught by David Linton and myself) made MENstruation. This video was inspired by Gloria Steinem’s 1978 Ms. Magazine article “What if Men Could Menstruate?”. As Smith asks her participants Steinem’s question, “What if men could menstruate,” their answers reveal much about cross-gender consciousness. It screened as part of the Blood on Screen series at the Spokane SMCR conference. Continue reading...
Guest Post by David Linton, Marymount Manhattan College
A lot of ideas get hatched in a bar over drinks with friends. Most don’t make it past the sober morning after. But a conversation in a Denver bistro in 2008 led to the creation of a new Internet service that aims to address Rodney King’s eternal question, “Can’t we all just get along?” In this case the “getting along” applies to men and women who feel afflicted by the scourge of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome – PMS – and its presumed negative impact on otherwise harmonious relationships.
Despite the sound research and persuasive arguments of writers such as Carol Tavris (The Mismeasure of Woman), Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender), Joan C. Chrisler (Charting a New Course for Feminist Psychology) and Paula Caplan (Fighting the Pathologizing of PMS), to name just a few who have labored to dispel the pernicious misconceptions and stigma surrounding the menstrual cycle, stereotypes and myths have been tenacious. Thus, in the digital age it was probably inevitable that PMS Lore would find new outlets for dissemination. Which brings us back to Denver. Continue reading...
6) I don’t know, but she will feel better in a week or less
5) Hormones
4) Women do that about every 28 days
3) Time for tampons
2)We gave up trying to figure that out a long time ago, but it will pass
1) PMS, of course.
I know I am not the only one exasperated with the easy dismissal of women’s anger as little more than PMS.
Sometimes (and I’d venture, MUCH of the time), an angry woman IS simply, well, an angry woman.
But WE (culturally-speaking), tend to immediately link women’s anger with PMS. This is lazy and effectively trivializes and silences women. While I don’t dispute that hormonal fluctuations can and often do explain the TIMING and/or SEVERITY of a woman’s emotional expression, I argue that is it important, no IMPERATIVE, that we resist the temptation to immediately attribute a woman’s rage to the biological. Continue reading...
A new study published in the journal, Appetite, suggests there is not a hormonal reason for premenstrual women to crave chocolate. The research was based on the premise that if the craving for chocolate was in fact related to a premenstrual surge in hormones, postmenopausal women would display diminished cravings for chocolate. Although the researchers did find a small drop in chocolate cravings after menopause in their small sample of women, the drop was not as great as expected, if the cravings were related to premenstrual hormones. This suggests that women crave chocolate for some other reason. Perhaps the concept of PMS cravings is a social construct. Or maybe some women just like chocolate – as the researchers state, we’re only talking about one-quarter of U.S. women: “[A]bout half of American women crave chocolate, and approximately half of the cravers crave it specifically around the onset of menstruation.”
Here’s another possible conclusion: Maybe women aren’t a monolithic group one can make facile generalizations about.
Readers should note that statements published in re: Cycling are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Society as a whole.
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