Another way for women to be oppressed!

Every time you turn around it seems someone has come up with a new drug or surgery to redesign women.

Weight loss pills, drugs to stave off ageing, cosmetic surgery, liposuction, botox. Women can’t just be themselves - there’s always someone who wants to intervene to “enhance” them - usually someone out to make money.

A new pill has been launched to eliminate a process usually seen as a healthy sign of a woman’s reproductive health: her monthly period.

The US Food and Drug Administration has just OK’d Lybrel - a name supposed to make us think of liberty - manufactured by Wyeth. It’s designed to get rid of periods completely. It’s also designed to increase Wyeth’s bottom line - Lybrel is expected to generate $US250 million in additional revenue to the company.

Women in the US are being told they don’t have to feel “fat” and “messy” every month. You can picture the advertising - carefree girls in bikinis frolicking on a Malibu beach being chased by impossibly handsome men as an anonymous hand pours blue liquid (it’s never red) over a pair of white pants - “No unsightly leaks - ever!”, intones the voice over.

Teens are even told they’ll do better academically if they’re on the pill, and that their social lives will improve.

These unsupported claims are patronising and disrespectful.

The drug’s supporters say it’s “natural” and “healthy” for women not to have periods, even though there is no evidence to support this. The long-term safety of these pills is unknown and existing safety data frighteningly limited.

As health psychologist Paula S. Derry wrote in the British Medical Journal in May: “The long term safety of menstrual suppression cannot currently be determined with experimental data … Overall, the existing data are limited, and whether or not long term risks exist remains uncertain: this would require lengthy study … science involves logic and evidence, and the case against menstruation involves neither.”

(Article written by Melinda Tankard Reist)

Raven's response:
When will women wake up and realise that the worst kind of oppression of a woman is telling her she's not acceptable just as she is and just how her body works naturally! How revolting that women would allow themselves to again be oppressed by men just like they were decades and centuries ago by making their bodies available to men 24 hours 7 days a week for sex without any consequences or need for responsibility and care on the part of the male! If all of this so called "sexual freedom" for us is so good and improving our lives as women, why then are there more articles then ever before being written about how we can improve our sex lives.......I thought they were supposed to be good already because of our "sexual freedom"? Are we missing something really obvious here?

Raven