We now talk about menopause as if it were afternoon tea: is that a good thing?

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/mar/30/we-can-talk-about-menopause-afternoon-tea

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I am very grateful to famous women, for talking in a forthright way about their experience of periods, and now the menopause, as if it were afternoon tea. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Marvellous. This is a step in the right direction. Women are no longer carted off and incarcerated in long-term institutions or despised and shunned for excessive sweating, screaming, hysteria or pregnancy. Everyone, hopefully, now knows that these things are normal and not signs of insanity, witchcraft, dirtiness or depravity. So thank you very much, celebrities, for bravely speaking out, emboldening women, ridding them of shame, and encouraging them to go and have check-ups and catch anything nasty early on. It saves lives and stops us feeling like neurotic freaks.

But has it become a bit much, knowing exactly how sweaty, boiling and agitated we women can be, and exactly which bits of our innards have been taken out? I have bits missing. I would tell you which ones, but do you really want to know? And Mavis has no womb at all – I can say that, because no one knows who Mavis really is. We both know what usually happens to your insides after their alteration, and it isn’t fun. We’ve also all woken up in sodden sheets, felt as if our bodies were boiling and bursting, for years on end. We’ve been either bleeding, leaking and weeping, or atrophied and raging, and now everybody knows all about it and hopefully understands, but in an odd way it feels like another form of intrusive poking and probing into women. As usual, it’s our bodies that get all the Technicolor attention.

Does nothing happen to men’s bodies? Do they just chug along on an even keel? Barely any change? I don’t hear anyone speaking out about late-onset hypogonadism, incontinence, impotence, raging or fading libido, or alteration and removal of bits.

“Try having a prostate examination,” says Fielding bravely. “We’re massively repressed, we drink and drug too much. We can’t tell people how unhappy we are. At least you lot can squawk.” Perhaps he’s not the best spokesperson, but it’s a start.