One of those "what in the weird", wtf news segments. On the plus side, I like it that it is classified as entertainment. As someone who has hardly any pre-menstrual symptoms and never having met anyone with such a clear link, I am perhaps not in a position to judge whether women do suffer from PMS. But linking female behaviour to hormones does not seem that far removed from other charming "medical" certainties like female hysteria. Like female hysteria, it is also an effective tool for putting down women as irrational and incapable of decision due to their specific femaleness. I have had colleagues and relatives asking me in an amused manner whether I had PMS just when I am debating a point with some passion (for the record, amusingly these Qs have happened when I was not hormonally impaired, in so far as anyone of us is not hormonally impaired on any given day given that the damn things are a part of human physiology). The sad thing is that there are legions of women buying into any behavioural diagnosis related to menstruation, whether it be the effects of PMS or menopause. Both these days pass for legitimate illnesses rather than just the nature of things.
29 January 2009
Mad & Bad, Blame PMS
One of those "what in the weird", wtf news segments. On the plus side, I like it that it is classified as entertainment. As someone who has hardly any pre-menstrual symptoms and never having met anyone with such a clear link, I am perhaps not in a position to judge whether women do suffer from PMS. But linking female behaviour to hormones does not seem that far removed from other charming "medical" certainties like female hysteria. Like female hysteria, it is also an effective tool for putting down women as irrational and incapable of decision due to their specific femaleness. I have had colleagues and relatives asking me in an amused manner whether I had PMS just when I am debating a point with some passion (for the record, amusingly these Qs have happened when I was not hormonally impaired, in so far as anyone of us is not hormonally impaired on any given day given that the damn things are a part of human physiology). The sad thing is that there are legions of women buying into any behavioural diagnosis related to menstruation, whether it be the effects of PMS or menopause. Both these days pass for legitimate illnesses rather than just the nature of things.
