Very informative. I liked Samantha Bees' take on this too.

I create and implement corporate wellness programs as a consultant. I generally devote whole sections to encouraging women to speak up -- and give them sentences to say and ways to effectively verbalize what their issues are. At the core, it's assertiveness training.

70 years of seeing this bullcrap on family, friends, me. The classic was a friend who complained her hip implants, originally very successful, were hurting more & more and was eventually put on heavy Prozac because Obviously she was a middle-aged attention seeking nutcase. This went on for over 2 years. Then came the recall notice for the hips.

I love the Atlantic,they do such great work.

As an alternative perspective there’s this:

[theatlantic.com]

'If you hear hoofbeats, look for horses, not zebras.'. Unless it's an emergency situation, doctors work up from most common Dx to less and less common ones. Unfortunately this means they then have to send the patient on their way because there are a dozen others people who also need help. Hospitals are horrendously understaffed. We need to address that before we start going on about gender.

On the other hand, you can just tell them you can't breathe. I had a muscle spasm that was constricting my ribcage, making breathing difficult and the next thing I knew, I had an x-ray, a CT scan, and a VQ done when all I needed was some cyclobenzaprine.

Having experienced similar greatly prefer female drs. I've only seen one that was wonky.

Thank you for this. Sharing!