Open the Window?

 

Can you have orgasms after the menopause?

I didn’t hear the official answer on Davina McCall’s Sex, Myths and the Menopause hard-hitting documentary on Channel 4, 12 May, ‘cause I fell asleep. But the answer, ultimately, is yes… and this is just one of MANY myths surrounding this wise-woman period of life. (Pun most definitely intended)

If you didn’t watch it - please do. It’s refreshingly honest, and it doesn’t hold back when tackling the very real problem of the ‘appalling way menopausal women have been treated by a supposedly enlightened society’. (The Telegraph, 2021)

I recall once teaching in a classroom with the windows wide open because I was having a hot flush. I can't describe the heat other than it being akin (supposedly) to being trapped inside someone's Lycra shorts at a body pump class.

The students said “Miss, can you close the windows please?” To which I replied, (from the relative safety of long-sleeved tops and layers of deodorant to hide my perspiring pits) “Nooooo!”

The history of menopause and the treatment of women and understanding of the condition on a social scale, points at a continual ‘hiding of the symptoms’, and the ‘mis-prescribing of medication for lunacy and melancholy’, with McCall calling-out ‘the appalling lack of medical knowledge’.

I wonder if this outdated methodology comes from an equally outdated lack of knowledge. The embarrassment surrounding it is palpable. I feel that it reeks of a patriarchal ‘looking the other way’, and still, sadly, appears to be in the Dark Ages.

Exploring myths is on the agenda of my feminist clowning classes, and the making of potent messages about the myths that surround this 'stage' of life - which is infused with confusion, fog, anger, heat, dryness, thinning and a journey into becoming… 

Could unlearning this ‘socialised behaviour’ and what’s expected of it, reap new ways of transforming a bit of a taboo into something that needs further investment and interrogation? I am now on HRT (amazingly only 10% of women take this) and boy, or rather woman, it makes a difference. I still get brain fog, and I still look like a ripened tomato on occasion - especially after six hours on zoom – but I feel so much better, I embrace this stage of life – hairy warts an’ all. (yet another myth!)

And I hope that I am playing my part in creating safe spaces for women to openly talk about what the menopause is, and means; strategies for creative play around this issue, and that there is a WINDOW of opportunity for huge breaths of fresh air surrounding its discussion - as the NORM!

Feel free to share your stories - let's get talking!