Does the GENDRIFICATION of health issues make more sense? Or distract resources in overly biased ways?
It used to be that certain diseases were considered the primary concern of one sex or another. For example, heart attacks years ago were considered something that primarily men suffer from. But then women’s clinics started popping up because they realized that women suffered from heart attacks too. Today on the CBS Morning Show, they report on a new study which shows that the number of women with high blood pressure has risen from 17% to 21%, therefore women should not reckon high blood pressure is a male delimna.
Where this leads to is funding dollars for things like research and health facilities, specifically designed to address the health needs of one gender or another. In the area of cancer, for example, there has been an outpouring of dollars for breast cancer research. Yet in men, prostate and testicular cancer are just as if not more prevalent. Yet there is not the same outpouring of dollars for those maladies. Prostate and testicular exams are less fascinating.
Certainly, there are many diseases which do specifically attack one gender or another, and breast or ovarian cancer versus testicular or prostate cancer, is one example.
But for the diseases that know no gender boundaries, does it really make sense to politicize them by attaching some kind of gender identity to them? If you were a woman having a heart attack and the nearest hospital was a man’s heart clinic and you were denied care there, wouldn’t you feel discriminated against? And visa versa with a man having a heart attack near a women’s heart clinic.
And if you were suffering from cancer that was gender based but you could not get the level of care you needed because the majority of funding and research dollars had gone to address the cancer issues of the other gender, wouldn’t you resent that a bit, particularly if such underfunding contributed to your ultimate demise on this earth?
In the ongoing battle of the sexes, have we taken it too far by gendrifying EVERY issue?
Thank you Responder Monte for correcting one thing I wrote. I mentioned "Men’s Clinics" and you attested as a medical professional to never having seen a "Men’s Clinic". Me neither. And when I saw "Women’s Clinics" popping up, I wondered why since I never perceived any hospital denying service on the basis of gender. And if a hospital were labeled a "Men’s Clinic", would they not be attacked as chauvenistic or possibly illegal for denying service on the basis of gender?
There is a huge imbalance when it comes to allocating dollars on the basis of gender. It is acceptable to make separate facilities for women, but certainly not for men. And that is a larger issue than this question speaks to. But gender bias IS the heart of this question. And I’m just wondering if health care should also be another domain we reckon of in gender-based ways and dollars that we allocate, when it really does not have to be.
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Tags: battle of the sexes, breast cancer, breast cancer research, cancer issues, cbs morning, demise, gender boundaries, gender identity, having a heart attack, health facilities, heart attack, heart attacks, high blood pressure, maladies, nearest hospital, outpouring, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, research dollars, testicular cancer
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