Is Medical Sexism Why Women Fall For Quackary

Jilly Juice, Miracle Mineral Solution, Black Salve, Hydrogen Peroxide Therapy, even chiropractors and the organic food industry - all scams that are dangerous and many times outright deadly.

Jilly Juice, for those that don't know, is made by blending kale with water and salt, then letting it ferment for three days. The creator of this insane idea claims it can cure anything from cancer to homosexuality. She even claims it can regrow limbs.

What it really does is cause severe diarrhea, dehydration, hallucinations, and death.

Well, I guess you can't suffer from cancer if you're dead.

As for homosexuality, that doesn't need a cure. That's just the way God, or evolution if you prefer, created some people. I suppose next she'll claim it will cure my asexuality and polycystic ovary syndrome the way an anti-vaxxer vegan claimed that an all vegan diet would cure my anemia.

Or, maybe like many bigots, she'll also try to claim that asexuality doesn't even exist.

Miracle Mineral Solution is nothing more than industrial strength bleach meant for bleaching wood pulp. Yet anti-vaxxer parents forcibly give this to their children as an enema, then take photos of the "Autism causing parasites" their children have passed. Those "parasites," however, are really their children's intestinal linings.

Black Salve is said to "draw out cancer cells and leave healthy cells alone." What it really does is kill off all flesh it comes in contact with. People have lost their entire nose, have holes burnt into their breasts, and otherwise left themselves severely disfigured. Some women are even putting it inside their vagina thinking it'll cure their cervical cancer.

Hydrogen Peroxide is not meant to be drank. This will kill you. Yet there's a looney tunes woman on YouTube who would have you believe that it'll cure you of everything.

The question is, why are people still falling for these out and out lies? Why, when Wakefield has been proven a fraud who faked his results in order to sell a more expensive vaccine, do people still insist vaccines are bad? Why are women putting a flesh eating salve up their vaginas? Even when confronted by photographic evidence that they're wrong, they still insist on doing this.

Well, the reasons are as varied as the scams, but as a woman who has dealt with many sexist doctors, I can't help but feel for us women one of the big reasons is because doctors will not listen to us simply because we're women.

Many times I have gone to a doctor with a complaint only to have it dismissed as being "all in my head." This hasn't just happened with male doctors, but female ones as well.

At 18 my mom took me to my first gynecologist appointment. He rolled his eyes when I said I was a virgin - imagine his shock later when he went to do the pap smear, ramming the stick inside me and tearing my hymen. I can still see the bloodless look on his face. He then told me that the pain I experienced during the exam which had me screaming and needing my legs restrained was caused by vaginitis due to too many bubble baths - despite me telling him that I took showers, not bubble baths.

It took me commenting to a guy I had sex with about how when we had sex when I wasn't menstruating and he used a condom it burned and hurt, but when we did it on my period and he didn't use a condom it wasn't as painful for it to come to light I had a latex allergy. It wasn't my non-existent vaginitis that was causing me to scream in pain, it was the doctor's latex gloves.

I still have pain during exams, but that's more from mental trauma than anything.

For years I suffered with both excessive facial hair and cystic acne. My dermatologist would dismiss it with "You'll always have acne until you hit menopause." I tried laser hair removal for the facial hair but found it didn't work. (It did work great on the top of my feet, however, which despite daily shaving still tended to be a bit Hobbit-like in hairiness.) When my dermatologist had knee surgery, I mentioned to her PA how the laser hair removal did nothing for my facial hair. Right away suspicious, she referred me to a gynecologist who referred me to an endocrinologist. A lot of testing later proved that I had Polycystic Ovary Syndrome.

By this time I was in my mid-30s.

After a long time having this same endocrinologist saying my only hope of ever losing weight was a gastric bypass, I changed health insurance so I could pick my own doctors. (At the time I had a HMO.) My new one took one look at me and said, "Has anyone ever told you you're anemic?"

My blood iron levels turned out to be in single digits. Now all my life I've had extremely heavy periods. Eight days with the first 4 being so heavy I had to wear three pads, one nighttime, two extra long, super absorbent - and still change them every hour or I'd leak badly. Tampons were out of the question. Doctors responses to this was to always throw birth control at me and not even discuss why.

I hated the birth control. I had been on probably a dozen different types by this time and the results were all the same - I'd lose my temper at the smallest thing, my blood pressure which was normally 126/70 (pretty good for a fat chick) would skyrocket into the 200s, and I'd spot all month long.

To make a long story short - because I don't want children and was already 38 years old, I decided a hysterectomy was right for me.

The gynecologist wouldn't even listen to me. She blamed my blood pressure spikes on my weight and claimed birth control did not raise blood pressure. She also said month long spotting was normal. She then stated she would do nothing to help me until I "popped out a couple of kids" and slammed out of the room.

This is just a few examples. I've had infections that were ignored, pain that was dismissed, and many other problems dismissed simply because of either my weight or being female - and most often both.

(I did get my hysterectomy, BTW, and my anemia is finally under control.)

I even has a PA in a hospital emergency room tell me that I "just had the flu" and to "Get out" without her even examining me. It turned out I had a severe infection that required antibiotics. Had she just actually listened to me she would've known this. Instead she kicked me out of the emergency room, insisting it was flu when I did not have the flu.

The whole point of me rambling about my history is to show I'm no stranger to being dismissed by doctors simply because I have a vagina, not a penis.

Had I not found doctors willing to listen to me and actually test me for things I can totally see falling for quack products in a desperate attempt to feel better.

Because, you see, the quacks actually listen.

Yes, everything they say is a lie. Everything they say could actually kill you. They want to make money off of you and become millionaires while you die slow, painful deaths.

But, by God, they listen.

Every time I bring up my experiences with things going undiagnosed for because some doctor insist it was all in my head, I suddenly get replies from loads of women how their doctors ignored their Endometriosis, uterine fibroids, or even cancer because the doctor insisted their problems were all in their heads.

Add to this the stories of many women who, like myself, are Childfree By Choice, being denied sterilization because "all women want babies." Even during my own struggle to get my hysterectomy one doctor said to me, after I had already said I would never marry (by this time I was coming to realize I am asexual) "When you get married your husband will want a baby." He completely dismissed what I wanted and what I said.

I've read articles by CFBC women on how they actually had to have their husband sign a permission slip so they could get their tubes tied. One woman had her gynecologist say when she stated that her husband also didn't want kids, "When you get divorced your new husband will want kids" and refuse sterilization.

Women with multiple sclerosis or for whom mental illness runs in the family have been denied sterilization by sexist doctors on the idiotic grounds that "All women want babies and if you say you don't then you're mentally ill and need a shrink, not sterilization."

This is just to push home the fact so many doctors of all genders are sexist. So sexist I've come to believe that Sexism 101 is a required course in medical school.

The doctors don't listen.

The quacks and scam artists who want to make money off of others' suffering do.

They write books about how their dangerous, deadly scams can cure a woman's infertility, help with her insanely painful periods, "fix" her gay and/or Autistic child, banish her cancer, reverse her clinical depression, all while clearing her skin of acne and wrinkles.

They lend a sympathetic ear. They make all the right noises and remarks at all the right times. They never say, "Your allergies are all in your head." (Something an actual medical professional once said to me.) They say "I believe you when you say you're in pain. I believe you when you say you feel sick and tired. I believe you and I care."

Here's the thing.

They don't believe you.

They don't care.

They just want your money.

They don't care if you die so long as you pay them.

But you've been fooled into think they do because so many doctors with actual training don't listen just because you have a vagina, not a penis.

Maybe, just maybe if real doctors stopped being so blasted sexist and started listening to women we'd start to see an end to scams like GOOP and MMS.

All it takes sometimes to get real change going is to actually listen and believe.