Surprise, surprise! The menopause backlash is here

In a way, I guess, the only real surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner

Carol Kane as the menopause banshee in Netflix cartoon Big Mouth

It was only ever a matter of time. The menopause movement – for want of a better way of describing it – has been gaining momentum for at least a couple of years now, so it couldn’t be allowed to go unchecked for much longer.

Certain elements of the mainstream media had a half-hearted go back in the autumn of 2020 when there was one of those perfect storms of women in midlife all getting mouthy at the same time. My book The Shift was published and I started the podcast (Abre numa nova janela) of the same name, Caitlin Moran’s More Than A Woman hit the charts, Gabby Logan started her podcast, The Mid.Point, and Karen Arthur launched @menopausewhilstblack on Instagram. Gaby Hinsliff picked up on it and wrote a piece in The Guardian (Abre numa nova janela) celebrating this new outspokenness and the mood took hold.

Of course menopause experts like Diane Dantzebrink and Louise Newson had been slogging away behind the scenes for years, and Mariella Frostrup had made a documentary for the BBC back in 2018, but this newfound media profile gave added impetus. Davina McCall and Kate Muir made their first documentary for Channel 4 that caused a landslide in awareness when it came out last year, and Labour MP Carolyn Harris launched her private members bill.

Since then, there has been an avalanche of the kind of books I was desperate for when I experienced perimenopause eight years ago: The Menopause Manifesto by the brilliantly outspoken US Ob/Gyn Dr Jen Gunter (Abre numa nova janela), Menopocalypse by the force of nature that is Amanda Thebe, and, more recently, Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie’s Cracking The Menopause. 

And these murmurs, this refusal to continue putting up with the lack of information and support (that, let’s be honest, has long characterised women’s healthcare full stop), of being told by doctors that we couldn’t have HRT (if we wanted it, or indeed just wanted to know more about it) because they “didn’t agree with it”, has turned into a roar. That… I hesitate to use the word peaked because I hope it hasn’t, last week when C4 aired McCall and Muir’s second documentary about the impact of perimenopause on our mental health.

And where there is a groundswell of opinion, there is inevitably a backlash.

It has long been a received wisdom in the (mainly right wing) press that if you want to silence a woman, the best way to do it is to use another woman. Alexandra Shulman popped up in the Mail on Sunday to reassure women who were unable to get their HRT because of national shortages that it was “survivable. It’s not a Mariupol basement.” (I hardly even know where to start with that.) Then, The Times struck, with Libby Purves writing about the “hysteria” around menopause. (Always with the hysteria when a woman expresses an opinion.) And The Sunday Times followed up promptly with a column by India Knight, Can We Just Cool It With The Menopause Mania? 

Knight, who was fortunate enough to have coasted through perimenopause without even realising (lucky woman – and I do mean that, most sincerely), deplored the “noise” and the “drama” and the “flapping” and the way we are terrifying young women with our "doomy narrative". She went on to condemn those who spoke up about menopause in general and HRT shortages in particular (and indeed anything else that would once have been stoically endured) as “wet” and “endlessly weedy”. Oh. Or narcissistic. Why couldn’t we just do the right thing, like the women she knew who mostly “just accepted menopause as a minor and temporary inconvenience, joked about it, rolled their eyes at it, refused to be defined by it and carried on their lives as women do….”?

Now I know a trolling when I see one. But that’s your answer right there. “As women” we are meant to just get on with it, regardless. To put up and shut up. And to refuse to do so, well, it’s frankly hysterical, isn’t it?

Far from sounding new, this was the kind of classic “get back in your box” rhetoric, we’ve been on the receiving end of for centuries – Medusa? What an embittered old bag! Terrible hair, too – and doubtless will hear for centuries more.

That, compounded with the insidious implication that if you have a tough menopause - as I did, as so many women do, (of the 13 million menopausal women in the UK, 80% are experiencing symptoms, 25% of them severe), it is somehow your own fault. I’ve just spent a “happy” hour revisiting my research for writing The Shift in search of suitably offensive quotes from the men dubbed the “masters of menopause”. Let’s just say I was spoilt for choice, but one of my favourites is this, by O. Spurgeon English and Gerald H.J. Pearson who wrote in the 50s that, women who feel “irritable, depressed, remorseful and pessimistic when the menopause appears must have lived unwisely between the ages of 12 and 42.” Damn. If only someone had told me that sooner.

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Just the day before the Sunday Times piece was published I was talking to a roomful of women, aged roughly mid-30s plus, at the Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival*.

Almost to a woman, they told me the same things I have been hearing ever since I put my head above the parapet: “I’m desperate”, “I’ve lost my confidence”, “I just want myself back”, “My GP told me I was too young to be perimenopausal and wouldn’t even have a discussion” (this woman was 48 so, far from being too young, bang on target), "My GP told me I could only take it for a year" and, my favourite, “One glass of wine gives me a hangover! Will I ever be able to get drunk again?” (No, probably not, if you don’t want a 72-hour hangover. But we compared notes and settled on vodka as the alcohol with the least worst side effects.)

Not one of the younger women I spoke to was frightened by the new wave of information. On the contrary. Not one of the older women had found it easy to get advice or was satisfied with the support she was receiving.

There is a reason the menopause debate won’t be going anywhere soon and that’s because it’s long overdue. Because women entering midlife, as I did, knowing sweet FA about perimenopause, with nowhere to turn and sideswiped by an avalanche of symptoms they didn't even know were symptoms, don’t see a) why they should put up with it or b) want to see other women go through the same thing.

If you are lucky enough not to experience severe symptoms, then I admit I’m jealous. But I also assume you’re decent enough not to think that no-one deserves help just because you don’t need it. Am I right?

Only approximately 10% of menopausal women in the UK take HRT. Even at its most optimistic that’s less than half the 25% of menopausal women experiencing severe symptoms. That is not a sign that too many of us are taking it already. Or that our voices are disproportionately loud. Even allowing for those who can’t take it or have chosen not to, it’s a sign that until recently information has been woefully lacking and access to it even more so.

Despite the fact I take HRT – and it made a huge difference to me, putting me back within sight of myself after a couple of months of taking it – I am not pro HRT, nor am I anti it. I am pro choice. I am pro us having access to all the information and then some. I am pro GPs treating us like grown ups, listening to our concerns and letting us make our own decisions. I am pro the government not pushing our needs to the bottom of the list. I am pro us having access to advice, support and, yes, medication, if that’s what we choose.

Doesn’t sound hysterical to me.

*Members of The Shift can have exclusive access to the audio from this event early next week. I’ll email you when it’s ready.

• You can find all the books mentioned here and more in The Shift bookshop on bookshop.org (Abre numa nova janela).

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Please leave a comment.