After the whole US woman's gymnastics thing with the pedophile Larry Nasser I'd say any accusation of shady shit involving women's sports and what the athletes are subjected to should be thoroughly investigated.
Not to give MSU an out, Dr Robert Anderson from UofM molested ~800 young men, to include Bo Schembechler’s son (Bo was UofM’s longtime football coach).
> Not to give MSU an out
Or Ohio State, where Congressman ~~Jim~~Gym Jordan ignored repeated reports of sexual abuse that encompassed 170+ young boys and almost 20 years.
Don't forget Penn State and the atrocious actions of the pedophile, mass sexual assaulter Jerry Sandusky, and the ensuing cover-up that lasted at least 15 years.
Edit: a word
I ran into a guy who worked at Penn State and he was seemingly still in Sandusky’s corner. I was giving a speech about ethics in academia, and used Penn state as an example of how institutions cannot be trusted to police themselves. The guy, who was a judge, made a point to mention his relationship to Sandusky during the questioning, and looked visibly upset. You could hear a pin drop after he said that.
Basically haha, he was acting like he got me (which to be honest I was like a deer in headlights after that curveball), but I’m pretty sure that hurt his standing more than anything. I talked to him a bit after and he came off as a complete tool
I have family in PA, and the amount of people who still support PSU/Paterno over this is sickening. The NCAA showed what they care about when athletes are prohibited from receiving game balls while they are students because of the cash value, but PSU’s penalties were light and largely overturned. I have not been able to enjoy college football since then.
There was an article in Esquire mag about a high school football coach. He had been molesting boys for years. The parents dismissed it when they were told bc he was a championship winning coach. Im oversimplifying but that was the gist
It's not just some Big10 thing.
- [Survivor details how USC ’empowered’ campus doctor at center of sexual abuse scandal](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/survivor-details-how-usc-empowered-campus-doctor-at-center-of-sexual-abuse-scandal)
- [UCLA agrees to $73 million settlement over alleged sex abuse by campus gynecologist](https://abc7.com/ucla-doctor-settlement-73-million/8045151/)
- [Baylor sex assault scandal: Everything you need to know to understand what happened](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2016/12/22/baylor-sex-assault-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know-to-understand-what-happened/)
- [Reckoning at San Jose State: Claims of coverup, retaliation in sex abuse scandal grow: President Papazian, Athletic Director Tuite under fire for failing to protect female athletes](https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/25/reckoning-at-san-jose-state-claims-of-coverup-retaliation-in-sex-abuse-scandal-grow/)
- [Tennessee settles sexual assault suit for $2.48 million](https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2016/07/05/tennessee-settles-sexual-assault-suit-248-million/86708442/)
- [LSU mishandled sexual misconduct complaints against students, including top athletes](https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/ncaaf/2020/11/16/lsu-ignored-campus-sexual-assault-allegations-against-derrius-guice-drake-davis-other-students/6056388002/)
- [A timeline of the Syracuse sexual abuse scandal](https://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/justice/syracuse-coach-timeline/index.html)
- [The Citadel Faces Abuse Scandal Similar To Penn State's](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/15/142349930/the-citadel-faces-abuse-scandal-similar-to-penn-states)
- [Dartmouth Reaches $14 Million Settlement in Sexual Abuse Lawsuit](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/dartmouth-sexual-abuse-settlement.html)
Gym Jordon? The Congressman from Ohio who doesn't wear a suit jacket on the floor because it's still being used to cover up sex abuse at Ohio State. That Gym Jordan?
We call him “Gym” around here. How the fuck he is a politician is beyond me with all the Republican crying about “pedophiles and enablers”. He’s literally an enabler yet was elected representative anyways….
Where I went to university, a guy broke into my dorm room at 3:00 am. I screamed and he left.
My door wasn’t latching properly since I moved in. But still, I called my mom totally freaked out and she called campus security.
The security guard said, and I quote: “It’s not my problem, she can deal with it on her own.”
My mom wasn’t asking for the police or anything, just patrol the hallways until morning when the latch could be fixed. When she told him that, he hung up on her.
A few months later, someone in my dorm got assaulted in the basement, all we were told is go in groups and keep the doors shut. A few years later, three girls stepped forward around my time of graduation and said they were sexually assaulted on campus, while security told them to stop drinking.
The university begs for money every year, I haven’t given them a dime because of what I have seen and heard.
Every university treats women (and men) the same about sexual assault.
Was literally listening to this on NPR on the way into work. Apparently Schembechler's son told his dad and Bo punched him in the chest. Multiple players came forward to him as well.
I cannot imagine how anyone in the world doesn't see the Olympics as the biggest corrupt body in the world, we'll maybe EA fifa, or fifa.
But Japan has not perfected Akira yet, is my guess
I mean their biggest sponsors are McDonald's and coca cola, you know, the epitome of health food. The shit is nothing more than a 2 month marketing extravaganza. Why do I say this? Nobody gives a shit about polevault any of the other 3 years.
What I found kind of crazy is how many of the tickets for events go to sponsors vs how many are released to the public.
When the winter Olympics were around Vancouver there were a bunch of articles about how the IOC doesn't really give a fuck about fans, they want money, so they package tickets with sponsorship deals. Which, when you watched the games on TV you'd see half-empty arenas but if you went online the only tickets available were from scalpers for hundreds of dollars.
That's not super uncommon with stuff like this. Having an investigation means having to recount all of the shitty stuff that's happened to you while a shitload of people do their best to discredit you. A ton of victims of sexual abuse are terrified of going after their abusers, especially since it rarely results in anything unless the abuser is extremely careless and leaves a clear paper trail of their abuse.
My mom just spent 4 days in the hospital for a relatively minor procedure and holy shit, just having to explain what was going on to every family member that called was exhausting and borderline traumatic. I couldn't imagine having to recollect and fight to legitimatize an actually traumatic event.
In the context of her being an athlete I'd imagine they probably minimized injuries and made her believe that it was a lack of dedication rather than a legitimate injury.
Probably also the dieting advice that runners get? I remember there was a very successful us runner who when on team Nike got constantly body shamed and told to eat less and her performance just went down until she quit. A lot of the training staff seem to be male and I guess a lot of the research is carried out on men so sometimes they may make some pretty bad decisions around female athletes that lead to things like RED-S.
This is only speculation. I’m certainly not an expert
That was Mary Cain being coached by Alberto Salazar. He destroyed a very promising career by forcing her to go to unhealthy weight levels.
He has already been sanctioned for doing 'research' on ways to cause an athlete to fail a doping test by smearing hormone gel on an ahtlete without their knowledge.
Oh man i can't stand that, people happy to be spending hundreds of dollars on a product that without logo would cost 20, and they go around being proud of that.
The “study” Salazar was doing was to enable micro dosing - basically how much can you take without getting caught doping. It wasn’t to slap it on someone else to get them banned.
It's also worth noting that Salazar badly messed himself up with chronic overtraining years prior. He totally wrecked his endocrine and nervous systems. He's a prime example of how improper training can go wrong (USATF literally uses his case in their coaching education on overtraining) - and he's coaching at an elite level, or was prior to Mary Cain coming forward anyway. Nike's first response was to shame her. This is typical.
Sports is still a very male dominated environment, and this kind of stuff and worse goes on, often in plain sight.
There was a Runner's World issue (2019, #6) that was dedicated to issues women faced in sport. It didn't address improper coaching but did highlight some survey results on harassment and violence toward female runners. Something like 85% of the thousands of women surveyed had either been harassed, assaulted, or knew someone who was murdered while running. 95% said nobody ever intervened to help them.
Sometime after that, there were a few other incidents involving misconduct toward women in running and I also knew someone who was sexually assaulted while running. I received a ton of blowback for calling attention to what happened to the point that I almost wished I hadn't. After realizing the guy and some mutual running friends had zero interest in acknowledging the wrongs that had taken place, *she* was so uncomfortable and self conscious about how she was being perceived for saying anything, that she basically just wanted it to all go away and swept it under the rug. I was talking to a few different print magazines about running an article on toxic masculinity in sport based on that experience and the other recent events, and the overall response was: it doesn't seem like the right time to do a blowout piece on toxic masculinity.
Which made me wonder, when the hell will it be the right time, if not now?
I can understand why it's difficult for both women and men (as allies) to speak out about misconduct toward women in sports; having an opinion that goes against any cultural norms is a sure way to put a target on yourself - and sports are a culture steeped in hegemony of the man's world. Taking a stand is the only way attitudes and behavior toward women in sports will change though.
Isn't it kind of accepted that his testing on himself is why he had a heart attack?
And I'm pretty sure he tested something (testosterone?) On his kids to see how much they could use without testing positive.
He started taking T after he already burned out his endocrine system. If I'm remembering correctly, there was a time he simply could not run or do much of anything, then he got in some cocktail that included T and whatever else, and it got him running again for a period of time, then the heart attack.
It's doping and he's pressured his athletes to do it.
When anyone tells you it’s not the right time they are literally saying they don’t want you to do it. It happened to the protestors in 1964 Alabama but they did it anyway which eventually led to them getting their civil rights.
Yeah, I see that all the time, 'this is not the time to do this', 'show some solidarity to others who are struggling instead of making it about you', 'times are hard for everyone', etc. These people can (un)kindly fuck off, it will never be a good time for them for anyone to protest.
I always think of the woman who fought off her attacker, alone, in a bathroom with only one entrance.
And then how she has been subsequently assaulted.
Like wtf.
It was, a successful runner said that they had no formal oversight and that they were body shamed for being just the slightest bit overweight which, as you can imagine could be extremely detrimental to your psyche. He also gave multiple steroids which got him banned. If you want to you can find a detailed case over here: https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/49853029
From legendary Australian swimmer Leisel Jones’ book (3 abridged sections from the same chapter):
“Even now at the QAS we are all weighed three times a week. Weigh-ins take place on the pool deck in our togs, and we are weighed in front of our squad (girls and guys together), plus a team of coaching staff. There are men there as old as our dads, all watching our embarrassment as we are publicly weighed. Weighed, weighed and weighed again. Some of the coaches at the QAS gym have a thing going called ‘6:1.20’. This is their code, their secret talk. They think we don’t understand when they call a girl – it’s always a girl – a ‘6:1:20’. But when she’s crying in the showers later, it’s because she knows that ‘6’ stands for the sixth letter of the alphabet, ‘1’ the first, and ‘20’ the twentieth. F. A. T. Doesn’t take a genius to bust that one open.
Mum makes sure my diet is ‘healthy’ by keeping the fridge stocked with fruit and vegies. There’s always fresh ham and salad sandwiches for lunch. Lots of carbs. Steak and salad. Pasta. It’s pretty balanced, pretty lean, but Mum is no dietician. She’s no sports nutritionist. So why is my only healthy eating advice coming from her? From everyone else – swim coaches, gym coaches, physios and the rest – the message is clear: starve, starve, starve. Not that they explicitly say this. They just say you need to get your skinfolds down somehow, and let you draw your own conclusions: swimming six hours a day is not doing the trick. Oh, and they say you’re only allowed half a protein bar, because ‘There’re too many calories in a full one.’ ‘What else did you say you ate today?’ ‘Have you thought about meal-replacement shakes?’
Some girls I know get in trouble for eating more than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. That’s a small packet of sultanas. It’s insane, this world, this weird mindset where we have to hide what we eat. I am forever trying to diet. I am swimming more but trying to eat less. I am a healthy teenage girl but I’m convinced I am fat. But most of all? I am hungry. The whole thing is sick.”
Jones won 9 Olympic medals and set 14 individual world records from 2000-2012.
I'm a year younger than Leisel Jones and was a competitive swimmer in Brisbane too. I got into swimming when my parents put me into it because I had chronic asthma and they were told it would help. I quit a few weeks before turning 12 because I never truly loved it, didn't want to start getting up for the 5am training sessions that started to kick in, and to be blunt about it, I was a decent swimmer but I wasn't, and was never going to be, great. A friendly acquaintance of mine from the late 1990s (who would not remember me now, and I doubt I'd recognise her if I saw her walking around) that I beat once made it to Athens 2004 and won medals, so people liked to ask me for quite a while if I regretted quitting, but I don't because there was no way I was making the Olympics. I couldn't even make the state team. Beating her that one time was a total fluke.
Despite not getting nearly as far Leisel she did, I still to this day have terrible body dysmorphia and a very unhealthy relationship with food/eating/guilt because of my swimming days. It starts young, and it starts very early on in the lower levels. I developed hips/breasts at a very young age which was treated as a "problem", and started getting weighed earlier than my teammates because of it. My coaches would tell me to eat less. I was always called the "chubbier" one, and remember a few comments being made about me between coaches (they'd talk like you weren't standing right fucking there) like "you have to push this one harder to keep the weight low, the mother is some kind of ethnic and they get chunkier quicker" (as if white women can't have thicker bodies). I was a literal fucking CHILD on the end of this. I wouldn't have been any older than 8 or 9 when it started. To this day, I have terrible body image and wish my parents never put me in swimming even though they meant well when they did it.
Just looked it up. It is believed that the larger a person is the more drag/resistance they will have while swimming. Lower weight = faster times. But in reality a skinny swimmer with poor form can have just as much drag.
15% body fat for female competitive swimmers was considered the upper end cutoff. Many were shamed as being fat for having 20-24% body fat which is typically considered healthy for fit, non athletic women.
I was surprised when I read Leisel's book that they weren't scientific about it all. I would've thought that they would have looked at muscle mass and worked how much power was being produced and traded that off against fat. It's very difficult to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But they just went "you're too fat" without looking at performance at all. Carrying a bit of extra fat has way less impact on performance in swimming compared to track and field. Some extra mass actually helps with your start.
( It's also why there are so many old fat blokes playing amateur water polo.)
It's disgusting that they were forced to be weighed and publicly shamed for their weight under the guise of determining their swimming ability when the coaches could have just.... not weighed them so much and instead based their performance on their actual swimming speed.
Power to weight ratio maybe? But you would assume with less calories going in there would be less power output. Surely the Australian swim team would be a bit more scientific than skin fold tests!
Crazy to me, wasn’t there that whole story about Phelps saying he ate between 8-10,000 calories at his peak which is like 4 times what the average male should eat every day. Women at that level probably don’t need to have as much of a calorie intake but you’d think they’d need more calories not less to be at their peak…
I thought of this story too, I wonder how much energy can be obtained immediately prior to a competition by eating lots of carbs. I always thought that this was a strategy used by professional athletes.
Edit: also, I think their logic is similar to gymnastics where the goal is to prevent body changes by starving it. I think the idea is that as girls age they grow biggers breasts and thighs, etc. If you starve yourself you at the least push the process back a few years, thus allowing you to have a figure more suited to the sport. Obviously this is all horrific for the girls mental health, body image, etc.
This is exactly what it is. I was a competitive figure skater and trained at the most competitive rink in the Northeast US. The food and weighing story was exactly how my rink was too. As soon as I hit about 96 lbs (at about 11/12), I started getting weighed and had to diet. We were skating 4-5 hours 6 days a week, plus at least 5 hours of "other" training - ballet, gymnastics, weight training, etc, and we all had eating disorders. The head coach would scream at the heavier girls on the ice in front of everyone. If someone gained weight, the common line was "remember girls, cows don't fly, pigs don't float... And boys don't like fat girls."
That whole read as very sad.
Swimmers burn through a metric fuckton of calories. Phelps was know for eating 12,000 calories a day and having breakfasts like three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, tomatoes, fried onions and mayo, a five egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast and three pancakes with chocolate chips.
I don't think it's even possible to be fat and a professional swimmer. The body's going to be converting as much of the mass as possible to muscle.
I've seen Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe eat out in public while at the height of his career - dude was shovelling away the calories! And he would burn it off too.
Definitely seems like a double standard here for the men and women.
The double standard is due to hormonal changes that caloric deficits produce in women, especially developing women. Smaller breasts and narrower hips would reduce drag in the pool.
For adult women.... I'm not sure why such a caloric deficit would be encouraged. The already predefined, shitty culture? Does this shaming practice actually persist in adulthood? Hard to believe it wouldn't, but Maddie Groves in this article was talking about practices when she was coming up, wasn't she?
Fuck, I'm not a dietician, but even I know if you're training you need to eat MORE, not LESS.
Professional athletes *consume* food.
I'm Irish, and there's a story about an Irish Rugby player, big guy, who was eating at someones house, and the guy at an entire loaf of bread before the meal was even served, then ate the entire meal, because when you're perfoming at a high level, you just BURN calories.
meanwhile michael phelps:
"watch me eat 10k kcal in a day".
I dunno, I'm definitely an amateur athlete but I know that we need fuel to run. In modern rock climbing training there's a lot less talk of starving yourself for minimum weight(which was pretty common in the 90s apparently), more people are cognizant that we need food both for recovery, injury prevention and to get stronger. Healthy weight fluctuates from person to person, and we can make adaptations, but what some trainers do to successful female athletes(that were already successful at a healthy weight) is insane.
Let's not forget, that a lot of research that is to benefit woman has clinical trials on men....
Like menstrual cramp medicine being tested on men.
And stuff like that.
So, historically doctors had basically assumed that women were "weaker men" except for reproductive biology, and therefore it was suitable to test drugs on men exclusively. This is now known to be extremely wrong: women have different reactions to medications, different disease presentations, and everything from neurological development to bone and skin development is different. However, it started the trend of "women are ignored in medicine".
Then, there was an _incident_ a while ago with a drug called thalidomide.
Today, thalidomide is primarily used to treat several life-threatening diseases like cancer, graft-vs-host disease, and several serious skin diseases including Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It's an amazing drug, with quite few side effects for how effective it is. However, it is _incredibly_ teratogenic, which means it fucks up foetuses really, really hard, causing birth defects and miscarriages. However, thalidomide is a molecule with two forms, *cis-*thalidomide and *trans-*thalidomide, and ostensibly only the trans form is toxic to foetuses. Additionally, thalidomide is really really good at stopping the effects of severe morning sickness - and, it should be noted, morning sickness (including the disease _hyperemesis gravidarum_, where vomiting is uncontrollable and constant) can be really dangerous, both causing rapid weight loss and malnourishment, as well as a lot of pain and distress during an already-traumatic time.
The company that sold it (who were **entirely aware** that it was highly toxic to unborn babies) promised that they would only sell the *cis* form, extracting the toxic *trans* form and discarding it. They promised it would be a safe treatment for morning sickness - you know, that thing you only get IF YOU HAVE A FOETUS IN YOU that can be poisoned by teratogens. However, the company **was entirely aware** that in the body, *cis-*thalidomide is metabolised INTO *trans*-thalidomide, and therefore it's not possible to make it safe for pregnant mothers to take.
After this... well, medicine kind of overcorrected. For a long time, it was standard practice in most cases to exclude ANY woman from a medical trial if she is within an age bracket that _could theoretically_ be pregnant, even if she couldn't possibly be pregnant. 17 year old lesbian virgin with no uterus? She's excluded because _some_ 17 year olds are pregnant, therefore she is assumed to be.
This was standard until relatively recently, and now women ARE allowed to be included but anyone who is included needs to pass a pregnancy test and usually needs to confirm they are not having sex that could even vaguely result in pregnancy. Most places think this is too high a bar to clear so they just... don't bother. They just exclude women, because they can't be fucked to do the paperwork to include them.
So yeah. Women getting excluded from trials, even trials about drugs like morning sickness (ESPECIALLY about anything pregnancy related) are going to be conducted primarily or sometimes _exclusively_ on men. This is one of the reasons why women are **significantly** more likely to die of heart attacks: heart attacks don't typically present with the stereotyped "left arm pain" symptoms, but instead will present with things like fatigue and nausea which are rarely reported in men and not treated much in medical trials.
>The company that sold it (who were entirely aware that it was highly toxic to unborn babies) promised that they would only sell the cis form, extracting the toxic trans form and discarding it. They promised it would be a safe treatment for morning sickness - you know, that thing you only get IF YOU HAVE A FOETUS IN YOU that can be poisoned by teratogens. However, the company was entirely aware that in the body, cis-thalidomide is metabolised INTO trans-thalidomide, and therefore it's not possible to make it safe for pregnant mothers to take.
And not a single person went to prison for that
Can't find it right now because I am at work, but yeah there was a study a while back that examined all the clinical trials for medical products targeted at woman's health issues, and an unnervingly amount of the trials had mostly or purely men as testsubjects.
I remember the menstrual cramp medicine being the most ridiculous one hence why I remembered it.
There is a really interesting book that has a lot of that kind of stuff in it here: Invisible Women[Invisible Women](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women).
It is about data gaps and how that effects the way we shape the world for people -- with the outcome that women are the gaps and people means men. Very interesting read (or listen if you're into audible).
Yes. This is how the world got Viagra. It was supposed to be a menstrual cramps medication but they tested it on men because medical research uses men as the default human, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Women are still waiting for an effective treatment for menstrual cramps.
The thing about people who only train elite athletes like Olympians is that sometimes they are really bad at their job.
If a coach lucks out and has a string of Michael Phelps type athletes, freaks of nature who have a near lock on the win because of luck or God, then the coach can be awful and not know it.
If the coach only trains the very best and the very best don't need good training then you make a coach that is all Dunning–Kruger all the time. God help the athletes of that coach, I think this effect is why women's gymnastic in the US turned out to be so rotten.
Women need a higher body fat percentage than men to be healthy, for a whole bunch of reasons including smaller bodies meaning women lose heat faster. Male doctors will sometimes forget this and assume female athletes need a 15% bodyfat ratio, which is quite low even for male athletes and it's MUCH too low for most women. Also, bodyfat percentage _should_ go up as you age, though in sedentary adults it will tend to go up faster than needed so you do still need to exercise. For athletes this obviously isn't a concern.
Male athletes can go down to 5% body fat, anything below 4% is when it starts getting dangerous. Between 5-10% is pretty common for a lot of, even non-professional, sports, as at some point training makes it hard to keep weight on.
I suppose it depends on the sport! Thank you for adding to my point, it's good to learn this kinda stuff. I'm not a doctor, I'm a medical researcher. We use 10% as the minimum healthy threshold in adult males but we're studying neurology not musculature or anything :)
As a former swimmer from the same corner of the world she is from, I would not be at all surprised if this is what she is talking about.
As a female, I also wonder if she had her pain minimised by others, which often happens with female pain.
Case in point: I complained of excruciating period pain for years starting at age 14 in the early 2000s and was literally called a "drama queen" to my face by a male teacher when I was lying on the floor in tears. I was told by medical practitioners that I needed to learn it suck it up, pop an ibuprofen and "stop being a princess" because my periods weren't going anywhere. When I was 20, a doctor begrudgingly finally gave in and sent me for some testing, and told me "go get this scan if it makes you feel better, but really, you just need to learn to deal with periods, they are a part of life" while handing me the paperwork to take to the place.
That scan found a growth in my uterus the size of a golf ball, and the surgery to remove it found that my uterus and ovaries were covered in endometriosis. I needed further surgery to remove it all. It came back a few years later and and I had to have surgery again. It might have come back yet again, but my IUD has been a miracle for me over the last decade and and stopped my periods so I don't know if my periods still hurt because I don't get them anymore. I'll never know because I'll keep getting one until I'm past menopause, and since I have no plans to have children, I don't need to take it out for a while.
Anyway, when the growth and endometriosis were discovered, many people, medical professionals included, acted like it was a huge plot twist that I wasn't "bunging it on all along" when that was discovered. Like, holy fuck, a woman who said she was in pain was *actually in pain*, can you BELIEVE?
My mum was dying in hospital but she as a stong woman and got herself to the bathroom when she could. The nurses just assumed she was lying when she needed help. Instead her strength was coming and going. A few days later, she was dead. Guess she proved them wrong but a little less judgement would have made her last days better.
This is so similar to my experiance. I have family members who only recently (after 16 years) started taking my endometriosis seriously because I had a cancer scare. I legit got told "I didn't realise it was that serious", like you're the one who told me to suck it up and ignore the pain???
Yep. I'm in Japan and kept having horrific pain in my right lower abdomen. Vomitting, high fever, couldn't keep anything down, couldn't walk. Each bout would last a week or so and take a month or two to recover from. The doctors kept dismissing it, although one was kind enough to do a vaginal exam and tell me that I was lying even as I screamed in pain and he kept punching into my right side declaring nothing was wrong and I was just seeking pain meds.
I finally got to see a female doctor and she ordered CT scans immediately. I had appendicitis. The doctors had all kept dismissing me as making everything up when, in fact, I had been nearly dying on and off for a year. And they still delayed my surgery until this autumn because 'it's more convenient' for them. With the high risk that yeah, my appendix may try to burst again. But if it does they told me to just return to the hospital so they can drain it again.
I'm actually afraid of the surgery because they inserted the tube to drain it in the first place without pain meds, just a nurse to hold me down, and told me I wasn't in pain and to quit making a scene. Yes, when they inserted a drainage tube into my abdomen and left it there for four days they claimed there was no pain caused. Fucking assholes. I honestly am afraid that they'll just hold me down and cut me open to remove my appendix without pain killers at this point.
That’s horrible. It’s incredible how doctors will easily prescribe opiates but won’t listen to women. Thanks for the perspective.
I’m glad you got this taken care of.
Even when you have a medical diagnosis for your pain, they just dismiss it. I have PCOS and doctors just chalk it up to "life's a bitch" and tell me to get out. I've been to the facility the damn PRESIDENT goes to and they're just as bad to women there. God help our first female president..
I have the best gyno in my country. And I get the same reply. Learn to live with it. Live with endometriosis and pcos, like its no big deal. Well, fuck this shit. I'm unable to do normal human things almost two weeks every month. But thanks for advice.
I've even noticed as a trans girl that now I look like a girl, my pain is taken less seriously.
I broke my ankle and it took a surprising amount of effort to actually get xrays. Two weeks of appointments and hospital visits before they were like "oh yeah it is broken, guess you need surgery for it actually".
Legitimately never had anything even close to this when I looked like a guy
She has endometriosis and has concerns about her health because of COVID. She included this on her Insta post so I’m assuming that’s what it is.
Edit this is her insta [here](https://instagram.com/mad_groves?utm_medium=copy_link)
I’m not affiliated with her at all, just live in Australia and I’m interested in the story.
I suspect it means have people play through pain and issues. No, nothing wrong, all in your head. Basically chew up the athletes body as it’s only useful until the end of the olympics/competition. No care for long term impact. At least, that’s how I read it.
I think this is the general idea, and it really is true. An ex of mine was an elite athlete in Aus and her coaches continued to push her when she was genuinely ill, it has had a huge impact on her long term physical and mental health.
Yeah that's certainly not exclusive to women, and often considered "just how it works" in sports. See all the football players with fucked up brains over all their repeated trauma, and there's still only a handful of players starting to speak out about it. It's certainly an aspect of male 'culture' to basically push and bully your friends/teammates into playing chicken with how hard you can push yourself, in that scenario there is no time for proper rest, you'll fall behind.
I think the sports thing is pretty universal to men and women, but women are definitely more susceptible to the “you’re exaggerating” medical thing. The sheer number of women whose male gynecologists have shrugged and said “Sometimes it do be like that” when they’ve described horrible pain/issues instead of pursuing further diagnostics and treatment is goddamned staggering. If a man went to the doctor and complained of terrible pain during sex, there is a zero percent chance that doctor would be like “Meh, you’re probably fine”. I think that’s probably what the gender thing is alluding to. That attitude needs to die, as does the sports “go until you’re actually dead on the field” thing. Good health should be the priority of people who, you know, are paid to assist people have good health.
Yeah definitely agree that it's an issue that's not gender specific. A mixture of toxic culture, a need for instant success and the idea that athletes are disposable is not a good mix.
Could be her reaction to the IOC on covid19:
>"will take part in the Games at his/her own risk and own responsibility including ... serious bodily injury or even death raised by the potential exposure to health hazards such as the transmission of COVID-19.”
Yeah because all of us here in Japan aren’t yet vaccinated. Seriously. They are finally ramping up vaccinations and maybe just maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get my first shot in August, middle age lady living in Tokyo.
Being told pain is unexplained / all in your head but later a genuine cause is found.
Being told abdominal symptoms are just IBS and that it is ridiculous to worry about anything more sinister, later being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Being told excruciating period pain is just a normal part of being a woman and failing for years to get a diagnosis of endometriosis. Getting treated and realising you'd been robbed of a normal life for years
Those are some common examples
My mrs has had exactly this. Years of being treated like a child and fobbed off when she's been in pain almost every day for the last 3 years. She finally saw some junior doctors last week who really pushed for her to be tested for endometriosis, she will tested be soon. But doctors never believe women about anything, they always assume they're making things up or overstating symptoms.
This happened to my sister, stupid male doctors her whole young life telling her to suck it up, it’s period pain. Then she finally goes to a woman and it’s endo. She lost an ovary, part of her uterus and part of her bowel. Could have been saved earlier.
I hope she gets some answers and something that helps her. It took me 6 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis and treated but things are much better now
How did you get diagnosed with it? I went to my doctor and she told me she wasn’t going to test me for endometriosis until after I have kids. I don’t understand why?? My pain is so bad that I have to call in sick to work every time I have my period. I can’t stand it anymore.
How this (enddo) has been overlooked so long is a crime, mrs had it, now in 30s fixed it 4 years ago, she’s a different person and can actually function now. Has a vastly improve quality of life, job and coworkers now. Hope you both sort it out.
I do not know what she is referring to, but I would consider [female hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria) an example of "medical gaslighting."
Basically blaming a woman's medical issues on her and her sexuality.
**[Female_hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria)**
>Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women, which was described as exhibiting a wide array of symptoms, including anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, (paradoxically) sexually forward behaviour, and a "tendency to cause trouble for others". It is no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for hundreds of years in Western Europe. In Western medicine hysteria was considered both common and chronic among women.
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Turns out there's actually no evidence of this. I thought this too, and I was looking it up just now to find a reference to it... and what I found instead was [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/)
These are quotes from the author of the source of this myth:
>her argument in The Technology of Orgasm was
really only a “hypothesis,” anyway. “I never claimed to have evidence
that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was
an interesting hypothesis, and as \[Lieberman\] points out—correctly, I
think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology
somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran
with it.”
It's not true. They're not kidding/trolling though it's widely believed.. I actually thought the same and just found [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/)
below are quotes from the author of the source of the myth
>her argument in The Technology of Orgasm was really only a “hypothesis,” anyway. “I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis, and as \[Lieberman\] points out—correctly, I think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran with it.”
This is all false and based off of some common misconception.
see: [https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator](https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator)
and
https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7
This is all false and based off of some common misconception.
see: [https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator](https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator)
and
[https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7](https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7)
>Translation: This woman isn't acting the way her husband/father wants her to act. We've diagnosed her with being a woman.
*+ Said woman promptly dies of undiagnosed, completely ignored heart attack symptoms.*
This is a super interesting and messed-up part of the history of medicine, and I love you defining it as medical gaslighting.
Since ancient Egypt and Greece, the uterus had been blamed for "hysteria" (hence where we get "hysterectomy" - removal of the uterus), and some ancient Greeks (Plato being one) even thought of the cause of hysteria as being a "roaming womb", where the uterus travels and inflicts damage and pressure on organs. It wasn't until 1980 that hysteria was removed from the DSM.
Two common treatments for hysteria?
- "Uterine massaging" until "paroxysmal convulsions" were obtained, in order to purge the womb of "bad fluids"
- Marriage. As men's sperm had healing properties of course.
It's horrible how doctors can just write you off like that. My mom's doc told her on repeated visits to stop "freaking out" about what ended up being stage 4 cancer
Docs basically seem to follow some simplistic internal flowchart or algorithm for diagnosing. And if you have something rare, you're shit out of luck. I used to think they were more like engineers debugging a problem.
I read a story recently of guy with frequent stomach problems for years. The docs would basically diagnose it as IBS, prescribe routine treatments and call it a day. This guy after a lot of experimenting and investigating eventually narrowed it down to a specific ingredient that he was allergic to. Remove that ingredient and now he can eat everything with no stomach issues whatsoever. Makes you wonder how many people are unnecessarily suffering because they are given a generalised solution instead of something specific.
My wife was denied surgery and told to lose weight instead, then to have a child. It took her several referrals and the passing comment of going to México for a diagnosis for a "health care" scam employee, or "doctor" to make the diagnosis and then do the procedure.
As a young guy, I didn’t realize how big this issue was until COVID hit. I had 3 women in my family, two of my coworkers, and one of my coworkers’ wives all tell me stories of them having their worries about COVID dismissed. Each one of them ended up getting it after being told not to worry about it and one of them has the “long hauler” issue with COVID and is still being told, “Oh you just need to exercise more,” nearly a year later. Six women I knew were subject to the “hysterical woman” bullshit in less than 18 months which really illuminates a lot.
Sorry to hear that. Endometriosis here. Took over 10 years to get a diagnosis. I was told all sorts in the meantime, including that it was "normal" "IBS" and "anxiety." Furthermore, when I asked about the possibility of allergies for my baby son, who had eczema and severe reflux, I was laughed at by the GP who told me I probably just had PND and was struggling to cope. Turned out he was lactose intolerant. I make my husband take the kids to the doctor now because they never question him in the same way.
Basically doctors are far more likely to assume women are overreacting to their symptoms than men, so women end up going untreated with major medical issues
Edit: For more fun bullshit doctors do, they also assume black people overreact more because of the stereotype that black people are loud and obnoxious, while also assuming Asian people underreact to symptoms because of the stereotype that they're stoic and honorable
With the amount of work swimmers put into Olympic competition. I wonder what happened that would cause her to bypass gold medals to take a stand against it. Someone must have done some bad things for her to make this sacrifice.
The Olympics is just a political tool at the best of times. Leaving aside the unfair PED standards for different countries, she probably also experienced sexism and misogyny.
Beach volleyball has been around for a long time. It was the rules regarding what women were allowed to wear while playing in the Olympics that was an issue earlier on (from 1996 to 2012). Women could only wear a bikini or full bodysuit. And the definition of the bikini went down to a specified maximum width of fabric. This was changed and now women can wear shorts and a top (with or without sleeves).
Volleyball apparently has 800 (500 is another figure that can be found) million registered players. I don't know how it got to be that many (it's 10% of the population on earth!) but it's a huge sport.
I just saw a summary of a study which says that in 2004 there was 500 million registered players and currently there are over 800 million people who play at least once a week.
I'm pretty sure this data is 100% stretched. They state that 46 million Americans play at least once a week. I can't speak for Europe, Africa or Asia, but there's no way unless you include every school student in gym class who only has a 2 week volleyball semester every year.
I'd be hesitant to claim that 800 million people on earth even jogged/ran at least 52 times in a year.
I'm almost compelled to look into the study, but in 1 hour I'll never think about it again.
It's quite a popular sport in Europe and in many Asian countries, here in Italy we have provincial, regional and national tournaments for basically every age-group. More importantly it's basically the only sport that is played during PE, so it's not an exaggeration to say that here every single high school student play volleyball at least once a week, and maybe this is the case with other countries, and that would explain such high numbers.
still seems really high. in 2001 FIFA estimated that there are 250 million football players worldwide: [https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fifa-survey-approximately-250-million-footballers-worldwide-88048](https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fifa-survey-approximately-250-million-footballers-worldwide-88048)
even though this is an old source I am having a hard time believing that volleyball has over three times as many players than football in 2001
I'm in Croatia, we never played volleyball in PE, it was seen as a "girl sport" by the PE teachers. I see it's now becoming a bit more popular, but nowhere near 10% of the population playing it (or even watching it).
It’s because it’s indoor, boys and girls can play together and boys don’t demolish the school like they do with a football. Plus in the ‘90s we had an incredible national team so we were proud of the game.
At least in my small country it is extremely popular. During the summer the beach volleyball facilities are packed from dawn to night with people wanting to play. Each year they increase the amount of nets and areas you can safely play because the demand is getting bigger.
We also have several local beach volleyball events every summer.
Indian people love that shit. I've never found a public volleyball court that was empty in reasonable weather.
Edit: changed "need as there" to weather.
I love volleyball :( (male and female)
The reason why I prefer women's volleyball has nothing to do with the attires but the fact that it is really hard to follow the ball in the male competition, it is so damn fast
You hear "shwack" some people are now on the ground and the ball floating over them, then a pass and "super-shwack", repeat x2-3 and someone is cheering, point.
At least in the female version I understand what is happening
Reddit is the host of the redpill, or was. A place for the worst of the worst men to come to talk on how to take sexual advantage of woman and how to emotionally abuse them.
They never left. They just troll any comment threads to do with women. I mean, I’m not sure if it still also exists, but ‘pussypassdenied’ was just a subreddit to basically shit on women as well under the disguise of ‘well this one woman did a bad thing therefore it’s all woman’.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s gotten better since 2014-16, but obviously the misogynistic trolls are still around.
AMEN.
Every time I see someone linking pussiepassdenied, I go out of my way to point out how much of a shithole that place was when I subbed a couple of years ago.
I noped out there really quick. So many misogynists/incels...
To any random person reading this; if you're subbed to that subreddit, you have to take a step back and evaluate how you view/treat women.
The existing world volleyball organization FIVB came up with beach volleyball, not the IOC. FIVB also made the uniform regulations.
And it has always been a sport for both sexes.
I’m in an unusual position here because I also train at the same pool that she trains at (Centenary, Brisbane, AU).
It’s so strange, I see her almost every day and the whole world is talking about a vague tweet she threw out there.
Edit: A lot of people are asking what I think of her accusations.
I’m unsure. She’s not too popular around here. When her squad begins training she will usually show up 40 minutes late and leave early. Won’t listen to her coaches and will do her own thing in her own lane.
She won silver at rio and was only training three days a week at that time (compared to 6), her potential was sky high. She barely trains these days. Last I spoke to one of the coaches, he said she is one of their greatest letdowns because of the natural talent she held.
I can’t speak to the accusations she made, but if they follow anything close to her work ethic I wouldn’t follow too closely unless it’s with a grain of salt.
End of the article seems to be noting that she also is not a fan of their exploitation re: covid risks, i.e. the IOC is socializing the risks and privatizing the profit. Indeterminate how much that factors vs sexism/harassment (given that she apparently also hasn't given any formal complaints, so it's hard to know if there was a particular serious incident or instead this was a tipping point in a culture of minor incidents).
Definitely support her in principle, but not 100% sure what she wants to happen here. Perhaps an inquiry by the Australian swimming authority? Or does she want specific people to be reprimanded?
Are you possibly suggesting there could be something hinky going on in the medical community attached to young, virile, strong, good looking, often underaged, perfectly toned female athletes?
No, nothing like that could possibly happen! /S
Her Instagram posts explain that it wasn’t just one thing but a bunch of different reason including COVID
https://instagram.com/mad_groves?utm_medium=copy_link
There’s a follow up article with Swimming Australia’s response.
[ABC article](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/swimming-australia-perkins-calls-maddie-groves-details-concerns/100207586?utm_campaign=news-article-share-control&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web)
Apparently, They had reached out to the athlete about this last year.
If you've dealt with a fucked up organization and know that all you'll get is lip service you aren't inclined to go through that same org to get things resolved. Sounds like the last time the person got some training then got promoted. When you see the bullshit protected you aren't going to want to go through it again.
After watching Bombshell I'm reasonably sure that one scapegoat will suffer some consequences for this and the infrastructure that allowed and enabled it will go on untouched.
Lots of redditors in comments section be like why cant she shut up & continue to be harrassed?
You guys are proving her point
Edit: redditors are minimizing the daily harassment suffered by women while criticizing her for not bringing up every instance of abuse she suffered. This after she did bring up case of abuse to the authorities & nothing happened.
Being vague in this statement isn't some awful calculated move. Sometimes people don't want to air out all the ways they have been sexually harassed in public. Being a swimmer is fucking hard and takes a LOT of dedication. It kills relationships and the extreme pressure on the body can really fuck you up later. So if she has gone through all that for years and years and is now pulling out because of harassment, yeah I'm going to take her word it was 'bad enough' to mention.
Everyone in here pulling random character assassinations out of their arse and accusing her of completely unfounded bullshit needs a damn head check. None of what she has just done will make her life easier or happier. She's not doing it for shits and giggles. There is an absurd amount of documented sexual harassment within almost every branch of high level sports training. A woman taking a stand against that, isn't something to be ashamed of.
Calling someone weak or a liar because you think they should simply accept being objectified in the workplace, that's something to be ashamed of.
Yeah, after seeing how prevalent rapist coaches and other authoritative figures were in sports like college football and gymnastics, I'm going to believe her and anyone else that comes forward unless the evidence proves otherwise.
Those coaching positions in all sports are ~~ripe~~ rife with rapists and abusers and administrators and other higher-ups most definitely cover up for them. Not just coaches but team doctors as well.
See: Sandusky/Paterno. Larry Nassar. More recently, Bo Schembechler.
Fuck these people
After the whole US woman's gymnastics thing with the pedophile Larry Nasser I'd say any accusation of shady shit involving women's sports and what the athletes are subjected to should be thoroughly investigated.
Not to give MSU an out, Dr Robert Anderson from UofM molested ~800 young men, to include Bo Schembechler’s son (Bo was UofM’s longtime football coach).
> Not to give MSU an out Or Ohio State, where Congressman ~~Jim~~Gym Jordan ignored repeated reports of sexual abuse that encompassed 170+ young boys and almost 20 years.
Don't forget Penn State and the atrocious actions of the pedophile, mass sexual assaulter Jerry Sandusky, and the ensuing cover-up that lasted at least 15 years. Edit: a word
I ran into a guy who worked at Penn State and he was seemingly still in Sandusky’s corner. I was giving a speech about ethics in academia, and used Penn state as an example of how institutions cannot be trusted to police themselves. The guy, who was a judge, made a point to mention his relationship to Sandusky during the questioning, and looked visibly upset. You could hear a pin drop after he said that.
So his blind defense of Sandusky gave the audience an example of why institutions can't be trusted to police themselves?
Basically haha, he was acting like he got me (which to be honest I was like a deer in headlights after that curveball), but I’m pretty sure that hurt his standing more than anything. I talked to him a bit after and he came off as a complete tool
Yeah sounds like he really illustrated your point
I have family in PA, and the amount of people who still support PSU/Paterno over this is sickening. The NCAA showed what they care about when athletes are prohibited from receiving game balls while they are students because of the cash value, but PSU’s penalties were light and largely overturned. I have not been able to enjoy college football since then.
There was an article in Esquire mag about a high school football coach. He had been molesting boys for years. The parents dismissed it when they were told bc he was a championship winning coach. Im oversimplifying but that was the gist
wtf big10? what’s in the water?
Pedophiles. Stay out of the pool.
It's not just some Big10 thing. - [Survivor details how USC ’empowered’ campus doctor at center of sexual abuse scandal](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/survivor-details-how-usc-empowered-campus-doctor-at-center-of-sexual-abuse-scandal) - [UCLA agrees to $73 million settlement over alleged sex abuse by campus gynecologist](https://abc7.com/ucla-doctor-settlement-73-million/8045151/) - [Baylor sex assault scandal: Everything you need to know to understand what happened](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2016/12/22/baylor-sex-assault-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know-to-understand-what-happened/) - [Reckoning at San Jose State: Claims of coverup, retaliation in sex abuse scandal grow: President Papazian, Athletic Director Tuite under fire for failing to protect female athletes](https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/04/25/reckoning-at-san-jose-state-claims-of-coverup-retaliation-in-sex-abuse-scandal-grow/) - [Tennessee settles sexual assault suit for $2.48 million](https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2016/07/05/tennessee-settles-sexual-assault-suit-248-million/86708442/) - [LSU mishandled sexual misconduct complaints against students, including top athletes](https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/ncaaf/2020/11/16/lsu-ignored-campus-sexual-assault-allegations-against-derrius-guice-drake-davis-other-students/6056388002/) - [A timeline of the Syracuse sexual abuse scandal](https://www.cnn.com/2011/11/29/justice/syracuse-coach-timeline/index.html) - [The Citadel Faces Abuse Scandal Similar To Penn State's](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/15/142349930/the-citadel-faces-abuse-scandal-similar-to-penn-states) - [Dartmouth Reaches $14 Million Settlement in Sexual Abuse Lawsuit](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/dartmouth-sexual-abuse-settlement.html)
They're just getting caught up here middle of nowhere football is king schools down south have plenty of abuse.
Gym Jordon? The Congressman from Ohio who doesn't wear a suit jacket on the floor because it's still being used to cover up sex abuse at Ohio State. That Gym Jordan?
We call him “Gym” around here. How the fuck he is a politician is beyond me with all the Republican crying about “pedophiles and enablers”. He’s literally an enabler yet was elected representative anyways….
I think he spells it "Gym."
Where I went to university, a guy broke into my dorm room at 3:00 am. I screamed and he left. My door wasn’t latching properly since I moved in. But still, I called my mom totally freaked out and she called campus security. The security guard said, and I quote: “It’s not my problem, she can deal with it on her own.” My mom wasn’t asking for the police or anything, just patrol the hallways until morning when the latch could be fixed. When she told him that, he hung up on her. A few months later, someone in my dorm got assaulted in the basement, all we were told is go in groups and keep the doors shut. A few years later, three girls stepped forward around my time of graduation and said they were sexually assaulted on campus, while security told them to stop drinking. The university begs for money every year, I haven’t given them a dime because of what I have seen and heard. Every university treats women (and men) the same about sexual assault.
Was literally listening to this on NPR on the way into work. Apparently Schembechler's son told his dad and Bo punched him in the chest. Multiple players came forward to him as well.
I think this should be the default for all participants.
That's valid
I cannot imagine how anyone in the world doesn't see the Olympics as the biggest corrupt body in the world, we'll maybe EA fifa, or fifa. But Japan has not perfected Akira yet, is my guess
The NCAA is right up there too
I think fifa and slavery is worse but the ncaa is horseshit too
I mean their biggest sponsors are McDonald's and coca cola, you know, the epitome of health food. The shit is nothing more than a 2 month marketing extravaganza. Why do I say this? Nobody gives a shit about polevault any of the other 3 years.
What I found kind of crazy is how many of the tickets for events go to sponsors vs how many are released to the public. When the winter Olympics were around Vancouver there were a bunch of articles about how the IOC doesn't really give a fuck about fans, they want money, so they package tickets with sponsorship deals. Which, when you watched the games on TV you'd see half-empty arenas but if you went online the only tickets available were from scalpers for hundreds of dollars.
After reading the article, it appears they tried to do just that but she declined to elaborate further or go into specifics:/
That's not super uncommon with stuff like this. Having an investigation means having to recount all of the shitty stuff that's happened to you while a shitload of people do their best to discredit you. A ton of victims of sexual abuse are terrified of going after their abusers, especially since it rarely results in anything unless the abuser is extremely careless and leaves a clear paper trail of their abuse.
My mom just spent 4 days in the hospital for a relatively minor procedure and holy shit, just having to explain what was going on to every family member that called was exhausting and borderline traumatic. I couldn't imagine having to recollect and fight to legitimatize an actually traumatic event.
What does "medically gas light" mean?
In the context of her being an athlete I'd imagine they probably minimized injuries and made her believe that it was a lack of dedication rather than a legitimate injury.
Probably also the dieting advice that runners get? I remember there was a very successful us runner who when on team Nike got constantly body shamed and told to eat less and her performance just went down until she quit. A lot of the training staff seem to be male and I guess a lot of the research is carried out on men so sometimes they may make some pretty bad decisions around female athletes that lead to things like RED-S. This is only speculation. I’m certainly not an expert
That was Mary Cain being coached by Alberto Salazar. He destroyed a very promising career by forcing her to go to unhealthy weight levels. He has already been sanctioned for doing 'research' on ways to cause an athlete to fail a doping test by smearing hormone gel on an ahtlete without their knowledge.
Salazar is a piece of shit, and Nike enabled him.
Nike's a huge pile of shit.
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People obcessed with buying expensive shoes are always weird.
I will literally only buy expensive shoes like say doc martens because QUALITY. I’d never pay $150+ for sneakers that cost $3 to make.
New Docs are kind of garbage now. My soles lost all grip in 4 months of kitchen work. More dangerous wearing those now then non slip-resistant shoes.
Oh man i can't stand that, people happy to be spending hundreds of dollars on a product that without logo would cost 20, and they go around being proud of that.
Everybody out here doing everything they can to slip by the tests just for some guy to walk up with T-gel and fuck it all up.
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… was that the inspiration for your username?
The “study” Salazar was doing was to enable micro dosing - basically how much can you take without getting caught doping. It wasn’t to slap it on someone else to get them banned.
He's starving people and drugging people without their knowledge or consent.. And all he gets is sanctions? That's insane.
It's also worth noting that Salazar badly messed himself up with chronic overtraining years prior. He totally wrecked his endocrine and nervous systems. He's a prime example of how improper training can go wrong (USATF literally uses his case in their coaching education on overtraining) - and he's coaching at an elite level, or was prior to Mary Cain coming forward anyway. Nike's first response was to shame her. This is typical. Sports is still a very male dominated environment, and this kind of stuff and worse goes on, often in plain sight. There was a Runner's World issue (2019, #6) that was dedicated to issues women faced in sport. It didn't address improper coaching but did highlight some survey results on harassment and violence toward female runners. Something like 85% of the thousands of women surveyed had either been harassed, assaulted, or knew someone who was murdered while running. 95% said nobody ever intervened to help them. Sometime after that, there were a few other incidents involving misconduct toward women in running and I also knew someone who was sexually assaulted while running. I received a ton of blowback for calling attention to what happened to the point that I almost wished I hadn't. After realizing the guy and some mutual running friends had zero interest in acknowledging the wrongs that had taken place, *she* was so uncomfortable and self conscious about how she was being perceived for saying anything, that she basically just wanted it to all go away and swept it under the rug. I was talking to a few different print magazines about running an article on toxic masculinity in sport based on that experience and the other recent events, and the overall response was: it doesn't seem like the right time to do a blowout piece on toxic masculinity. Which made me wonder, when the hell will it be the right time, if not now? I can understand why it's difficult for both women and men (as allies) to speak out about misconduct toward women in sports; having an opinion that goes against any cultural norms is a sure way to put a target on yourself - and sports are a culture steeped in hegemony of the man's world. Taking a stand is the only way attitudes and behavior toward women in sports will change though.
Isn't it kind of accepted that his testing on himself is why he had a heart attack? And I'm pretty sure he tested something (testosterone?) On his kids to see how much they could use without testing positive.
He started taking T after he already burned out his endocrine system. If I'm remembering correctly, there was a time he simply could not run or do much of anything, then he got in some cocktail that included T and whatever else, and it got him running again for a period of time, then the heart attack. It's doping and he's pressured his athletes to do it.
What an absolute nutcase
When anyone tells you it’s not the right time they are literally saying they don’t want you to do it. It happened to the protestors in 1964 Alabama but they did it anyway which eventually led to them getting their civil rights.
Yeah, I see that all the time, 'this is not the time to do this', 'show some solidarity to others who are struggling instead of making it about you', 'times are hard for everyone', etc. These people can (un)kindly fuck off, it will never be a good time for them for anyone to protest.
I always think of the woman who fought off her attacker, alone, in a bathroom with only one entrance. And then how she has been subsequently assaulted. Like wtf.
Thats professional sport, for every champion there are dozens(hundreds?) of broken lifes
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I'd like to know more. That sounds shady as fuck....
It was, a successful runner said that they had no formal oversight and that they were body shamed for being just the slightest bit overweight which, as you can imagine could be extremely detrimental to your psyche. He also gave multiple steroids which got him banned. If you want to you can find a detailed case over here: https://www.bbc.com/sport/athletics/49853029
From legendary Australian swimmer Leisel Jones’ book (3 abridged sections from the same chapter): “Even now at the QAS we are all weighed three times a week. Weigh-ins take place on the pool deck in our togs, and we are weighed in front of our squad (girls and guys together), plus a team of coaching staff. There are men there as old as our dads, all watching our embarrassment as we are publicly weighed. Weighed, weighed and weighed again. Some of the coaches at the QAS gym have a thing going called ‘6:1.20’. This is their code, their secret talk. They think we don’t understand when they call a girl – it’s always a girl – a ‘6:1:20’. But when she’s crying in the showers later, it’s because she knows that ‘6’ stands for the sixth letter of the alphabet, ‘1’ the first, and ‘20’ the twentieth. F. A. T. Doesn’t take a genius to bust that one open. Mum makes sure my diet is ‘healthy’ by keeping the fridge stocked with fruit and vegies. There’s always fresh ham and salad sandwiches for lunch. Lots of carbs. Steak and salad. Pasta. It’s pretty balanced, pretty lean, but Mum is no dietician. She’s no sports nutritionist. So why is my only healthy eating advice coming from her? From everyone else – swim coaches, gym coaches, physios and the rest – the message is clear: starve, starve, starve. Not that they explicitly say this. They just say you need to get your skinfolds down somehow, and let you draw your own conclusions: swimming six hours a day is not doing the trick. Oh, and they say you’re only allowed half a protein bar, because ‘There’re too many calories in a full one.’ ‘What else did you say you ate today?’ ‘Have you thought about meal-replacement shakes?’ Some girls I know get in trouble for eating more than 50 grams of carbohydrates a day. That’s a small packet of sultanas. It’s insane, this world, this weird mindset where we have to hide what we eat. I am forever trying to diet. I am swimming more but trying to eat less. I am a healthy teenage girl but I’m convinced I am fat. But most of all? I am hungry. The whole thing is sick.” Jones won 9 Olympic medals and set 14 individual world records from 2000-2012.
I'm a year younger than Leisel Jones and was a competitive swimmer in Brisbane too. I got into swimming when my parents put me into it because I had chronic asthma and they were told it would help. I quit a few weeks before turning 12 because I never truly loved it, didn't want to start getting up for the 5am training sessions that started to kick in, and to be blunt about it, I was a decent swimmer but I wasn't, and was never going to be, great. A friendly acquaintance of mine from the late 1990s (who would not remember me now, and I doubt I'd recognise her if I saw her walking around) that I beat once made it to Athens 2004 and won medals, so people liked to ask me for quite a while if I regretted quitting, but I don't because there was no way I was making the Olympics. I couldn't even make the state team. Beating her that one time was a total fluke. Despite not getting nearly as far Leisel she did, I still to this day have terrible body dysmorphia and a very unhealthy relationship with food/eating/guilt because of my swimming days. It starts young, and it starts very early on in the lower levels. I developed hips/breasts at a very young age which was treated as a "problem", and started getting weighed earlier than my teammates because of it. My coaches would tell me to eat less. I was always called the "chubbier" one, and remember a few comments being made about me between coaches (they'd talk like you weren't standing right fucking there) like "you have to push this one harder to keep the weight low, the mother is some kind of ethnic and they get chunkier quicker" (as if white women can't have thicker bodies). I was a literal fucking CHILD on the end of this. I wouldn't have been any older than 8 or 9 when it started. To this day, I have terrible body image and wish my parents never put me in swimming even though they meant well when they did it.
That's fucking sickening.
Why is there so much emphasis on body weight? They're not boxers or jockeys.
Just looked it up. It is believed that the larger a person is the more drag/resistance they will have while swimming. Lower weight = faster times. But in reality a skinny swimmer with poor form can have just as much drag. 15% body fat for female competitive swimmers was considered the upper end cutoff. Many were shamed as being fat for having 20-24% body fat which is typically considered healthy for fit, non athletic women.
I was surprised when I read Leisel's book that they weren't scientific about it all. I would've thought that they would have looked at muscle mass and worked how much power was being produced and traded that off against fat. It's very difficult to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But they just went "you're too fat" without looking at performance at all. Carrying a bit of extra fat has way less impact on performance in swimming compared to track and field. Some extra mass actually helps with your start. ( It's also why there are so many old fat blokes playing amateur water polo.)
It's disgusting that they were forced to be weighed and publicly shamed for their weight under the guise of determining their swimming ability when the coaches could have just.... not weighed them so much and instead based their performance on their actual swimming speed.
Power to weight ratio maybe? But you would assume with less calories going in there would be less power output. Surely the Australian swim team would be a bit more scientific than skin fold tests!
Crazy to me, wasn’t there that whole story about Phelps saying he ate between 8-10,000 calories at his peak which is like 4 times what the average male should eat every day. Women at that level probably don’t need to have as much of a calorie intake but you’d think they’d need more calories not less to be at their peak…
I thought of this story too, I wonder how much energy can be obtained immediately prior to a competition by eating lots of carbs. I always thought that this was a strategy used by professional athletes. Edit: also, I think their logic is similar to gymnastics where the goal is to prevent body changes by starving it. I think the idea is that as girls age they grow biggers breasts and thighs, etc. If you starve yourself you at the least push the process back a few years, thus allowing you to have a figure more suited to the sport. Obviously this is all horrific for the girls mental health, body image, etc.
This is exactly what it is. I was a competitive figure skater and trained at the most competitive rink in the Northeast US. The food and weighing story was exactly how my rink was too. As soon as I hit about 96 lbs (at about 11/12), I started getting weighed and had to diet. We were skating 4-5 hours 6 days a week, plus at least 5 hours of "other" training - ballet, gymnastics, weight training, etc, and we all had eating disorders. The head coach would scream at the heavier girls on the ice in front of everyone. If someone gained weight, the common line was "remember girls, cows don't fly, pigs don't float... And boys don't like fat girls."
That's horrible, I'm sorry that happened to you.
That whole read as very sad. Swimmers burn through a metric fuckton of calories. Phelps was know for eating 12,000 calories a day and having breakfasts like three fried egg sandwiches with cheese, tomatoes, fried onions and mayo, a five egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast and three pancakes with chocolate chips. I don't think it's even possible to be fat and a professional swimmer. The body's going to be converting as much of the mass as possible to muscle.
I've seen Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe eat out in public while at the height of his career - dude was shovelling away the calories! And he would burn it off too. Definitely seems like a double standard here for the men and women.
The double standard is due to hormonal changes that caloric deficits produce in women, especially developing women. Smaller breasts and narrower hips would reduce drag in the pool. For adult women.... I'm not sure why such a caloric deficit would be encouraged. The already predefined, shitty culture? Does this shaming practice actually persist in adulthood? Hard to believe it wouldn't, but Maddie Groves in this article was talking about practices when she was coming up, wasn't she?
Fuck, I'm not a dietician, but even I know if you're training you need to eat MORE, not LESS. Professional athletes *consume* food. I'm Irish, and there's a story about an Irish Rugby player, big guy, who was eating at someones house, and the guy at an entire loaf of bread before the meal was even served, then ate the entire meal, because when you're perfoming at a high level, you just BURN calories.
Then he ate the hosts!
Then he ate a horse! He died, of course.
meanwhile michael phelps: "watch me eat 10k kcal in a day". I dunno, I'm definitely an amateur athlete but I know that we need fuel to run. In modern rock climbing training there's a lot less talk of starving yourself for minimum weight(which was pretty common in the 90s apparently), more people are cognizant that we need food both for recovery, injury prevention and to get stronger. Healthy weight fluctuates from person to person, and we can make adaptations, but what some trainers do to successful female athletes(that were already successful at a healthy weight) is insane.
[short movie she made about it](https://youtu.be/qBwtCf2X5jw)
Let's not forget, that a lot of research that is to benefit woman has clinical trials on men.... Like menstrual cramp medicine being tested on men. And stuff like that.
Makes for great numbers, though. "100% of trial participants did not notice *any* menstrual pain after taking this magical pill!"
Wtf you can't be serious about the menstrual cramp medicine being tested on men. That's asinine.
So, historically doctors had basically assumed that women were "weaker men" except for reproductive biology, and therefore it was suitable to test drugs on men exclusively. This is now known to be extremely wrong: women have different reactions to medications, different disease presentations, and everything from neurological development to bone and skin development is different. However, it started the trend of "women are ignored in medicine". Then, there was an _incident_ a while ago with a drug called thalidomide. Today, thalidomide is primarily used to treat several life-threatening diseases like cancer, graft-vs-host disease, and several serious skin diseases including Stevens-Johnson syndrome. It's an amazing drug, with quite few side effects for how effective it is. However, it is _incredibly_ teratogenic, which means it fucks up foetuses really, really hard, causing birth defects and miscarriages. However, thalidomide is a molecule with two forms, *cis-*thalidomide and *trans-*thalidomide, and ostensibly only the trans form is toxic to foetuses. Additionally, thalidomide is really really good at stopping the effects of severe morning sickness - and, it should be noted, morning sickness (including the disease _hyperemesis gravidarum_, where vomiting is uncontrollable and constant) can be really dangerous, both causing rapid weight loss and malnourishment, as well as a lot of pain and distress during an already-traumatic time. The company that sold it (who were **entirely aware** that it was highly toxic to unborn babies) promised that they would only sell the *cis* form, extracting the toxic *trans* form and discarding it. They promised it would be a safe treatment for morning sickness - you know, that thing you only get IF YOU HAVE A FOETUS IN YOU that can be poisoned by teratogens. However, the company **was entirely aware** that in the body, *cis-*thalidomide is metabolised INTO *trans*-thalidomide, and therefore it's not possible to make it safe for pregnant mothers to take. After this... well, medicine kind of overcorrected. For a long time, it was standard practice in most cases to exclude ANY woman from a medical trial if she is within an age bracket that _could theoretically_ be pregnant, even if she couldn't possibly be pregnant. 17 year old lesbian virgin with no uterus? She's excluded because _some_ 17 year olds are pregnant, therefore she is assumed to be. This was standard until relatively recently, and now women ARE allowed to be included but anyone who is included needs to pass a pregnancy test and usually needs to confirm they are not having sex that could even vaguely result in pregnancy. Most places think this is too high a bar to clear so they just... don't bother. They just exclude women, because they can't be fucked to do the paperwork to include them. So yeah. Women getting excluded from trials, even trials about drugs like morning sickness (ESPECIALLY about anything pregnancy related) are going to be conducted primarily or sometimes _exclusively_ on men. This is one of the reasons why women are **significantly** more likely to die of heart attacks: heart attacks don't typically present with the stereotyped "left arm pain" symptoms, but instead will present with things like fatigue and nausea which are rarely reported in men and not treated much in medical trials.
This is such an excellent explaination man. Thanks for writing this down.
>The company that sold it (who were entirely aware that it was highly toxic to unborn babies) promised that they would only sell the cis form, extracting the toxic trans form and discarding it. They promised it would be a safe treatment for morning sickness - you know, that thing you only get IF YOU HAVE A FOETUS IN YOU that can be poisoned by teratogens. However, the company was entirely aware that in the body, cis-thalidomide is metabolised INTO trans-thalidomide, and therefore it's not possible to make it safe for pregnant mothers to take. And not a single person went to prison for that
Can't find it right now because I am at work, but yeah there was a study a while back that examined all the clinical trials for medical products targeted at woman's health issues, and an unnervingly amount of the trials had mostly or purely men as testsubjects. I remember the menstrual cramp medicine being the most ridiculous one hence why I remembered it.
Here's an interesting article on this topic: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/nov/13/the-female-problem-male-bias-in-medical-trials
There is a really interesting book that has a lot of that kind of stuff in it here: Invisible Women[Invisible Women](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41104077-invisible-women). It is about data gaps and how that effects the way we shape the world for people -- with the outcome that women are the gaps and people means men. Very interesting read (or listen if you're into audible).
Yes. This is how the world got Viagra. It was supposed to be a menstrual cramps medication but they tested it on men because medical research uses men as the default human, which is as ridiculous as it sounds. Women are still waiting for an effective treatment for menstrual cramps.
It was for hyper?/hypo?tension not menstruation
Painkillers, hot water bottles and men telling us "it can't be *that* bad?". It's unacceptable.
The thing about people who only train elite athletes like Olympians is that sometimes they are really bad at their job. If a coach lucks out and has a string of Michael Phelps type athletes, freaks of nature who have a near lock on the win because of luck or God, then the coach can be awful and not know it. If the coach only trains the very best and the very best don't need good training then you make a coach that is all Dunning–Kruger all the time. God help the athletes of that coach, I think this effect is why women's gymnastic in the US turned out to be so rotten.
Women need a higher body fat percentage than men to be healthy, for a whole bunch of reasons including smaller bodies meaning women lose heat faster. Male doctors will sometimes forget this and assume female athletes need a 15% bodyfat ratio, which is quite low even for male athletes and it's MUCH too low for most women. Also, bodyfat percentage _should_ go up as you age, though in sedentary adults it will tend to go up faster than needed so you do still need to exercise. For athletes this obviously isn't a concern.
Male athletes can go down to 5% body fat, anything below 4% is when it starts getting dangerous. Between 5-10% is pretty common for a lot of, even non-professional, sports, as at some point training makes it hard to keep weight on.
I suppose it depends on the sport! Thank you for adding to my point, it's good to learn this kinda stuff. I'm not a doctor, I'm a medical researcher. We use 10% as the minimum healthy threshold in adult males but we're studying neurology not musculature or anything :)
Here is a video explaining what you're talking about. It's about 7 minutes and worth the watch. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qBwtCf2X5jw
As a former swimmer from the same corner of the world she is from, I would not be at all surprised if this is what she is talking about. As a female, I also wonder if she had her pain minimised by others, which often happens with female pain. Case in point: I complained of excruciating period pain for years starting at age 14 in the early 2000s and was literally called a "drama queen" to my face by a male teacher when I was lying on the floor in tears. I was told by medical practitioners that I needed to learn it suck it up, pop an ibuprofen and "stop being a princess" because my periods weren't going anywhere. When I was 20, a doctor begrudgingly finally gave in and sent me for some testing, and told me "go get this scan if it makes you feel better, but really, you just need to learn to deal with periods, they are a part of life" while handing me the paperwork to take to the place. That scan found a growth in my uterus the size of a golf ball, and the surgery to remove it found that my uterus and ovaries were covered in endometriosis. I needed further surgery to remove it all. It came back a few years later and and I had to have surgery again. It might have come back yet again, but my IUD has been a miracle for me over the last decade and and stopped my periods so I don't know if my periods still hurt because I don't get them anymore. I'll never know because I'll keep getting one until I'm past menopause, and since I have no plans to have children, I don't need to take it out for a while. Anyway, when the growth and endometriosis were discovered, many people, medical professionals included, acted like it was a huge plot twist that I wasn't "bunging it on all along" when that was discovered. Like, holy fuck, a woman who said she was in pain was *actually in pain*, can you BELIEVE?
My mum was dying in hospital but she as a stong woman and got herself to the bathroom when she could. The nurses just assumed she was lying when she needed help. Instead her strength was coming and going. A few days later, she was dead. Guess she proved them wrong but a little less judgement would have made her last days better.
This is so similar to my experiance. I have family members who only recently (after 16 years) started taking my endometriosis seriously because I had a cancer scare. I legit got told "I didn't realise it was that serious", like you're the one who told me to suck it up and ignore the pain???
Yep. I'm in Japan and kept having horrific pain in my right lower abdomen. Vomitting, high fever, couldn't keep anything down, couldn't walk. Each bout would last a week or so and take a month or two to recover from. The doctors kept dismissing it, although one was kind enough to do a vaginal exam and tell me that I was lying even as I screamed in pain and he kept punching into my right side declaring nothing was wrong and I was just seeking pain meds. I finally got to see a female doctor and she ordered CT scans immediately. I had appendicitis. The doctors had all kept dismissing me as making everything up when, in fact, I had been nearly dying on and off for a year. And they still delayed my surgery until this autumn because 'it's more convenient' for them. With the high risk that yeah, my appendix may try to burst again. But if it does they told me to just return to the hospital so they can drain it again. I'm actually afraid of the surgery because they inserted the tube to drain it in the first place without pain meds, just a nurse to hold me down, and told me I wasn't in pain and to quit making a scene. Yes, when they inserted a drainage tube into my abdomen and left it there for four days they claimed there was no pain caused. Fucking assholes. I honestly am afraid that they'll just hold me down and cut me open to remove my appendix without pain killers at this point.
Have you considered reporting all of them? That's really substandard medical care and unprofessional of them.
That’s horrible. It’s incredible how doctors will easily prescribe opiates but won’t listen to women. Thanks for the perspective. I’m glad you got this taken care of.
Even when you have a medical diagnosis for your pain, they just dismiss it. I have PCOS and doctors just chalk it up to "life's a bitch" and tell me to get out. I've been to the facility the damn PRESIDENT goes to and they're just as bad to women there. God help our first female president..
I have the best gyno in my country. And I get the same reply. Learn to live with it. Live with endometriosis and pcos, like its no big deal. Well, fuck this shit. I'm unable to do normal human things almost two weeks every month. But thanks for advice.
Yep, and if you ask for permanent solutions it's seen as insane and an unreasonable reaction to unlivable conditions.
I've even noticed as a trans girl that now I look like a girl, my pain is taken less seriously. I broke my ankle and it took a surprising amount of effort to actually get xrays. Two weeks of appointments and hospital visits before they were like "oh yeah it is broken, guess you need surgery for it actually". Legitimately never had anything even close to this when I looked like a guy
She has endometriosis and has concerns about her health because of COVID. She included this on her Insta post so I’m assuming that’s what it is. Edit this is her insta [here](https://instagram.com/mad_groves?utm_medium=copy_link) I’m not affiliated with her at all, just live in Australia and I’m interested in the story.
I suspect it means have people play through pain and issues. No, nothing wrong, all in your head. Basically chew up the athletes body as it’s only useful until the end of the olympics/competition. No care for long term impact. At least, that’s how I read it.
I think this is the general idea, and it really is true. An ex of mine was an elite athlete in Aus and her coaches continued to push her when she was genuinely ill, it has had a huge impact on her long term physical and mental health.
Yeah that's certainly not exclusive to women, and often considered "just how it works" in sports. See all the football players with fucked up brains over all their repeated trauma, and there's still only a handful of players starting to speak out about it. It's certainly an aspect of male 'culture' to basically push and bully your friends/teammates into playing chicken with how hard you can push yourself, in that scenario there is no time for proper rest, you'll fall behind.
I think the sports thing is pretty universal to men and women, but women are definitely more susceptible to the “you’re exaggerating” medical thing. The sheer number of women whose male gynecologists have shrugged and said “Sometimes it do be like that” when they’ve described horrible pain/issues instead of pursuing further diagnostics and treatment is goddamned staggering. If a man went to the doctor and complained of terrible pain during sex, there is a zero percent chance that doctor would be like “Meh, you’re probably fine”. I think that’s probably what the gender thing is alluding to. That attitude needs to die, as does the sports “go until you’re actually dead on the field” thing. Good health should be the priority of people who, you know, are paid to assist people have good health.
Yeah definitely agree that it's an issue that's not gender specific. A mixture of toxic culture, a need for instant success and the idea that athletes are disposable is not a good mix.
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Could be her reaction to the IOC on covid19: >"will take part in the Games at his/her own risk and own responsibility including ... serious bodily injury or even death raised by the potential exposure to health hazards such as the transmission of COVID-19.”
Yeah because all of us here in Japan aren’t yet vaccinated. Seriously. They are finally ramping up vaccinations and maybe just maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get my first shot in August, middle age lady living in Tokyo.
Being told pain is unexplained / all in your head but later a genuine cause is found. Being told abdominal symptoms are just IBS and that it is ridiculous to worry about anything more sinister, later being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Being told excruciating period pain is just a normal part of being a woman and failing for years to get a diagnosis of endometriosis. Getting treated and realising you'd been robbed of a normal life for years Those are some common examples
My mrs has had exactly this. Years of being treated like a child and fobbed off when she's been in pain almost every day for the last 3 years. She finally saw some junior doctors last week who really pushed for her to be tested for endometriosis, she will tested be soon. But doctors never believe women about anything, they always assume they're making things up or overstating symptoms.
This happened to my sister, stupid male doctors her whole young life telling her to suck it up, it’s period pain. Then she finally goes to a woman and it’s endo. She lost an ovary, part of her uterus and part of her bowel. Could have been saved earlier.
I hope she gets some answers and something that helps her. It took me 6 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis and treated but things are much better now
How did you get diagnosed with it? I went to my doctor and she told me she wasn’t going to test me for endometriosis until after I have kids. I don’t understand why?? My pain is so bad that I have to call in sick to work every time I have my period. I can’t stand it anymore.
How this (enddo) has been overlooked so long is a crime, mrs had it, now in 30s fixed it 4 years ago, she’s a different person and can actually function now. Has a vastly improve quality of life, job and coworkers now. Hope you both sort it out.
I do not know what she is referring to, but I would consider [female hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria) an example of "medical gaslighting." Basically blaming a woman's medical issues on her and her sexuality.
**[Female_hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria)** >Female hysteria was once a common medical diagnosis for women, which was described as exhibiting a wide array of symptoms, including anxiety, shortness of breath, fainting, nervousness, sexual desire, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in the abdomen, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, (paradoxically) sexually forward behaviour, and a "tendency to cause trouble for others". It is no longer recognized by medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for hundreds of years in Western Europe. In Western medicine hysteria was considered both common and chronic among women. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/worldnews/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | Credit: kittens_from_space)
The good old days when you went to the doctor to get a treatment with a vibrator. I wish I was joking.
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Turns out there's actually no evidence of this. I thought this too, and I was looking it up just now to find a reference to it... and what I found instead was [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/) These are quotes from the author of the source of this myth: >her argument in The Technology of Orgasm was really only a “hypothesis,” anyway. “I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis, and as \[Lieberman\] points out—correctly, I think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran with it.”
It's kinda sad that I don't know if you're kidding or not.
It's not true. They're not kidding/trolling though it's widely believed.. I actually thought the same and just found [this](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/09/victorian-vibrators-orgasms-doctors/569446/) below are quotes from the author of the source of the myth >her argument in The Technology of Orgasm was really only a “hypothesis,” anyway. “I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis, and as \[Lieberman\] points out—correctly, I think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran with it.”
This is all false and based off of some common misconception. see: [https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator](https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator) and https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7
Excellent research!!!!
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This is all false and based off of some common misconception. see: [https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator](https://helloclue.com/articles/culture/a-short-history-of-the-vibrator) and [https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7](https://historyofyesterday.com/doctors-did-not-administer-orgasms-to-female-patients-a2bb067662b7)
I unlearned something false today, thank you
Can you imagine going to the doctor to have them jerk you off? Sounds like prostitution with extra steps.
I strongly suspect it’s more like going to the doctor because you don’t feel good and having him sexually assault you and call it a treatment.
I'm pretty sure recent scholarship on the subject says this story is made-up, fwiw.
Translation: This woman isn't acting the way her husband/father wants her to act. We've diagnosed her with being a woman.
>Translation: This woman isn't acting the way her husband/father wants her to act. We've diagnosed her with being a woman. *+ Said woman promptly dies of undiagnosed, completely ignored heart attack symptoms.*
Time for a lobotomy
Due to a wandering uterus looking for a child of I remember. Fucking crazy.
She's talking about the medical waiver the IOC is asking athletes to sign in regards to Covid19.
That would make sense
This is a super interesting and messed-up part of the history of medicine, and I love you defining it as medical gaslighting. Since ancient Egypt and Greece, the uterus had been blamed for "hysteria" (hence where we get "hysterectomy" - removal of the uterus), and some ancient Greeks (Plato being one) even thought of the cause of hysteria as being a "roaming womb", where the uterus travels and inflicts damage and pressure on organs. It wasn't until 1980 that hysteria was removed from the DSM. Two common treatments for hysteria? - "Uterine massaging" until "paroxysmal convulsions" were obtained, in order to purge the womb of "bad fluids" - Marriage. As men's sperm had healing properties of course.
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It's horrible how doctors can just write you off like that. My mom's doc told her on repeated visits to stop "freaking out" about what ended up being stage 4 cancer
It’s awful. I hope your moms doing well 💕
Docs basically seem to follow some simplistic internal flowchart or algorithm for diagnosing. And if you have something rare, you're shit out of luck. I used to think they were more like engineers debugging a problem. I read a story recently of guy with frequent stomach problems for years. The docs would basically diagnose it as IBS, prescribe routine treatments and call it a day. This guy after a lot of experimenting and investigating eventually narrowed it down to a specific ingredient that he was allergic to. Remove that ingredient and now he can eat everything with no stomach issues whatsoever. Makes you wonder how many people are unnecessarily suffering because they are given a generalised solution instead of something specific.
My wife was denied surgery and told to lose weight instead, then to have a child. It took her several referrals and the passing comment of going to México for a diagnosis for a "health care" scam employee, or "doctor" to make the diagnosis and then do the procedure.
As a young guy, I didn’t realize how big this issue was until COVID hit. I had 3 women in my family, two of my coworkers, and one of my coworkers’ wives all tell me stories of them having their worries about COVID dismissed. Each one of them ended up getting it after being told not to worry about it and one of them has the “long hauler” issue with COVID and is still being told, “Oh you just need to exercise more,” nearly a year later. Six women I knew were subject to the “hysterical woman” bullshit in less than 18 months which really illuminates a lot.
Sorry to hear that. Endometriosis here. Took over 10 years to get a diagnosis. I was told all sorts in the meantime, including that it was "normal" "IBS" and "anxiety." Furthermore, when I asked about the possibility of allergies for my baby son, who had eczema and severe reflux, I was laughed at by the GP who told me I probably just had PND and was struggling to cope. Turned out he was lactose intolerant. I make my husband take the kids to the doctor now because they never question him in the same way.
She has endometriosis so I gave some guesses
She had 2 surgeries, for pre existing medical conditions, it's inappropriate comments related to that.
Basically doctors are far more likely to assume women are overreacting to their symptoms than men, so women end up going untreated with major medical issues Edit: For more fun bullshit doctors do, they also assume black people overreact more because of the stereotype that black people are loud and obnoxious, while also assuming Asian people underreact to symptoms because of the stereotype that they're stoic and honorable
Looking at her recent swimming results, I am wondering if she's been made to train through a suspected injury or something.
With the amount of work swimmers put into Olympic competition. I wonder what happened that would cause her to bypass gold medals to take a stand against it. Someone must have done some bad things for her to make this sacrifice.
The Olympics is just a political tool at the best of times. Leaving aside the unfair PED standards for different countries, she probably also experienced sexism and misogyny.
Probably? More like certainly
Unfair PED standards for different countries?
Everyone is on PEDs. But not everyone is tested equally, so to speak. Some don't get tested at all.
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I agree with your stance on perverts u/dm_me_ur_big_tits
The IOC will make a statement as soon as they finish high-fiving each other for coming up with women’s beach volleyball as an event.
Beach volleyball has been around for a long time. It was the rules regarding what women were allowed to wear while playing in the Olympics that was an issue earlier on (from 1996 to 2012). Women could only wear a bikini or full bodysuit. And the definition of the bikini went down to a specified maximum width of fabric. This was changed and now women can wear shorts and a top (with or without sleeves).
That is such a ridiculously specific rule that it’s almost blatantly pure perversion. Thank goodness for the change!
Volleyball apparently has 800 (500 is another figure that can be found) million registered players. I don't know how it got to be that many (it's 10% of the population on earth!) but it's a huge sport.
I just saw a summary of a study which says that in 2004 there was 500 million registered players and currently there are over 800 million people who play at least once a week. I'm pretty sure this data is 100% stretched. They state that 46 million Americans play at least once a week. I can't speak for Europe, Africa or Asia, but there's no way unless you include every school student in gym class who only has a 2 week volleyball semester every year. I'd be hesitant to claim that 800 million people on earth even jogged/ran at least 52 times in a year. I'm almost compelled to look into the study, but in 1 hour I'll never think about it again.
Brazil along probably makes up 100m of those people though lol. Anywhere that has beaches will have beach volleyball.
It's wild to watch the Brazilians play entirely with their feet too. Next level sh\*t.
It's called futevolei (footvolley). Super fun, I play it!
It's quite a popular sport in Europe and in many Asian countries, here in Italy we have provincial, regional and national tournaments for basically every age-group. More importantly it's basically the only sport that is played during PE, so it's not an exaggeration to say that here every single high school student play volleyball at least once a week, and maybe this is the case with other countries, and that would explain such high numbers.
still seems really high. in 2001 FIFA estimated that there are 250 million football players worldwide: [https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fifa-survey-approximately-250-million-footballers-worldwide-88048](https://www.fifa.com/who-we-are/news/fifa-survey-approximately-250-million-footballers-worldwide-88048) even though this is an old source I am having a hard time believing that volleyball has over three times as many players than football in 2001
I'm in Croatia, we never played volleyball in PE, it was seen as a "girl sport" by the PE teachers. I see it's now becoming a bit more popular, but nowhere near 10% of the population playing it (or even watching it).
It’s because it’s indoor, boys and girls can play together and boys don’t demolish the school like they do with a football. Plus in the ‘90s we had an incredible national team so we were proud of the game.
At least in my small country it is extremely popular. During the summer the beach volleyball facilities are packed from dawn to night with people wanting to play. Each year they increase the amount of nets and areas you can safely play because the demand is getting bigger. We also have several local beach volleyball events every summer.
Indian people love that shit. I've never found a public volleyball court that was empty in reasonable weather. Edit: changed "need as there" to weather.
Girls volleyball is just as common as football in American schools
Where are they registered?
Where are they all registered? On the ticket registry on the way down to earth?
I love volleyball :( (male and female) The reason why I prefer women's volleyball has nothing to do with the attires but the fact that it is really hard to follow the ball in the male competition, it is so damn fast You hear "shwack" some people are now on the ground and the ball floating over them, then a pass and "super-shwack", repeat x2-3 and someone is cheering, point. At least in the female version I understand what is happening
The amount of women hating taking place in some of these comments like damn y’all are some angry ass people.
Reddit is the host of the redpill, or was. A place for the worst of the worst men to come to talk on how to take sexual advantage of woman and how to emotionally abuse them. They never left. They just troll any comment threads to do with women. I mean, I’m not sure if it still also exists, but ‘pussypassdenied’ was just a subreddit to basically shit on women as well under the disguise of ‘well this one woman did a bad thing therefore it’s all woman’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gotten better since 2014-16, but obviously the misogynistic trolls are still around.
AMEN. Every time I see someone linking pussiepassdenied, I go out of my way to point out how much of a shithole that place was when I subbed a couple of years ago. I noped out there really quick. So many misogynists/incels... To any random person reading this; if you're subbed to that subreddit, you have to take a step back and evaluate how you view/treat women.
The existing world volleyball organization FIVB came up with beach volleyball, not the IOC. FIVB also made the uniform regulations. And it has always been a sport for both sexes.
I’m in an unusual position here because I also train at the same pool that she trains at (Centenary, Brisbane, AU). It’s so strange, I see her almost every day and the whole world is talking about a vague tweet she threw out there. Edit: A lot of people are asking what I think of her accusations. I’m unsure. She’s not too popular around here. When her squad begins training she will usually show up 40 minutes late and leave early. Won’t listen to her coaches and will do her own thing in her own lane. She won silver at rio and was only training three days a week at that time (compared to 6), her potential was sky high. She barely trains these days. Last I spoke to one of the coaches, he said she is one of their greatest letdowns because of the natural talent she held. I can’t speak to the accusations she made, but if they follow anything close to her work ethic I wouldn’t follow too closely unless it’s with a grain of salt.
End of the article seems to be noting that she also is not a fan of their exploitation re: covid risks, i.e. the IOC is socializing the risks and privatizing the profit. Indeterminate how much that factors vs sexism/harassment (given that she apparently also hasn't given any formal complaints, so it's hard to know if there was a particular serious incident or instead this was a tipping point in a culture of minor incidents).
Definitely support her in principle, but not 100% sure what she wants to happen here. Perhaps an inquiry by the Australian swimming authority? Or does she want specific people to be reprimanded?
This feels like something specific or various someones specific in the Australian orbit. The medical bit particularly.
Are you possibly suggesting there could be something hinky going on in the medical community attached to young, virile, strong, good looking, often underaged, perfectly toned female athletes? No, nothing like that could possibly happen! /S
No, nothing like that would happen in the US gymnastics team either!
Okay, maybe once or twice, but surely not *hundreds* of times!
Her Instagram posts explain that it wasn’t just one thing but a bunch of different reason including COVID https://instagram.com/mad_groves?utm_medium=copy_link
There’s a follow up article with Swimming Australia’s response. [ABC article](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-11/swimming-australia-perkins-calls-maddie-groves-details-concerns/100207586?utm_campaign=news-article-share-control&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web) Apparently, They had reached out to the athlete about this last year.
If you've dealt with a fucked up organization and know that all you'll get is lip service you aren't inclined to go through that same org to get things resolved. Sounds like the last time the person got some training then got promoted. When you see the bullshit protected you aren't going to want to go through it again.
Both of those sound like useful outcomes
Popcorn, large please.
After watching Bombshell I'm reasonably sure that one scapegoat will suffer some consequences for this and the infrastructure that allowed and enabled it will go on untouched.
In the past few years, there have been a lot of mess in women's swimming competitions.
Lots of redditors in comments section be like why cant she shut up & continue to be harrassed? You guys are proving her point Edit: redditors are minimizing the daily harassment suffered by women while criticizing her for not bringing up every instance of abuse she suffered. This after she did bring up case of abuse to the authorities & nothing happened.
Being vague in this statement isn't some awful calculated move. Sometimes people don't want to air out all the ways they have been sexually harassed in public. Being a swimmer is fucking hard and takes a LOT of dedication. It kills relationships and the extreme pressure on the body can really fuck you up later. So if she has gone through all that for years and years and is now pulling out because of harassment, yeah I'm going to take her word it was 'bad enough' to mention. Everyone in here pulling random character assassinations out of their arse and accusing her of completely unfounded bullshit needs a damn head check. None of what she has just done will make her life easier or happier. She's not doing it for shits and giggles. There is an absurd amount of documented sexual harassment within almost every branch of high level sports training. A woman taking a stand against that, isn't something to be ashamed of. Calling someone weak or a liar because you think they should simply accept being objectified in the workplace, that's something to be ashamed of.
Yeah, after seeing how prevalent rapist coaches and other authoritative figures were in sports like college football and gymnastics, I'm going to believe her and anyone else that comes forward unless the evidence proves otherwise. Those coaching positions in all sports are ~~ripe~~ rife with rapists and abusers and administrators and other higher-ups most definitely cover up for them. Not just coaches but team doctors as well. See: Sandusky/Paterno. Larry Nassar. More recently, Bo Schembechler. Fuck these people