The politics of menopause
文摘
In 1990 I wrote an article in a women's magazine, exhorting: “Why is climacterics a taboo subject? I've come out of my menopause-hell thanks to HRT. Let's learn and do something about it!” Stung by the hostile silence and reactions from medical profession, media and womens libbers, with the yen I had earned from translating musicals, Oliver! and Miss Saigon, I created Amarant Society. For the annual membership fee of 4,500yen (US$42) I issued 3 news letters a year, referred enquiries to appropriate clinics and specialists, organized workshops on menopause across Japan. And, today, menopause has become a boom subject and every university hospital's menopause clinic is overflowing… But having conducted an in-depth inquiry amongst Amarant members and read thousands of letters (in my speech I'd like to illustrate through such materials the irreconcilable gap between women's actual needs and the Byzantine medical system currently in force) I am obliged to admit that unless the overwhelmingly male-dominated political and medical hierarchy wakes up to the urgent need for reforms, Japanese women's ever increasing longevity will be a curse for themselves and an unsupportable burden for the society, soon, very soon.