Objectifying Endometriosis Study FINALLY Redacted From Medical Journal

We women deal with a lot of crap on a daily basis, some of us whilst suffering a debilitating illness. Endometriosis is a long-term condition that affects one in ten women of reproductive age — approximately 176 million women worldwide. In summary, if patriarchal bulls**t wasn’t enough of a pain, 10% of women have to deal with literal, incapacitating pain, every. single. day.

The NHS defines endometriosis as “a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes.” Symptoms include, but aren’t limited to, pain in your tummy or back, period pain, pain around sex, feeling sick and constipated, and having difficulty getting pregnant. Sounds terrible right? Leave it to the medical professionals to provide relief…or don’t.

A recent addition to the list of ‘messed up things that should never have been made’ is the 2013 paper “Attractiveness of women with rectovaginal endometriosis: A case-control study,” which resurfaced in recent years thanks to activists and sufferers of endometriosis who were rightly offended. As the title suggests, women with endometriosis were part of a study in which they were rated by OB/GYN’s on their ‘hotness’ — for science, of course. The author’s defended their study as being ‘useful to know if body characteristics made someone more susceptible to endometriosis.’ And in case you were curious, body characteristics *cough* hotness was determined by the women’s BMI, breast size, and sexual history which were all recorded for ‘research’. Yikes.

What’s worse, to “limit potential intentional seductive behaviors” (in the author’s words), the female patients were blind to the true nature of the study. Worse still, all women involved were white. So not only is the study sexist and misogynistic, but it is also racist.

It won’t come as a surprise then, that it was redacted recently from the journal it was published in, Fertility and Sterility. Who knew objectifying women and calling it a medical study would cause this much outrage!? — Just about everyone…

Top Images courtesy of Giada Fiorindi and thumbnail by Pedro Figueras

Next up, We Talk Music, Diversity & Female Empowerment With Singing Sensation/Sass Queen Kelly Kiara