Lifting the shame. A Queer Perspective

by Noelle Brown

When I hit menopause it was a shock to discover that it was something I wasn’t supposed to talk about. When I did, I was hit with walls of silence, and other people’s visible discomfort. I felt frustrated, because I wanted to talk and educate myself about something fundamental going on in my body. I wanted to move beyond simply sitting at home, googling a load of depressing symptoms. So, as an artist, I decided to create a theatre project around it. This got me out there interviewing members of the queer community about all things menopause.

There is a popular myth within the straight world - that the queer community somehow have an easier time with menopause. One lesbian I spoke to was told, “well, you have a same sex partner, so it will be easier anyway”, followed swiftly by, “but sure you haven’t given birth to children, so your menopause won’t be severe”. Her partner was in fact going through menopause at the same time, and because one size does not fit all in terms of each individual’s symptoms, it was, at times, a difficult experience for both women. “The straight community needs to understand,” she told me, “that our bodies behave the same way as theirs, whether we are queer or have given birth to children or not.”

While there are the age-old,universal symptoms of hot flushes,mood swing,brain fog,and the sense that you are no longer in charge of the ship that is your body, many symptoms can be specific to the individual themselves. These unrecognised symptoms can at times leave queer people without a proper diagnosis of menopause. The particular symptom that kept surfacing during my conversations with others was anxiety. This was for me the first indication that something was going on physiologically.

Anxiety can leave you feeling like your life is falling apart and compromise your self-esteem and confidence. When it suddenly hits you with no warning, it’s confusing and frightening. I remember trying to express to my GP that I felt fine in my head but physiologically something was wrong, and it was making my heart race and making me feel fearful. As one lesbian described it; “it is like you are walking around like you have no skin against the world”.

Menopause can be difficult, because mostly it is something you have to learn about while you are actually going through it. The level of online information can be overwhelming and confusing, particularly when it comes to Hormone Replacement Therapy.For members of the queer community who have tried to deal with menopause through natural alternatives but failed,they are left struggling,and frightened of taking HRT.

It is primarily a question of support around information,so that you can make an informed decision about how you want or don’t want to treat menopause. Hearing the experiences of the queer community made me realise that the health care profession, particularly GP services, were lacking fundamental levels of support for menopause. There was a pattern of disengagement according to many people spoke to, including one lesbian, who said, “the female GP was vague and disinterested”. She also stated that in the end it came to a “self-diagnosis”. She said she was left feeling, “totally unprepared for the experience of menopause”.

For women who go through early menopause,it can be even more difficult. It is rarely something that is picked up because they are perceived to be too young to be going through menopause. One bi woman I spoke to, who began to experience symptoms in her early 30’s, said she had ten years of misdiagnosis, which was hard on her relationships, and her mental health. She said; “a simple series of blood tests to check hormone levels” would have saved her a decade of discomfort and worry.

Medical information and support around what will happen to your body after surgically induced menopause or after cancer treatment is also severely lacking. One queer woman, who had an accelerated menopause because of cancer treatment said she felt isolated and was shocked by the silence and a dearth of information around the issue of menopause. It appeared to be always spoken about, “in euphemistic language”. The whole experience was, for her, “like plodding forward in the dark, with occasional bits of information”. She wondered, “how can a centuries old event in a woman’s life, have so little information about it?”

It’s a popular belief in society that once estrogen leaves your body, so does your sex drive. While this can be the case for some people, the overall feeling got from my queer brethren was that this was not in fact true. Sex became better for many people I spoke to. A bi woman spoke of the “menopause orgasm,” which she said was unlike any other orgasm that she had experienced in the years before menopause.

Services and awareness around the importance of cervical smear testing and STI testing is worryingly absent around menopause. While society at large (and, to some extent, the queer community itself) wants to believe that lesbians don’t have sex, and that it is all about, ‘holding hands and skipping through meadows’; we are in fact having lots of sex. Before, during, and after menopause, we need, among all the other levels of support, access to sexual health information and clinics. It also gets tiring as a lesbian, to have to cut up condoms, because dental dams are not freely available to buy in Ireland.

While we are bombarded online and in the press with symptoms and while, yes, they can be challenging, what no one talks about is the sense of empowerment that menopause brings. Because you are more focused on your body and are checking where you are at throughout, both physically and emotionally, a new sense-of-self comes to the fore. You feel a different sense of power. It makes me wonder if that’s what society is afraid of and why there is a tendency to dismiss or laugh at someone experiencing menopause. Is that why it lacks a proper level of support from our healthcare providers and open conversations in society at large? Are we afraid of the power that menopause brings?

The view from the members of the queer community that I interviewed was that there is a responsibility in society to let younger people know something about menopause before it hits.

One lesbian said she felt empowered to finally talk publicly about her menopause because of the Waking the Feminist movement in 2015. Her advice to anyone experiencing menopause was; “don’t panic, talk about it, find a sympathetic GP, try the non-pharmaceutical options before HRT, and, if you can, find a buddy, someone to talk to”. Sound advice.

There is nothing wrong with menopause; it is, as with most issues, society’s response to menopause that is wrong. For the most part, it is a natural occurrence in our lives.

It’s time to lift the shame, and destroy the myths around menopause, by talking about it. It starts with us! For more information visitwww.mysecondspring.ie, www.themenopausehub.ieandwww.wellwomancentre.ie