CNN calls women "individuals with a cervix" but prostate-havers are still "men"

submitted by Terfenclaw from (self.GenderCritical)

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[–]Realwoman 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

Interesting, I'm from a former socialist country, not Romania though, so this is all very surprising to me since all older women I have know know about the women's reproductive system. But I guess it was different in different countries.

[–]MarkTwainiac 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

But did you grow up and reach adulthood under socialism? And witness/experience the dramatic changes that occurred quite quickly once the Berlin Wall came down and communism collapsed? As the German tragicomedy "Goodbye Lenin" about the GDR made so clear.

The women I was speaking of all grew up in and reached adulthood in Soviet bloc countries, and came to the US from the early 80s - when Gorbachev opened the floodgates partly as a way to get rid of dissidents, Jews, the elderly and the unemployable to make them the responsibility of Reagan, Israel and the West - into the early 90s, after communism fell. These women ranged in age from approx 20 to approx 70 - so most had been born between circa 1910 and circa 1970-74.

BTW, it wasn't just in Soviet bloc countries in the communist era that many women were in the dark. Even in "liberal" Western countries like the USA and Canada, huge swathes of women of earlier generations didn't have access to much in the way of information about their bodies. Which is why there was such a need for "Our Bodies, Ourselves" - which was originally self-published on cheap newsprint pages stapled together (that was the kind of copy I originally got), and only was "formally" published by a big name mass market press - Simon & Schuster - in 1973.

Sex education in schools in the US was strongly resisted by many parties in the 1960s and 70s. The story of the woman who pushed for it - Mary Calderone, a physician and public health expert - is instructive.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605187/

[–]Realwoman 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I didn't but my mom did and she was super knowledgeable about the woman's reproductive system and she wasn't in healthcare. I guess that's what I'm basing my observations on but I can't think of any woman I know that grew up during that time that doesn't know those basics.

I did experience all the dramatic changes after the Berlin wall fell, well, I was too young for the first few years and to me, that was just the normal state of things, with the adults talking about the past.

But then, I was a very curious kid and I loved reading about science and about pregnancy and genetics, so I knew so much by the time I was 9 and I guess my perception is skewed.

[–]MarkTwainiac 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Nah, your perception is your own. I was simply reporting on what the Soviet bloc adult female students/clients of mine in the resettlement agency I worked for reported in the 80s and 90s. There were/are always outliers and exceptions. Both as individuals and as countries - like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

If you'd been an adult back then, you might have experienced the changes that started occurring in the Soviet bloc countries in the mid-80s, and especially after 1990, as more dramatic and profound.