Tenaculum: For over 100 Years Women Have Endured Pain in Gynecology | Hacker News Reader

Tenaculum: For over 100 Years Women Have Endured Pain in Gynecology

aspivix.com

24 pointsjelliclesfarm27 comments

> To transform women and clinicians’ experience in the exam room, American company Ceek Women’s Health has recently launched a speculum made of plastic.

I am not sure whether this is a new invention considering disposable speculums made of plastic already existed.

Existing plastic speculums are typically made with clear polycarbonate. They are often used as a “light tunnel” with some form of light source connected on the other end.

Still, there are painful pinch points at the hinges. It looks like their product optimizes spacing at the hinge, without a need of having the bottom piece too narrow and uncomfortable.

The entire field of gynecology is founded upon intentional sadistic torture of women by male physicians. Tenaculam was originally invented to pull out bullet fragments out of soldiers. They never changed the design and use it to pinch the cervix and pulling it closer to the vaginal walls.

I just found out..fun fact: chainsaws were invented for childbirth. Yes. By two male doctors in 1780 to assist with Caesarian births to cut through the pelvic bone.

Think about such fun facts when you can’t answer ‘what is a woman?’

a more relevant question is: Why hasn’t the field of gynecology considerate enough to women’s pain? Just women’s healthcare in general. If penis cancer can only be detected by smashing the penis between two metal x ray plates just like they do with mammograms, then we would have cured cancer by now.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" We just did not know any better (yet).

49.72% of human beings are women. Among those my mother and two sisters which are medical doctors. Stop blaming men for everything we did not manage to fix. Plenty of us did try.

"It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness" and "Be the change you want to see in the world". As a man, I can tell you that I will personally celebrate anytime a woman joins STEM and fix/invent something new.

Sorry, I didn’t get your point. Are you saying that women are solely responsible for inventing ‘something new’ in healthcare as it is only used for them?

You made a really heavy claim with "The entire field of gynecology is founded upon intentional sadistic torture of women by male physicians".

The other person is saying that there are many male and female doctors. If there would be a better option, it for sure would have been made possible. It's not male gyns wanting women to suffer - this doesn't make any sense, it's only there to create hate.

There “are”. But for most of medicine’s history there “weren’t”.

And men were making decisions about things they simply had no idea about.

Using the same analogy, then all veterinarians are sadistic?

Your claim simply can't be explained with historical data. Women have entered the medical field for decades upon decades.

What has advancements in medical equipment and diagnostics have to do with women studying to become physicians? Pharmacology and medical equipment is an industry.

Further: [..]Historically, medical studies have excluded female participants and research data have been collected from males and generalized to females. The gender gap in medical research, alongside overarching misogyny, results in real-life disadvantages for female patients.[..]

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8909483/

Because even in the 70s gynecologist practices were already significantly changing due to women doctors entering the field. Claiming that something so easily changed isn't done because "the entire field of gynecology is founded upon intentional sadistic torture of women by male physicians" is totally ridiculous. It's so far divorced from reality that it's lands you in troll territory.

I even more so when 99% of men don’t even know what a speculum is, or have any clue about the subject matter.

There are more areas of colour between that black and white spectrum of “malice” and “ignorance”.

In this case, the system favours research geared towards men, because money, because more men decided where the researchmoney is to be spent. This all has historical backgrounds that are all ver understandable. But ignorance? Malice? Both? Or something in between?

Ignoring this pain is at this point certainly malicious. And I see too many comments here for comfort that are of that nature.

> If penis cancer can only be detected by smashing the penis between two metal x ray plates just like they do with mammograms, then we would have cured cancer by now.

Digital rectal examination [..] was a common and "dreaded" component of annual exams for older men, as it was thought to be a reliable screening test for prostate cancer. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectal_examination

How much of the 'dread' was because it was painful and how much of it was just a consequence of homophobia?

I imagine it's neither. It is the psychological aspect of the violation. Just as why many women dread vaginal exams, or even having their breasts examined. Necessary but clearly undesirable. I think it may actually be more violative for the average gay man compared to the average straight man, since it's probably more closely tied up with his concept of intimacy.

I was thinking more in terms of it coming from the same place as dudes who refuse to wash their butt because it's 'gay'.

Mammograms hurt a like shit for a lot of women. People aren't just upset about this because of the violation. There is real actual physical intense pain associated with these procedures.

This is to say nothing about various gynecological exams. "Let me scrape your cervix with a metal tool" is a pretty common procedure, for example.

Why are you getting downvoted?!?

OBGYN has had a horrible UX because women were historically underrepresented in the Medical field [0].

Gender, Economic, and Racial diveristy is critical in the Medical sphere because cultural competency is absolutely required when treating people across the board.

On a separate note, this site has absolutely gone to shit, with any view that isn't some sort of a fringe pseudo-anarchist RW or LW fork being absolutely downvoted.

[0] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Because HN is full of men who have never had a uterine sound inserted or have had a teneculum pinch the orifices of their private parts.

I give up.

jelliclesfarm, why frame this as a men versus woman thing? The doctors who are sadistic (and yes, there are a lot of them) are often sadistic to everyone regardless of their gender. If they are less sadistic to men, the only reason would be be because they worry about retribution.

I'm a bit unsure why jelliclesfarm didn't mention Marion Sims. It's no secret that the "father of gynecology" performed non-consentual human experiments on slave women without the use of anesthesia. I had assumed that's what they were referring to when they mentioned "founded".

I wasn’t talking about the doctors. They are literally just agents of pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment. They simply follow orders. And are more than adequately rewarded. The doctor at your HMO is not going to burn the mid night oil to come up with a patent free tool pain free gynecological exam.

I was speaking about research and development of non invasive and less painful management of women’s health. It’s abysmal.

The data doesn't support your claims... for one, death of the woman via childbirth was very common, now very uncommon, and this ability to have better care occurred during the time when the bad cis non-womyn were in charge...

I have trouble understanding your reply and it’s relevance to my comment.

> Just women’s healthcare in general. If penis cancer can only be detected by smashing the penis between two metal x ray plates just like they do with mammograms, then we would have cured cancer by now.

Having undergone transrectal biopsy of the prostate, I can assure you that discomfort abounds in field of men’s health as well. And yet prostate cancer is still a thing…

> I just found out..fun fact: chainsaws were invented for childbirth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chainsaw

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