Menopause and Perimenopause

Menopause Is Fueling a Movement

A new generation of women are demanding that the next chapter of their lives no longer be ignored, overlooked or squandered.

Dr. Sharon Malone, author of Grown Woman Talk, will be in conversation with Jennifer Weiss-Wolf at Ms. headquarters (433 S. Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills, Calif., 90212) on Thursday, June 27, at 8 p.m. PT—or come at 6 p.m. to watch the presidential debate! RSVP for the free event here.

(This article originally appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)

Summer 2024 Issue Sneak Peek: Menopause Is Fueling a Movement

According to the Ms. Summer 2024 cover story: “Menopause is not an afterthought for us. Nor can we continue to tolerate being society’s afterthought.”

In the upcoming issue, you can also read about the coalition of governors that’s determined to protect the abortion rights and reproductive freedom of all Americans; best practices for early cancer screening; and combatting the silence around Hamas’ sexual violence on and following Oct. 7.

Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox! When you become a member, you’re supporting independent, feminist media—and becoming part of a global community of feminists who care about the issues that matter to you.

Keeping Score: Right-Wing Activists Spread Disinformation on Birth Control; Larry Nassar’s Survivors Reach $138.7 Million Settlement; Breast Cancer Screenings Should Start at Age 40

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week: the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on emergency abortion care and criminalizing homelessness; new EEOC and Title IX regulations protect sexual violence survivors, pregnant people and the LGBTQ community; Arizona repealed their 1864 abortion ban, while Florida now has a six-week ban; birth control misinformation goes viral on TikTok; the United Methodist Church repealed their ban on LGBTQ clergy; the chilling effects of the global gag rule; three in five Americans support a national law protecting access to medication abortion; and more.

Menopause in Three Parts: Where Rivers Flow, Split and Unravel

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When Rivers Flow: “Menstrual blood came with its own set of messages, whispers from my womb space that only I could decode. It was like embarking on a treasure hunt within myself, armed with nothing but a compass made of intuition and a hefty dose of trial and error. Creating my own map of this internal landscape wasn’t easy. I had to channel my inner cartographer and chart new territories with each cycle.”

When Rivers Split: “There was something special about a bunch of Black women who had already been where I was calling me with joy in their voices. … forming a kinship with our wombs is about learning to love ourselves, to treat ourselves with the same grace, kindness and high regard that the world demands of us as Black people with wombs.”

When Rivers Unravel: “Menopause would be that queer initiation, that modern-day rite of passage I had so longed for. And it would come at a price. My transition initiated a second puberty that changed everything about my body. This rite of passage pried off the mask of societal expectations I had inherited from my foremothers. Menopause set the mask on fire.”

An Introduction to Catalonia’s Feminist Administration

For many decades, sexual and reproductive rights have been at the core of the global feminist struggle—but only an unapologetically feminist administration puts them at the center of the political agenda. Such is the progressive turn the government of Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain, assumed in May 2021 when it created a Ministry of Equality and Feminisms.

In October 2021, this new ministry drafted the national strategy for sexual and reproductive rights. This was founded on the premise that the personal is political, so it must also be public policy. This strategy sought to guarantee the effective exercise of existing rights—particularly abortion, long-term contraception and sexuality education.

Many women are now asking: What about perimenopause, menopause and post-menopause?

Out of Touch on Menopause: Experts Respond to The Lancet’s ‘Over-Medicalization’ Claims

Menopause is gaining attention in the media and highest levels of government, including the White House—but we still have a long way to go to ensure women get the support they need. A recent series issued by a respected journal, The Lancet, proves this point. 

The series claims to promote an “empowerment model for managing menopause.” To us—more than 250 obstetrician-gynecologists, family medicine physicians, cardiologists, internists, urologists, medical oncologists, psychiatrists, orthopedic surgeons, nurse practitioners and licensed therapists—this was an unexpected and welcome opportunity.

The series was awash with misstatements that do not reflect the lived experience of women in this stage of life or our clinical experience in treating them.

Women Know Best About Their Bodies: Fighting Doctors’ Disregard and Colorectal Cancer

As a seemingly healthy 39-year-old mom of three young boys, five years after I first questioned what was happening to my body, I was diagnosed with rectal cancer—and it had advanced to stage 3. A lime-sized tumor had gone undetected. I realized something I knew the whole time: I am not crazy; I know my body better than anyone else. My gut was right, something was very wrong. 

One doctor, a gastroenterologist at UCLA, finally saw me. She knew that new cases of colorectal cancer has nearly doubled, resulting in a new standard of care that required colonoscopies beginning at age 45. She knew this disease had become the leading cause of cancer deaths for Americans 20 to 49 years old.biopsies, CT and MRI scans.

So it is urgent: If you are experiencing even one of the symptoms—like bloody stool, stomach pain, urgency to go, and/or anemia causing fatigue—go straight to your doctor and ask to be screened. If the doctors push back or minimize your concerns, keep going.

Women Deserve Our ‘Menopause Moonshot.’ U.S. Policy Can Help.

Menopause is having its moment, so say daily news headlines. A new essay series in the medical journal The Lancet, published to coincide with International Women’s Day, argues all that hype—combined with “over-medicalization” and reliance on menopausal hormone therapy—harms women by framing menopause as a disease. But, in fact, the real disservice to women is the lack of consideration of menopause in the halls of government.

If we truly want to rise to the so-called moment for menopause, here is a policy agenda that can best serve us.

Before the Stopping Starts

As I got older, I began to understand that things will get weirder and weirder before your period stops—something every woman should know before the stopping starts.

Then something else will happen. You will begin to notice a large chunk of the world, nearly invisible until now: an army of cool, older women, the ones who have emerged on the other side and flourished. In their eyes you will catch a glimpse of the person you want to become. You will do away with pretense then, giving up whatever is keeping you from beginning to live the rest of your life. And this is where the flamenco dancing might come in.

The Ms. Q&A: Dr. Jen Gunter on Combatting Misinformation and Democratizing Knowledge on Women’s Health

Dr. Jen Gunter’s third book, BLOOD: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation, is an accessible look at the multiple ways that the patriarchal control of medicine has allowed misinformation about reproduction, sexuality and anatomy to flourish.

Ms. sat down with Gunter to discuss the book and how she hopes to “democratize knowledge and make a difference in people’s lives.”