Why women still need to ask:
"What is Menopause?"
It may seem odd to ask the question "What is menopause?"
After all there's loads of information out there.
But so much of it seems to refer to menopause, either directly or indirectly, as if it were some kind of medical condition.
Why menopause is not a medical condition
Many of us find menopause confusing, because so many people talk about it as if it were a medical condition with symptoms and treatments.
But menopause is NOT a medical condition. - Naturally occurring menopause is a normal phase of healthy women's lives. Google Ads are supplied randomly and are not endorsed by Natural Menopause Journey
Women need to ask and keep asking, "what is menopause?" Because only by repeatedly asking the question, can we clarify for ourselves and for the world around us, that our midlife transition is so MUCH MORE than the biology of menstruation ending.
Menopause and culture - how experience varies around the world
It is important that we resist the temptation to think of menopause as something "going wrong" with our bodies. If we think of menopause as a medical condition rather than a totally, natural process, we are allowing this normal life phase to be medicalised. This doesn't mean that menopause doesn't have discomforts. But then menarche (when periods start) can also bring problems, but nobody thinks of that as a medical condition.
Re-valuing Midlife We are continually bombarded with medical definitions and explanations about menstruation and ovulation ending at the time of menopause. And the media and many doctors seem to have an obsessional focus on our hormones... But all of this information ignores the reality that middle aged women instinctively know: That midlife is much more complex than the chemistry of a few hormones. Midlife brings emotional, psychological and social upheavals that cannot be separated from how we feel in our bodies. And at the same time, how we feel in our bodies during these critical years is influenced by: - who we are,
- how we have lived and are living,
- our relationships,
- our psychology
- our emotions
- our cultural and social expectations of midlife and aging.
Menopause transition and life course
To simplify this highly complex life phase down to an obsession with the effects of lower oestrogen levels is to seriously undervalue midlife women and our experiences. On this website, I take a much broader look at the question of what is menopause? Here, on Natural-Menopause-Journey.com, menopause is a life phase, a transition and above all - a journey. Like many women who have studied women's midlife, I believe that the word
"Climacteric",
much more accurately reflects the subtleties of women's midlife. But since "menopause" and "perimenopause" have become the more commonly used terms I also use them on this website. Let's take a look at the kinds of answers we might get today, when we ask the question:
What is menopause? The truth is that the answers to the question will differ depending on who you ask and in what context. The word "menopause" can even mean something different when used by the same person in different contexts... Doctors especially tend to talk about menopause differently depending on whether they're amongst colleagues, with patients or when they're socialising with friends and talking like "normal" people! All this means that menopause is confusing and puzzling but it is also a fascinating topic.
Origin of the word The actual word "menopause" was first coined in the early 19th century by a physician called Gardanne who used the term "la ménépausie" to refer to the "critical age" that women enter at midlife. Nowadays if you ask: "What is menopause?" you might get variations on any one of the following THREE answers:
1. Menopause is a normal, biological event in a middle aged woman and is defined as the end of monthly periods. This happens because we stop ovulating and become infertile for the second time in our lives. Menopause occurs naturally in all healthy middle aged women (unless it has been artificially induced by surgery before).
The medical answer to the question: "what is menopause?",
is the easiest but by far the most limited meaning of the term.
Perhaps because it is a relatively easy definition, it has taken such a firm hold in popular understanding. Or perhaps it's because medical thinking now dominates so much of how we understand our lives? But even in medical circles, where there is a more or less exact
definition of menopause,
there is still lots of debate about the exact meanings of associated terms such as
pre-menopause, menopause transition, perimenopause and post menopause.
2. Menopause is a process that covers the midlife phase of a woman’s life in general. We talk about women being "menopausal" and we refer to ourselves as "entering menopause". And although our last ever menstrual period (biological menopause) happens as a single event, in popular everyday talk we still tend to refer to a kind of phase of life as "menopause".
Other words that people use interchangeably with "menopause" include: "perimenopause", "climacteric" and "menopause transition".
3. Menopause is a social, cultural and political phenomenon. As well as the more obvious meanings of menopause, there are also some more hidden answers to the question "what is menopause?" These indirect, rather shady meanings of menopause relate to what society expects of a
middle aged woman.
Our menopause is seen as the dividing line between youth and age in women – and in some cultures a change in roles is assumed as well. And let’s face it: In Western cultures the word menopause has such bad press it's almost become a taboo subject!
Better say "m" than admit to being menopausal... Women in their twenties and thirties prefer to think that menopause will never happen to them. While women in their forties, faced with the inevitable, look forward to its arrival with a sense of dread and impending doom!
All this is hardly surprising given the negative meanings that are bound up with the "m" word in many Western cultures. Negative and stigmatised associations with the word menopause include: • loss of sexuality and attractiveness • loss of womanhood • onset of diseases and health problems • moodiness, depression and irrationality • obsolence and the advent of old age and decreptitude And perhaps most pernicious of all is that menopause is implicitly regarded as the time... ...when a woman becomes INVISIBLE!
But why should this be so?
Magical Disappearance of Middle Aged Women
A serious question deserves a serious answer Rather than taking it as a given, we need to ask the question "What is menopause" very seriously. Because only by really understanding the meaning of menopause not only to each of us as individuals but also to society as a whole, can we hope to re-discover the huge potential and value of older women in creating a stabilising force in the world. It is time for the invisible women to come out into the daylight again!
Published January 2010. Last updated 15/8/2011 
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