Against Nature—Menopause as Herald of Decay
Against Nature—Menopause as Herald of Decay
A potent fear of aging, coupled with a quest for immortal youthfulness and sexual desire, seems to be driving the medicalization of menopause. Commercialized and linked to the puritanical heritage of North America with its insistence on individual responsibility for a disciplined body and continued good health, this urge biases our interpretation of demography and reproductive biology and causes us to believe that we can improve on nature's poor design. But, even more important, aging within the amoral realm of science screens us from reflection on the consequences for their health of economic differences among women and above all from the politics of aging while we dwell ad nauseam on ovaries, flashes, vaginas, libido, fragile bones, and risk-benefit analyses.
Keywords: sexual desire, aging, menopause, medicalization, science, immortal youth
California Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
