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Who thinks we don’t talk about the menopause?

Male academics should say the word ‘menopause’ at least three times a day in solidarity with their female colleagues, according to a fellow scholar.

Staff at the University of Leicester are being encouraged to open up and talk about the taboo subject in a bid to normalise conversation on the topic.

Dr Andrea Davies, from the university’s School of Business, has argued that all staff should be able to talk about menopause openly and without embarrassment and that saying the word three times a day would help.

In a bid to open up the conversation she has organised the monthly Leicester Menopause Café, where male and female colleagues are encouraged to come together and chat about the middle-aged phenomena.

“We have been arguing to avoid any closeted words or acronyms and just say menopause – preferably three times a day to make it unremarkable”, she said.

“We set out that menopause should not be a women’s only issue.”

Given the age of much of the readership here most have observed the event. It’s not something either men nor women (!) tend to ignore.

The need to talk about it, no, that’s not really it. What this bint is insisting is that everyone should sit around and empathise about it. Which, you know, well there’s fishing to be done, bathrooms to be grouted…..

31 thoughts on “Who thinks we don’t talk about the menopause?”

  1. “Dr Andrea Davies, from the university’s School of Business, … has organised the monthly Leicester Menopause Café…”

    It’ll go bust.

  2. Apparently I’m “mansplaining” and “making my colleagues feel uncomfortable” by mentioning menopause. So I’ll just go back to talking on safe topics such as politics and religion.

  3. Male academics should say the word ‘menopause’ at least three times a day in solidarity with their female colleagues, according to a fellow scholar.

    What if they don’t want to and don’t give a shit about “solidarity with their female colleagues”, knowing that when it came to reciprocal support they’d shit over their male colleagues without a second thought?

    Anyway, if you needed a story to embody Lefty middle-class University life, this would be it. The only thing missing is the student “sit-in against neoliberal periods”.

  4. Whilst in theory a good idea, I would advise some care when choosing at what points to use each of your 3 daily invocations of the menopause. Apparently, if poorly timed, this can be offensive rather than supportive. Well, now I know.

  5. I’m in … provided the chapesses (whether by birth or self-identification) will agree to say “sex” every 30 seconds in sympathy with us chaps who are reputed to think about it roughly that often.

  6. Female academics should say the words ‘itchy cobblers’ at least three times a day in solidarity with their male colleagues,

  7. Philip Scott Thomas

    Male academics should say the word ‘menopause’ at least three times

    Is that like saying ‘Beetlejuice’ three times? Will a shrieking harridan appear?

  8. Maybe the men uncomfortable voicing the word menopause could use something like “barren dried up old prune symptoms” as a euphemism?

  9. “In a bid to open up the conversation she has organised the monthly Leicester Menopause Café, where male and female colleagues are encouraged to come together and chat about the middle-aged phenomena.”
    Well, if you talk to martians about the menopause you’re going to get all sorts of helpful advice that you probably don’t want. And then you’ll complain about mansplaining.

  10. That rather good ‘tec series that finished the other day might, in part, have been about the menopause.

    That’s about the sum of what I have to say on the topic.

  11. Didn’t Frank Spencer try this?

    “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better. Ummumhmm.”

  12. Isn’t the word ‘womynopause’ now?

    Or in this brave new world where people of all sexes^Wgenders can have periods, `genderopause?’

  13. Isn’t this just preparing the way for a call for some time-off with, of course, no loss of either pay or career prospects ?

  14. IN academia, of which I have extensive experience, the wimmin blather on about the need to bleed for years, which is the excuse for everything, then they get pregnant, stop bleeding for a while but fortunately fuck off and leave the men to it.Then the excuse amongst the elderly matrons is that they don’t bleed any more.

    It’s rather like having your cake and eating it, isn’t it?

  15. “In a bid to open up the conversation she has organised the monthly Leicester Menopause Café, where male and female colleagues are encouraged to come together and chat about the middle-aged phenomena.”

    Where I work we encourage colleagues to come together to talk about work as that’s what we are paying them for. Private issues can be dealt with in private. But then I forgot that we are not part of the public sector so actually have to work in order to make sure that we have any revenues so that we can pay staff

  16. Shouldn’t that be the Leicester Personopause Café?

    Fucking idiots. No wonder this country is shot.

  17. That cafe may be having monthly meetings now but soon they’ll be further and further apart before stopping completely.

  18. Isn’t this encouraging micro-aggression towards trans-women? They hardly need reminding. Or can they modify their hormone regime to simulate the ‘experience’?

    round of applause for the solid punnery on this thread.

  19. If only men would sit around all day talking about women’s problems instead of sport and politics then women could balance that by sitting around all day talking about women’s problems. That’s fair.

  20. If I started mentioning the menopause even once a day all the women I know, once they got over their bafflement, would think I was having a breakdown.

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