The Fertile Woman
Before I get into the topic du jour, I promised to share the story of the insurance fraud crime ring. There’s too much to unpack here so I’m going to just give it to you in portions. If reading about tow truck scams isn’t your thing, please skip it. But if you want a little criminal suspense, see the appetizer portion below.
Featured Topic
What I really wanted to talk about today is the pitch I’m involved in to build an experience design and data strategy for a women’s health company. The client has said repeatedly that he wants his company to be the partner of choice to support “the lifecycle of the fertile woman.” I don’t even know where to start with the ways in which this just feels wrong. I mean, are women only to be seen as host bodies? What does that mean for those of us who weren’t able to have kids? Do we hold no value to society? Certainly, there are people in society who believe that. Many of those people are women, who can’t comprehend how it must feel for women whose medical problems prevent them from having kids. These are the same women who come to work and talk about their kids, unaware that there might be a woman among them who can’t have kids and would rather change the subject. The invalidation is pervasive.
I recall years ago when I was suffering from a burst ovarian cyst - a reaction to my attempt to stop taking the pill in the hopes that I might be able to get pregnant - I was in a work meeting that was meant to motivate a team of people who were promoting a cervical cancer vaccine. Our male VP concluded he could accomplish this goal by reading a letter from a woman who had cervical cancer. In that letter, the woman talked about how she had a hysterectomy to save her life but no longer felt like a woman, because she could no longer have kids. It never occurred to the man who read this horrible letter that there might be a woman in the audience for whom this story crossed the line. I remember glowering at the VP after he pulled that stunt, but not until after I had abruptly left the conference room to go sob in the bathroom. I once had a romantic interest who told me, when I expressed that I always thought I would adopt a kid, that if I did that I would just be quitting. Nice of him to define that for me, since he’s not the person who had a ruptured cyst and a pre-cancerous tumor as a consequence of discontinuing hormone therapy. Somehow, the misogyny has only gotten worse since then. Just look at what is happening in Texas. We are treated like second class citizens whose moral obligation and sole purpose it is to produce babies, regardless of the circumstances in which a pregnancy occurs or whether it would be harmful to a woman to try and bring a baby to term.
Why should we confine the field of “women’s health” to only issues that either prevent or promote pregnancy? Surely, we should first concentrate on eradicating diseases that make it difficult for women to live without pain and suffering, or in some scenarios result in making sex unenjoyable. Why do those life altering health issues take a backseat to fertility? And when they do, why doesn’t anyone consider how that may feel to women who can’t produce babies, or at least not without putting their own health at risk? I’ll tell you how it feels. It feels incredibly disheartening, invalidating, and depressing. I don’t want to limit the field of women’s health to the ability to reproduce. Because when we do, that means that those of us who do not reproduce are also excluded from having a voice in our community. We are the epitome of the “other” women, those unfortunate souls who cannot or do not live up to their societal expectations. We are the underachievers, regardless of how much we have personally overcome to get up in the morning, regardless of how lucrative our careers may be, how much we have accomplished or how educated we are. We are told, repeatedly, that if we don’t have kids we are nothing. And when that message is delivered over and over again, it’s hard to understand why we endure so much to get up in the morning.
So, stop it. The discussion of women’s health should not start and end with fertility. Stop pretending to be advocates to women when all you want to do is help them to get pregnant. Women are so much more than the health of their uterus. I am through letting anyone define me as an also ran simply because I was not a vessel for a man’s sperm.
Insurance Fraud Crime Ring, Part I
When a passenger opened the door of my parked car into an oncoming bus, I first watched in horror. Then I got out of the car and inspected the damage. I felt even more horrified. Then I called my insurance company, which was the most horrifying experience of that day. I’m sorry to tell Allstate that I was not in good hands. I was bounced around from one incompetent agent to another, all while I was held at the scene of an accident. There were people coming by to take pictures of the car wreck and me, even though I wasn’t the idiot to have caused the accident. The bus company was coming to me for information. I was standing among shattered glass and my car was stuck to the side of a bus. The bus was idling while waiting for the transportation authority supervisors to show up to take photos and collect statements. Since I didn’t have a quiet place in which to speak to my insurance company, such as, I don’t know - a car with intact windows and doors - it was not the best setting in which to file a claim. I merely wanted to arrange a tow. After waiting twenty minutes for someone to answer my call for help, I told her I was calling from the scene of an accident and that my passenger had opened my car into an oncoming bus. She paused for a moment, and then said I would need to speak to the claims department. So I was transferred, placed on hold, and then greeted by an agent who demanded I provide him with my policy number. I said that I was calling from the scene of an accident and asked if he could just look up my policy number by using my name, address, and phone number. He refused. Because, you know, why should the agent be inconvenienced? I was only standing at the scene of the accident. Not like I was holding up city traffic or anything. Finally, when the guy finished taking my claim information he said he’d have to transfer me back to roadside assistance to arrange a tow.
We’re now approaching 90 minutes since the accident, while the bus company and transit authority patiently waited for me to finish my little chat with Allstate. When the Roadside agent picked up, she told me I did not purchase roadside assistance and if she sent a tow I would have to pay upfront and then send in a request for reimbursement. At this point, I was done with Allstate. Instead of providing the service I paid for, I was left stranded and told my only lifeline was to reach into my pocket and pay for the service of being mistreated by incompetent insurance agents. Meanwhile, everyone else was ready to go but me. I hung up with Allstate, provided my information to everyone and their mother (including the transit police, because someone claimed to fall after being evacuated from the bus). I finally pointed out that my passenger is the one who caused the accident by opening the door. The transit cops looked surprise, I guess because it’s inconceivable that a woman would be sitting in the driver’s seat where she was merely a witness to the vehicular carnage. My passenger conceded that it was he who opened the door, and the transit cops and bus company took his information too. Then off they went.
Finally, with everything they needed to file administrative reports, the driver got in the bus and moved it away from my car. I was about to call AAA, but I knew that accident protection didn’t fall within my policy, and even if I got through to someone who was willing and able to help me I’d have to wait around for a tow vehicle to show. Since my car door could not be closed, it was open to the narrow street and continuing to obstruct traffic. That’s when a random dude told me he owns a body shop down the road and could take my car. What choice did I have but to turn my car over to some rando, who misspelled the word, “Services” on the claim form he provided to me? (He spelled it as, “Service’s.” Apparently, he didn’t know that plural words don’t require an apostrophe.) So anyway, that’s chapter one. Next comes the hostage situation.
