One side effect of being young, female and sick: People won’t believe you

My reason for posting about this article is not because the article is fantastically good (it isn't), but because the comments in reply to it are astonishing. (Could someone tell me what an MW is, please? Somehow I don't think it is a megawatt!) Edit : The article isn't awful either, so do read it if the subject interests you.

Title : One side effect of being young, female and sick: People won’t believe you

Link : https://www.marketwatch.com/story/o...e-and-sick-people-wont-believe-you-2018-03-15

After Michele Lent Hirsch had major hip surgery in her early 20s, even as she hobbled around on crutches, people didn’t always believe that she’d had surgery.


“Oh, my grandmother had that,” she’d hear. Or, “Weird, hip surgery.”


An older woman yelled at her for taking a seat on a mostly empty bus, and one bus driver refused to lower the steps so she could get on.


Other health problems beset Lent Hirsch throughout much of her 20s, from a severe allergic reaction that nearly killed her to thyroid cancer — which her then-boss told her to leave “at the door” — and later, Lyme disease.


Over and over again, she saw how unsympathetic society was toward young women with health problems.


Lent Hirsch began to wonder whether other young women were struggling with similarly serious health conditions. The answer turned out to be an overwhelming yes.


Statistics show that young women are disproportionately affected by certain diseases and health conditions, she says — and that’s hard enough.


But they also have to grapple with societal attitudes toward women, and young women in particular, which makes everything that much more difficult.

Article continues here : https://www.marketwatch.com/story/o...e-and-sick-people-wont-believe-you-2018-03-15

 

@Arnie Pye , I didn't read the article, but you're right about the Comments. I guess they're not surprising, considering the mandate of the website the article was published on -- Market Watch. This answers your question -- MW is a financial website.

 

no shock whatsoever welcome to the rampant world of unrestrained greed if your not making money for someone then you are worthless and of course those who are making the money gaining power and political influence make sure that the idiots attack those less well of than themselves. this has gone on forever and a day . divide and conquer always the goto for societies who can or will not make the changes necessary for a slightly more fair world.

 

Doh! I missed that completely! Thanks for the answer!

 

Yes, that is why I thought it was worth posting. But it still shocks me to the core.

 

A pretty reasonable article.
The point that could have been made more clearly for my mind is:
People want to contribute to society. Society wants people to contribute to it. People with chronic illnesses can't contribute when the only option is full-time; there needs to be more options so that everybody can contribute and flourish as much as possible. (That's how I feel about it, anyway. I don't see how anybody could be against this.) It happens that, among younger people, there are more women than men with these sorts of conditions, so we particularly should look out for this.

I don't know how it is elsewhere but in the U.S. anytime you mention gender, depending on what you're saying you'll get a flood of hate from either the far/alt-right or ultra-progressives (or maybe both). Since this was one to stoke right-wing delirium, the slavering misogyny in the comments is not surprising.

 

This had me laughing hysterically:



The guy has no idea that he is a parodic cliche. Having left the City 27 years ago, I'd forgotten that dicks like that exist.

Mind you this wasn't so funny:



I had forgotten that in some cultures (offices in the financial industry for example) empathy is seen as a weakness and a complete lack of it as a virtue. The wives of such masters of the universe usually bugger off as soon as the children have grown up, leaving them baffled about the complete lack of appreciation they got for keeping the economy going, and sadly hammering away on the internet about "women" at every opportunity.

 

These comments are just so much free entertainment I'm reading them all. Imagine if this was your entire literary output for the day:



What kind of a ... ?

 

Thank you, I needed a laugh to wake me up and this did the trick!

I don’t know why everyone hates Trolls so much, they are an endless source of entertainment.

 

A kind of person who wanted empathy when facing court action in the past for 'liens or bankruptcy'? (not linking to actual info about the bigot)

 

A friend of mine was riding her bicycle in the bike lane of a major city and was "doored" by a taxi patron. She was flung from her cycle and tore her ACL, so was on crutches for a very long time. She also repeatedly experienced the unexplainable refusal from bus drivers to push the button that lowers the stairs. I honestly do not understand my fellow humans at all. Seriously, man, push a gorram button.

 

I think it is very wide-spread. Being without empathy is a key qualification for building a career nowadays.

 

Mr Junk Bond and Mr Boo Hoo Snowflake have probably had it drilled into them for free by their obliging employers. What a great perk - being sent on a course on bad manners and lack of empathy at the company's expense. Sorry, I mean a course on positive thinking, accepting personal responsibility and seeing challenge in adversity.

Having been willingly brainwashed, when they are included in the next wave of redundancies (coincidentally 6 months after their super-duper course) they will see it as an opportunity. So for the costs of the brainwashing sorry continuing professional education courses the company that fires them saves the much larger costs of potential protests and legal action at mass redundancies.

All a company needs to get away with persuading their employees that everything is their own fault and nothing is the company's is a constant supply of job applicants who are so up themselves that they don't realise what's going on, and think being sent on such soft-skills courses is a status-enhancing perk, rather than a way to put bums on seats so that the CEO's girlfriend can charge the company thousands to scream at their employees like Tom Peters.

Enter Mr Junk Bond and Mr Boo Hoo Snowflake stage right, with no idea of who's about to move their f***ing cheese.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8GGpYFmkYI