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There is life beyond menopause.
And “good life,” agrees the feminist psychologist Anna Freixas (Barcelona, 77 years old).
The thinker, a retired professor of Psychology, has just updated, 17 years after its publication (in Paidós), the book
Nuestra Menopause, an unofficial version
(Capitán Swing, 2024), where she sets her critical gaze on the sociocultural perception of this stage of life and dismantles myths, stigmas and taboos.
Forceful, Freixas charges against the conception of this vital stage as an illness and harshly criticizes hormonal therapy, drugs that have been surrounded by controversy for decades because, first, they were massively recommended to all women and, at the beginning of the century, it was discovered that increased the risk of some diseases.
Today, in Spain, clinical guidelines limit its use to a specific profile of women and with severe vasomotor symptoms, but Freixas maintains his misgivings.
The psychologist, who defines herself as “a curious person, a bothersome thinker about the life cycle of women,” highlights the need to “talk” about menopause, whether in the past, present or future.
More information
The limits of menopause hormone therapy: it is not recommended to prevent diseases, but it is recommended to treat severe hot flashes
Ask.
This book is an update of one published in 2007. Has things changed much since then?
Answer.
It hasn't changed that much.
The essence of the issue remains the same: there is a cultural panic that is transmitted to women.
And this cultural panic is the mother of all controversies and all the fear with which girls approach menopause.
Q.
A cultural panic about menopause or what you expect from it?
A.
Yes. It is a cultural panic about what they tell you about a process that is natural and vital.
It is very difficult to be young and approach menopause safely, calmly and with a relaxed view of a natural process, such as menarche [first menstrual bleeding].
Q.
How has this panic been built?
A.
It comes from afar.
Culturally there has been a definition of women as beings for reproduction, a uterus with legs.
The thing is that that definition doesn't work for us now.
In our culture, women do not have children or have very few and our meaning of life is not reproduction.
Furthermore, we live many more years: at 50 we have menopause and we die at 90. These 40 years, from 50 to 90, are almost more significant than the previous 40, we cannot think that half of our life is a meaningless life.
Q.
Is menopause still taboo?
A.
Between one book and the other, I think we have made progress in this.
In the same way that menstruation is also talked about, menopause is now also beginning to be a topic of conversation.
Women have acquired greater freedom, more security and less panic.
The taboo is based on the fear of exclusion: the fear that, after menopause, you will begin to no longer be sexually eligible, to stop being attractive, to lose positions in the labor market...
It is very difficult to be young and approach menopause calmly”
Q.
You say in the book that language is not innocent.
He proposes talking about signs instead of symptoms.
Because?
A.
A symptom indicates illness.
Hot flashes are not a symptom of menopause;
They are a sign, a signal.
When we confuse sign and symptom, we are agreeing with those who consider menopause to be a hormone deficiency disease: it is not a disease, it is a natural process.
It cannot be that the end of the reproductive cycle is the most important thing that happens in our lives.
Q.
Another phrase of yours: “We are not sick, but wounded by the social stigmatization of this transition.”
How do these wounds heal?
A.
It is very important to talk: with our mothers, with our friends, with our sisters... Talk and read.
And realize that for many women menopause means nothing.
And many will tell you: “I feel freer, better, less emotionally vulnerable, more in control of myself, with much more energy.”
Q.
Are signs that do not directly correspond to this biological process attributed to menopause?
A.
Of course.
There are currents in gynecology that say that there are up to 80 signs that can be attributed to menopause.
Please!
What does that mean?
Is losing an eyelash a sign that you lack estrogen?
As Carmen Sáez Buenaventura says: menopause, like a beautiful cape, covers everything.
Q.
But there are vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flashes or hot flashes at night, that have a physiological explanation linked to this hormonal decrease.
And there are women who suffer from them, they are real, it is not a somatization due to the sociocultural context.
A.
Obviously.
These signs are real, but they affect a small percentage of women, which does not mean that they are not important.
There are many women who do not have a single hot flash and there are other women who have many and very important ones.
Obviously, hot flashes are real and very annoying, but they last for a while, they go away.
And they are not only due to estrogen: they are also due to stress, the quality and type of life we lead.
It is a question of hormones stimulated by a vital situation.
Anna Freixas, photographed on the terrace of her home, in Barcelona. Gianluca Battista
Q.
Compare the conception of menopause and menstruation, while menstruation is socially well regarded because it implies “becoming a woman” and menopause, quite the opposite.
But menstruation also has negative connotations, such as assuming that a girl is menstruating when she is in a bad mood, for example.
A.
It is that women always have an exposed flank.
Culturally, we have been attacked for our biology, for having periods, for not having them... Patriarchy has used this to discredit women.
This lucidity of women throughout life, which is rooted in our being a woman, in our logic that has to do with the essence of the creation of life, is unbearable for society and must be attacked.
Q.
Is menopause pathologized?
A.
Yes, totally.
But I also think that, in the last 20 years, menopausal pride is beginning to appear.
That is, women who stomp their feet and say: “Yes, I am happy since I have had menopause, I feel better.”
Q.
You are very critical of hormone therapy.
But, currently, in Spain, its use is very limited to very specific cases.
What do you think?
A.
What you say is perfect: limited by this, by this and by this.
But I'm afraid it doesn't happen that way.
Why do I say this?
Because I hear young gynecologists talk about the 80 symptoms and that hormone therapy is not what it used to be, that it is preventive... And I find it hard to believe it.
I agree that in some cases it may be necessary, I am not a doctor nor do I want to be, but I am afraid that this clear reflection does not exist.
“When they want to scare you, they warn you that menopause is the beginning of the end.”
Q.
There are gynecologists who suggest that in Spain there is a certain “hormonophobia.”
A.
It is not hormonophobia, it is that in Spain there are lucid women who do not swallow what they have tried to do to us.
The thing is that they should be asking for forgiveness for the abuses that have been committed and for the amount of lies and fears that have been transmitted.
What worries me most is the fear that, for years, young women harbor in their bodies and that makes them reach menopause full of panic.
That is very serious.
Q.
Just as it was a mistake to make us believe that periods had to hurt no matter what and that masked undiagnosed cases of endometriosis, for example, couldn't normalizing any of those 80 signs that you mentioned as part of the vital process you are experiencing? also hide some pathological condition?
A.
The signs that are really associated are hot flashes, vaginal dryness, which also has a lot to do with desire;
and the decrease in sexual interest in some people, which also has to do with the relationship situation.
Little more.
There are a series of gynecological examinations that are routinely done and whose objective is to rule out other types of problems.
Q.
You talk about the “menopausal industry.”
Who are they?
A.
They are the entire set of economic forces that induce us to consume certain products in order to avoid something that has not yet occurred or an inconvenience that may never exist.
And they also induce fear and fear in us, that define menopause as a disease, that promise what they cannot deliver, that make us sick and that ruin us.
Culturally, there has been a definition of woman as a womb with legs."
Q.
What are the biggest fears that women have around menopause?
R.
Exclusion.
Work, sexual, emotional exclusion... When they want to scare you, they warn you that menopause is the beginning of the end.
How can it be the beginning of the end when we are at the beginning of new life?
We are in our 50s, we are going to live 40 more years of meaningful life.
Q.
You positively highlight the possibilities from this vital process, but each menopause is different and each woman experiences it differently.
Can excessive euphoria about what this stage of life can offer distort this diverse reality?
A.
Menopause is a moment in the long life cycle.
I don't think it's something that should be given tragic importance.
It is a process in the life cycle that, for some women, gives certain meanings and others have some difficulties.
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