Hormone Conflict

How Medicine Sold Women Suffering and Repackaged Male Fetish as Healthcare

By Alessandra Moretti

New York, NY -If society spent as much time educating women about the natural changes their bodies go through with age, especially around hormones and menopause, as it does teaching them how to apply makeup or perform for male attention, more women would enter midlife with confidence and self-assurance. Instead, young women are conditioned to prioritize their appearance and devote their energy to attracting men, with little to no understanding of what lies ahead. By the time they reach their 50s, they’re often unprepared for the emotional and physical shifts that come, and the validation they once received in their youth may have faded, leaving them to navigate it all alone. For decades, women were told that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was dangerous. We were warned it could cause breast cancer, heart disease, and stroke. The message was loud and clear: if you want relief from menopause, you’d better be willing to risk your life for it. And so, generation after generation of women were taught to fear the very thing that could have helped them navigate one of the most intense physiological transitions of their lives.

That fear campaign reached its peak in the early 2000s, following the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study. The findings were alarming: increased risks of breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, and blood clots were reported among women taking HRT. The media latched onto the headlines and amplified the panic. Overnight, hormone therapy was no longer a viable option—it became a cautionary tale. Doctors pulled prescriptions. Women were told to stop treatment immediately. The atmosphere around HRT turned toxic, and millions of women were left to suffer in silence with no alternatives.

But in time, cracks began to show in that narrative. Women, once again, started asking questions—this time more publicly. Many healthcare professionals stepped forward, pointing out that the WHI study was flawed in its design: most of the women enrolled were well over the age of 60, far past the typical window for initiating HRT. The results didn’t reflect the experience of the average perimenopausal woman in her 40s or 50s. Yet the conclusions were applied to all of us.

Critics began to push back. They argued that the panic over HRT had been overblown, and that the study had been used to reinforce outdated notions about women’s health. In silencing HRT, medicine had once again defaulted to what it knows best when it comes to women: fear, restriction, and denial of care.

By 2024, even follow-up research from the WHI itself began to walk back its earlier alarm. For many younger women, particularly those under 60 or within 10 years of menopause, short-term HRT is now understood to be not only relatively safe, but often beneficial—especially for those dealing with severe symptoms like hot flashes, insomnia, mood swings, and anxiety. But for a full two decades, millions of women were denied access to that possibility. The damage had already been done.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape has shifted—but not for us. Trans-identified males are now routinely prescribed high doses of the same hormones we were told to avoid. Their use is celebrated, funded, and protected. HRT, once framed as too dangerous for women, is suddenly “safe,” “affirming,” and “life-saving” when administered to males. This isn’t evolution in medicine—it’s a blatant double standard. It’s a reminder that women’s suffering has always been seen as tolerable, while male distress, even when rooted in porn, identity confusion, or discomfort, is treated as a medical emergency.

I grew up in a multigenerational Italian household, surrounded by women at all stages of life. Our home was filled with the texture of womanhood: bras drying on the shower rod, pantyhose dangling from door handles, and older women with open blouses sitting in front of the fridge, trying to cool down during a hot flash. This was the late ’90s—not ancient history.

I remember hearing the older women in my family whisper about “the change.” Menopause was spoken of like a storm you just had to survive. Mood swings, night sweats, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, trips to the emergency room. One aunt repeatedly thought she was dying of a heart attack. Not one of them was offered support. Not one of them was told there were options. They were told to endure it. Because that’s what women do.

And now, as I reach my late 50s and my own body begins to change—my periods becoming irregular, my sleep disrupted—I’m diving into research, asking questions, and I’m met with the same cautionary tales: “Don’t take hormones. They’ll give you cancer.” The fear runs deep. It was passed down like a family recipe. Meanwhile, trans-identified males celebrate their hormone regimens online, documenting every physical change, and every emotional milestone, raving about how estrogen saved them. The same hormones that were too dangerous for women are now life-saving for men. And the pharmaceutical industry? Silent. The same industry that once plastered warning labels all over women’s prescriptions now has nothing to say about long-term high-dose hormone use in males.

Even now, as some women seek HRT for menopausal relief, there are reports of shortages—because so many trans-identified males are being prescribed large quantities of the same medication. The drugs we were warned against are now in short supply, not because of our needs, but because they’re being diverted to support male identity transitions. The irony is not just bitter—it’s enraging.

And let’s not stop with HRT. When it comes to the female body—our cycles, our fertility, our hormones—we’ve never had full autonomy. Men have always been at the helm of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. And that power has rarely served us.

Take birth control. One group of women’s poverty has historically served as the testing ground for another group’s contraception. Trials on poor women and women of color were conducted without proper consent, with devastating results. For decades, birth control was discouraged—seen as unnatural, immoral, even dangerous. But now it’s aggressively pushed, not necessarily because our autonomy is finally respected, but because it’s useful: it allows women to continue having sex with men without “disruption.” It keeps pregnancies at bay. It keeps women from demanding that their partners utilize condoms. 

Yes, some women find real relief from birth control, particularly those with endometriosis or PCOS. But even then, that relief can come at a cost: emotional side effects, weight changes, blood clots, or a severing from one’s natural rhythms. The hormonal flattening we’re sold as empowerment can also be a form of disconnection—from our bodies, from our intuition, from our innate cycles of rest, release, and renewal.

Again and again, science in the hands of men becomes a tool not of healing, but of hierarchy. Our bodies are studied, judged, poked, prodded, pathologized—and always in relation to male norms. Medicine doesn’t ask, “What does the female body need?” It asks, “How can we control it? Suppress it? Profit from it?” Whether it’s silencing menopause, sterilizing ovulation, or experimenting with hormones, the pattern is clear: when male institutions govern female biology, it is almost always to our detriment.

So when we talk about hormone use—whether for birth control or menopause, —we need to be brutally honest about who gets care, who gets silenced, and who gets sacrificed. Women have been told to suffer in silence for generations, while others are handed every tool in the medical arsenal to escape discomfort.