Curiously titled “Sex Matters,” McGregor’s book gets grouped on Amazon with books about sexuality like “Living an Orgasmic Life“. But it is actually about sexism in medical research and practice, overlapping strongly with Doing Harm from 2018, by Maya Dusenbery. McGregor is a doctor, while Dusenbery is a medical journalist. Doing Harm about twice as long with more scholarly references than Sex Matters. But then Dusenbury in her book refers to some of the work of McGregor, whose 15 minute TEDX talk “Why medicine often has bad side effects for women” has over 1.5 million views. While Dusenbery’s book felt dense and repetitive at points, McGregor’s book is a relatively quick read with a good amount of personal anecdote. Each chapter ends with a bullet point list of “key takeaways.” Both cover material that has been well described in scholarly journals. 

The basic ideas are straightforward: medicine has based its theories of disease and its cures on men’s bodies, and these do not always work for women because women’s bodies are different from men’s bodies. McGregor identifies 6 main areas of concern:

• Heart disease and brain disorders
• Pharmaceuticals
• Dismissive attitude towards female patients
• Women’s relation to pain
• Hormones and hormone therapy
• Promoting diversity in medicine

Maybe the most distinctive claims in the book relate to pain, since they were not included in Doing Harm, She argues that women have biologically different pain mechanisms from men, that women’s hormonal cycles affect pain levels, and that pain killers work differently for women. These are important claims that if generally accepted by the medical community should be far better known by all. 

The main advantage of Sex Matters is that it summarizes many ways in which medicine is different for women and how this disadvantages them, and it should appeal to a wide readership. It is important that both doctors and patients understand the issues set out in the book and consider the solutions proposed by McGregor in her final chapters. 

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology. He lives in Suffolk County of Long Island, NY. He is Full Adjunct Professor at St John’s University, Vice President of AAPP and is an APPA

Categories: General

Keywords: sex, gender, medicine, sexism