{"id":44987,"date":"2019-07-07T13:30:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-07T20:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/?p=44987"},"modified":"2019-07-07T13:30:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T20:30:56","slug":"what-orcas-can-teach-humans-about-menopause-and-matriarchs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/what-orcas-can-teach-humans-about-menopause-and-matriarchs\/","title":{"rendered":"What Orcas Can Teach Humans About Menopause and Matriarchs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Darcey Steinke will be discussing her new book, Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life, at the Forum at Town Hall on July 8. Tickets are on sale now, or buy your tickets at the door<\/strong><\/a>!<\/p>\n

The following article, written by Brangien Davis<\/a>, originally appeared on Crosscut<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Seattleites understand the draw of killer whales. Even a dorsal fin glimpsed from a ferry sparks awe. We want to be near their black-and-white bodies, their close family pods, their huge brains, their haunting songs.<\/p>\n

But for writer Darcey Steinke, one quality above all others pulled her from her home in Brooklyn to the San Juan Islands in hopes of seeing a killer whale in the flesh: the fact that orcas and humans are two of only five species\u00a0known to experience menopause.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In her new book,\u00a0Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life<\/em>, Steinke explains how this surprising cross-species connection led her on a cross-country quest to see the centenarian southern resident orca \u201cGranny\u201d (aka J2, who has since died). The trip was\u00a0<\/strong>a kind of feminist version of\u00a0Moby-Dick<\/em>, but instead of hoping to harpoon\u00a0a\u00a0white whale, Steinke\u00a0sought solace from a black-and-white elder.<\/p>\n

When she\u00a0was 50 and having frequent, intense hot flashes (not to mention insomnia, fatigue and anxiety), Steinke\u00a0began looking around for something \u2014 anything \u2014 positive about menopause. She noted that in pop culture, menopause is referred to almost exclusively as a punchline, often via dismissive or self-deprecating jokes about hot flashes or mood swings. The self-help books she read couched menopause as a disease that should be fixed, usually with hormone replacement therapy (HRT, which has many risks and unknowns). From pioneering menopause writer Gail Sheehy (The Silent Passage<\/em>, 1992) to 1970s television star Suzanne Somers (The Sexy Years<\/em>, 2004), experts promoted HRT as the best shot at \u201ckeeping the veneer of femininity intact.\u201d To Steinke, everything read\u00a0like \u201cboilerplate misogyny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her research unearthed a long history of dubious \u201ccures,\u201d from transfusions of dog\u2019s blood to vinegar sponge baths to putting a magnet in your underpants. All of which, she says, seem a little less strange once you realize that the most popular hormone replacement treatment, Premarin, is made from the urine of pregnant horses.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody wants to hear about menopause, not even menopausal women themselves,\u201d she writes in\u00a0Flash Count<\/em>. It\u2019s an unspoken secret that many women are embarrassed to discuss. Even among middle-aged women, the topic of menopause and perimenopause (the years-long, symptom-heavy suite of bodily changes that lead\u00a0up to the final cessation of periods) has a hushed air of shame \u2014 something to be kept under wraps, because culturally it signifies\u00a0\u201cyour usefulness is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she found\u00a0an article in the journal\u00a0Nature<\/em><\/a>\u00a0about how postmenopausal killer whales serve as leaders and knowledge bearers in their pods, Steinke felt a glimmer of hope. While menopausal humans are ridiculed or ignored, menopausal orcas are critical members of their society. Given the lack of nuanced human narratives about this significant\u00a0life change, Steinke latched onto the\u00a0cetacean story. She took a plane to Seattle, a van to Anacortes, a ferry to San Juan Island and a sea kayak out into the Salish Sea.<\/p>\n

Part memoir, part widely researched treatise\u00a0(with citations ranging from The Incredible Hulk to Simone de Beauvoir),\u00a0Flash Count\u00a0<\/em>argues for a new view of menopause, one that openly\u00a0acknowledges and embraces it\u00a0as a phase of life that is confounding and physically nightmarish, but ultimately pregnant with possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to fight back, to resist how the culture denigrates and stigmatizes menopausal women,\u201d Steinke writes. She goes on to quote renowned feminist\u00a0Germaine Greer, author of\u00a0The Change\u00a0<\/em>(1991): \u201cThe menopausal woman is a prisoner of a stereotype and will not be rescued from it until she has begun to tell her own story.\u201d And so, Steinke does just that.<\/p>\n

I spoke with Steinke in advance of her upcoming\u00a0appearance at Town Hall Seattle<\/a>, where she\u2019ll be in conversation with Dr. Deborah Giles, scientist and lecturer at the University of Washington\u2019s Friday Harbor Labs on San Juan Island.<\/p>\n

BD: What was it about that article in Nature<\/em>\u00a0that clicked for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> I found out that not only do killer whales go through menopause, but the post-reproductive orcas go on to lead their pods. And in that same article they talked about how menopause is an evolutionary puzzle because most creatures breed until the end of their life cycles \u2014 it\u2019s a principle of Darwinian fitness to have as many offspring as you can. The article said menopause probably evolved in human communities for the same reason as in whale communities: because around 50, women get so smart and knowledgeable that they\u2019re more valuable to their communities as leaders than as breeders. This was an idea that I really, really liked.<\/p>\n

BD: So you got obsessed.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> I got completely obsessed. There\u2019s a lot of YouTube footage of the southern resident killer whales in the Salish Sea, and the University of Washington\u2019s Center for Whale Research has a live-linked hydrophone<\/a>\u2014 so I could listen 24 hours a day for whale sounds. Sometimes I heard them calling to each other. I also got obsessed with Lolita, who was from L Pod, and was taken 48 years ago from the Salish Sea and is still held captive at Miami Seaquarium. So I went down to see her. And then I flew to Seattle, went straight to Friday Harbor, got in a kayak, and on my first day out, I saw Granny! She was such an iconic whale. It was unbelievable. I\u2019m still not really over it. I\u2019ll never get over it.<\/p>\n

BD: But in the book you say the moment wasn\u2019t like the movie Born Free<\/em>. It was more mysterious.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> Right. When I saw Granny it wasn\u2019t like we had this big connection, like, \u201cOoh, we are one.\u201d I actually felt like her look said, \u201cWhat the frig are you doing? Why are you guys out here?\u201d I think that\u2019s related to menopause. The passage is mysterious \u2014 it\u2019s not like it\u2019s all powerful. I definitely suffered some. But there was also some fascination with what was happening to my body, my mind, my gender, my sexuality. You\u2019re almost like molting. It didn\u2019t seem completely negative; it seemed more like, human. And real in a way that was not sugar-coated, and not necessarily empowering, but a human experience that should be felt and honored.<\/p>\n

BD: Flash Count Diary<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is currently Amazon\u2019s No. 1\u00a0bestseller \u2026 in the menopause section. Most of the other books in that category are about \u201csolving the menopause problem\u201d with hormones or diets or essential oils.<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> I know, I love it! It\u2019s like, The Hormone Cure<\/em>,\u00a0The Estrogen Cure<\/em>,\u00a0Menopause Is a Disease<\/em>,\u00a0You Need to Fix Yourself<\/em>. I\u2019m not totally against hormones, but I\u2019m so happy to be beating all the hormone books! When I was going through menopause \u2014 I think I\u2019m at the end now, but I\u2019m not sure \u2014 I discovered there are so few books that talk about menopause as something that is nuanced. It was always about how to get rid of the symptoms. There was nothing that was really engaged and respectful. When I started to have hot flashes, they were really uncomfortable, but they were also fascinating as a bodily phenomenon. I found them exquisite in a weird way, too \u2014 just to be incandescent with heat.<\/p>\n

BD: Alternately there are rah-rah, empowerment narratives, such as, \u201cHot flashes are power surges!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> As annoying as the menopause books trying to push everyone onto hormones are, those other books that are like, You\u2019ll rise like a phoenix through menopause!<\/em>\u00a0were really annoying to me, too. Those are equally unnuanced. … I\u2019m not completely surprised that I\u2019ve landed in the women\u2019s health world, and I guess I\u2019m kind of happy about it. But part of the conclusion of the book is that we don\u2019t need to be ashamed, we don\u2019t need to get rid of it, we should live our own truth. So I like to think that my book is somewhat more punk rock than the others.<\/p>\n

BD: It seems like lately there have been a few more menopausal storylines on television. Do you watch Better Things<\/em>? Pamela Adlon\u2019s character is dealing with her changing body and new life stage in the current season.<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> Oh yeah, that\u2019s a great show. I think she has a hot flash in one of the first episodes. There is also that incredible scene in Season 2 of\u00a0Fleabag<\/em><\/a>\u00a0when the older woman [Kristin Scott Thomas] talks about how wonderful life is postmenopause. But I\u2019m very sensitive to menopause being made fun of on TV, like when hot flashes are laughed at, even if by women. That stuff makes me kind of crazy \u2014 do we make fun of people who are having seizures? I\u2019m not saying menopause is an illness, but it is a kind of bodily suffering. I know humor can be a release but most of the\u00a0jokes are just boilerplate misogyny.<\/p>\n

BD: When I was reading Flash Count\u00a0<\/em>I found that I sometimes felt embarrassed to be carrying around a book with \u201cmenopause\u201d on the cover. And then I\u2019d get mad that I was embarrassed by this thing that happens to half the population.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> Yes, other women have told me the same thing. They think, \u201cWow, I realized I\u2019m a little ashamed of this, and then I realized how crazy that was.\u201d I mean, if you were reading a book about pregnancy or birth you wouldn\u2019t feel embarrassed. Or maybe even a book about menstruation, because now we have this \u201cmenstruation power\u201d movement. That\u2019s connected to the idea in the book that women are mostly valued for their sexuality and their motherhood, so after those days are over, there is some shame attached to menopause. That\u2019s misogyny, too. It\u2019s just not a phase when men find women interesting.<\/p>\n

BD: As the author of many fiction titles, did you ever have qualms about writing a personal menopause book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> At the very beginning I wondered, would this taint me as being \u201cthe menopause writer\u201d? But pretty quickly I realized even thinking that shows how messed up the culture is around all this. And I started getting kind of angry. I decided, I\u2019m gonna write the most honest book about my own experience, and say what I really think about the way the medical world treats this condition. I got buoyed up by my own fury, so that dealt with the shame I might\u2019ve felt.<\/p>\n

BD: \u201cStorylessness has been women\u2019s biggest problem,\u201d you quote cultural critic Katha Pollitt as saying. Her (and your) point is that while we have countless books about women coming of age, embracing sexuality, falling in love and starting a family, the roster of stories by and about women experiencing menopause is measly.<\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> That\u2019s why I wrote the book, right? And that\u2019s kind of why I attached myself to whales, too. I couldn\u2019t find any human stories about menopause, so I got attached to Granny. Two books I did like were\u00a0The Change<\/em>\u00a0by Germain Greer, a philosophical feminist study of menopause and midlife, and Colette\u2019s novel\u00a0Break of Day<\/em>, which is a story about Colette\u2019s own menopause and her flirtation with a younger man,\u00a0a meditation on her sexuality at this age. There is also Simone de Beauvoir\u2019s\u00a0Old Age<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 people forget she was one of the first writers who would go out and interview people for her books, to hear their experiences, which is something I did for my book too.<\/p>\n

BD: Tell me about the subhead: Menopause and the\u00a0Vindication of Natural Life.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

DS:<\/strong> I love the word vindication \u2014 in part because of Mary Wollstonecraft, whose book A Vindication of the Rights of Women<\/em>\u00a0[1792] was one of the first feminist books and was very important to me as a young person. But also because menopause is not a disease, it doesn\u2019t need to be cured, it needs to be vindicated! I really wanted the book to be engaging \u2014 a fun read \u2014 but also a treatise or call to arms. I know that writing it definitely saved me from menopause shame, so I hope that can be true for other women as well.<\/p>\n

Darcey Steinke was joined by Dr. Deborah Giles in the Forum July 8, 2019. Listen to the whole conversation in our media library<\/a>!\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seattleites understand the draw of killer whales. Even a dorsal fin glimpsed from a ferry sparks awe. We want to be near their black-and-white bodies, their close family pods, their huge brains, their haunting songs.<\/p>\n

But for writer Darcey Steinke, one quality above all others pulled her from her home in Brooklyn to the San Juan Islands in hopes of seeing a killer whale in the flesh: the fact that orcas and humans are two of only five species\u00a0known to experience menopause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,24,17,6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature","category-guest-contributor","category-interview-conversation","category-town-crier","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/townhallseattle.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}