From: May
To: You

Greetings from May,
Friend, I can swear to you that a few days ago, I felt cold in this same apartment with the temperature set at 74 degrees. I was legit shivering. Now, it’s still 74 degrees, and I’m drenched in sweat. I feel irritated right now, not even by the temperature, or the slight headache, or the backache I have. I feel warm, yet I don’t want to put my back on the seat because it feels cold.

Riddle me this, what am I going through?

I doubt you guessed right. You probably thought I was just rambling on about nothing and wasting your time.

I’m on my period. You may be rolling your eyes at the mention of PMS again, tired of hearing about the pain, mood swings, and everything else I, women, go through. As for me? I’ve accepted the lot given to me, but what I don’t get is why, why, why there’s more research on—

…
—I took a break there to search up exactly what I was going to say, and here’s the most popular result relating to my inquiry: “Erectile dysfunction has received five times more research than premenstrual syndrome (PMS), even though 90% of women experience PMS symptoms compared to 19% of men who experience erectile dysfunction.” Now, we could debate this all day, and I look forward to your reply.

But, let’s focus on what I did there. I paused to research. You see, Google is free, and easy to use. Why, then, do people choose to spread misinformation when arguing? There’s so much rubbish floating around on the web simply because we don’t take the time to fact-check. We argue, we share, and we mislead without ever doing the basic research that’s literally a click away.

It reminds me of how I used to believe something someone told me, then passed it on without checking. And suddenly, I was part of the problem. Misinformation spreads like wildfire when we don’t take responsibility for what we share.

And that brings me back to research. Why is it that erectile dysfunction, affecting only 19% of men, gets five times more attention than PMS, which affects 90% of women? Apparently, the global market for erectile dysfunction drugs is increasingly worth billions of dollars. Meanwhile, funding for PMS research is barely on the radar. So, we end up knowing everything about erectile dysfunction, and next to nothing about what most women endure monthly. And then, misinformation fills the gaps.

Honestly, how we got here, I don’t know. But here we are.

Another question is, were you confused while reading this?

Are you confused now?

Or will you be confused later?

And who do we blame for this confusion? Me for writing, or the researchers who chose the 19% over the 90%?

Maybe the problem isn’t confusion at all. Maybe confusion is profitable. And as long as there’s more money in keeping one thing up than in understanding half the population’s monthly ordeal, we’ll keep having this conversation.

Till next time friend…