As well as raising awareness, I wanted the article to help women find out if they have endometriosis and be solid enough to take to their doctor. That means accurate, comprehensive, and well-cited information. Filament's the perfect magazine for this. Subtitled "the thinking woman's crumpet", it's an international magazine based in the UK, aimed at women, and mixes serious articles with stunning pictures of men. (The editor, Suraya Singh, argues strongly for the female gaze and that magazines for women shouldn't be crammed with images of women.)
But I also know that our current information on endo isn't the whole picture, and one of the missing pieces is women's experiences of it. I passionately want to collect that information and make it available. I also believe we can't do quantitiative research (tick-boxes) without more qualitative research (open questions). We need to know the categories before we create tick-boxes. Thanks to Endometriosis-UK and the Oxford Endometriosis Support Group, I was able to survey a huge group of women: what was the worst aspect for them, and what had they learnt which could help other women? Over 80 women responded: their answers were striking, brave, and moving.
Even with a generous 5-page spread, we couldn't print all of them. The full list of responses will be published on this blog next week. (If you want a reminder, you can subscribe via email on the right-hand bar or below this post.) In the meantime, you can...
 | • preview the article in Filament • order a copy of the magazine • share this post and spread awareness of endo |
