"Just" a painful period: A philosophical perspective review of the dismissal of menstrual pain.

Science and society typically respond to dysmenorrhea-or painful menstrual cramps-as a normal, natural, and inevitable part of menstruation. This normalization has greatly contributed to the systemic dismissal of painful menstrual cramps. Stigma, secrecy, and the expectation to "cope" fuel the normalization of menstrual pain. In this article, I argue that the normalization of menstrual pain restricts the ability to share an excruciating menstrual pain in a way that would otherwise elicit alarm or concern. This can cause clinicians to downgrade menstrual pain, and even menstruating persons to downgrade their own pain. I refer to the dismissal of menstrual pain as an example of a pain-related motivational deficit. A pain-related motivational deficit describes instances in which an utterance fails to motivate due to societal practices and ideas that make it difficult to recognize the import of the embodied experience being shared.

"Just" a painful period: why we are not concerned by reported menstrual painIt is widely believed that painful menstrual cramps are just a normal part of the menstrual cycle; something that all menstruating persons are expected to deal with. There is also a stigma around periods and an expectation to keep the experience of periods hidden. This creates a process known as normalization. Because painful menstrual cramps are normalized, it is easier to dismiss patients who report painful menstrual cramps. In this article, I argue that the idea that painful menstrual cramps are normal makes it difficult for others to be concerned or alarmed by reports of menstrual pain. Reports of menstrual pain are downgraded or are seen as not that bad. When we are unable to see how bad a pain is because society believes the reported pain is normal, the pain report fails to elicit concern from the listener. I call this process a pain-related motivational deficit.

Screening Out Neurodiversity.

Autistic adults suffer from an alarmingly high and increasing unemployment rate. Many companies use pre-employment personality screening tests. These filters likely have disparate impacts on neurodivergent individuals, exacerbating this social problem. This situation gives rise to a bind. On the one hand, the tests disproportionately harm a vulnerable group in society. On the other, employers think that personality test scores are predictors of job performance and have a right to use personality traits in their decisions. It is difficult to say whether these negative disparate impacts are a case of wrongful discrimination. Nevertheless, we will show that pre-employment personality tests prey on several features of autism in an unfair way, and for this reason, we suggest the contours of some regulation that we deem necessary.

Acknowledging the Burdens of 'Blackness'.

The novel coronavirus of 2019 exposed, in an undeniable way, the severity of racial inequities in America's healthcare system. As the urgency of the pandemic grew, administrators, clinicians, and ethicists became concerned with upholding the ethical principle of "most lives saved" by re-visiting crisis standards of care and triage protocols. Yet a colorblind, race-neutral approach to "most lives saved" is inherently inequitable because it reflects the normality and invisibility of 'whiteness' while simultaneously disregarding the burdens of 'Blackness'. As written, the crisis standards of care (CSC) adopted by States are racist policies because they contribute to a history that treats Black Americans are inherently less than. This paper will unpack the idealized fairness and equity pursued by CSC, while also considering the use of modified Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (mSOFA) as a measure of objective equality in the context of a healthcare system that is built on systemic racism and the potential dangers this can have on Black Americans with COVID-19.