This Is Not What a Feminist Looks Like
If you've got a uterus, what you've got is new to us...
Feminism is an issue. For a lot of men.
Nicole Askwith Williams, my guest on this week’s podcast has first hand experience of this from thousands of men telling her to get back in the kitchen or even die for expressing:
The reason we don’t have free menstrual products in public toilets is because men don’t bleed.
Let’s just look at that.
Is there anything upsetting to men in this construction?
Would men be affected by people who need tampons or pads having access to them? Firsthand, I’d actually say “yes, positively”, particularly in moments where our partners or mates or mums or friends or daughters or sisters have bled through and felt uncomfortable or embarrassed, say on a day or night out, and not had a way to change this until they got home.
Feminism isn’t anti-men. It’s pro-women in a society that constantly/still/even in 2026 treats women as smaller men – a line of Nicole’s in one of her recent talks that really stuck with me.
I am a biological male and straight man who coaches mostly women and non-binary folk, many of whom bleed, some of whom have lost their cycles consequent on a lack of understanding or care, or, sometimes, acknowledgement from the people around them that something isn’t quite right. Their experience isn’t my direct experience.
And yet, recognising that different people have different needs, and access should match those needs, feels like something everyone can get behind; rather than support the message, tho we have over a thousand angry men on Nicole’s instagram feed alone ready to fight against it.
“Equality for everyone” is bullshit
Free menstrual products for everyone isn’t the solution because cis-men, like me, don’t need them.
But cis-men not needing something isn’t a good enough reason for everyone else who can benefit from them doing so.
Everyone getting the same thing is nonsense; everyone who needs the thing having access to it is the conversation we need to have.
We don’t want equality; we want equity. Giving people what they actually need based on their bodies, not giving everyone the same thing regardless of whether it helps them.
This is the conversation I’ve been having with Nicole and Ev Francis over the past few weeks. And it starts centuries ago, with a word we’ve supposedly moved past.
For centuries, doctors had a diagnosis for almost anything that went wrong in a woman’s body: hysteria.
Emotional distress, neurological symptoms, reproductive issues, unexplained pain – if a woman presented with it and doctors couldn’t immediately categorise it, hysteria was the catch-all. It wasn’t a real diagnosis. It was a way of saying: we don’t understand this, so it must be in your head.
The word itself comes from the Greek hystera – the womb. The assumption was always that women’s bodies were fundamentally unstable, ruled by their reproductive systems, prone to emotional excess. Treat the head, the thinking went, and the body will follow. Except it didn’t.
We’ve moved past calling it hysteria. We have better language now, better diagnostic tools, better science. But the underlying pattern – women’s symptoms being dismissed, misdiagnosed, or attributed to psychological causes when they’re actually physiological – that hasn’t shifted as much as we’d like to think.
The Pattern Continues: Fowler’s Syndrome
Enter Fowler’s syndrome. It’s rare. It affects the urethral sphincter, the muscle that controls the release of urine. As Ev details in episode 33 below, people with Fowler’s syndrome can’t relax that muscle properly, leading to urinary retention – the bladder fills but won’t empty. It’s a real, physiological condition. And it’s chronically underdiagnosed, particularly in young women.
Why? Part of it is rarity.
Fowler’s syndrome wasn’t formally identified until the 1980s, when Christine Fowler described it. Before that, women with these symptoms probably got dismissed. Told it was anxiety. Told they were overreacting. Told to try positive thinking. Sound familiar?
Ahead of Fowler’s Syndrome Awareness Month in February, Ev and I caught up to discuss living with this rare condition and an indwelling catheter – and her diagnostic journey was brutal: long delays before being believed, repeated dismissal despite worsening symptoms, doctors suggesting her symptoms were stress-related.
When she finally got answers, she discovered that support and resources for catheter users are largely designed for older men – what she jokingly calls the “stale pale male” demographic. Young women with catheters though? Nah, they don’t get this; this isn’t for them. And so she’s had to advocate for herself in a healthcare system that wasn’t built to see her condition, let alone treat it.
“Women aren’t weaker men”
This pattern extends beyond diagnosis. It extends into fitness and performance too. Smaller weights, higher reps, fewer calories. Do more cardio. Maybe some yoga for “balance.”
Nicole, founder of Women’s Wellbeing Club, left corporate finance after watching professional women across different age groups struggle with the same symptoms – exhaustion, hormonal chaos, feeling like they had to perform like men to succeed – and nobody addressing the root causes.
For decades, fitness advice has been built around male bodies and male training responses, and women not just being weaker or less capable but also all wanting to be smaller than men.
But the menstrual cycle affects performance, recovery, and nutrient needs. Female bodies have different muscle-to-fat ratios. They have different injury patterns. They have different hormonal responses to training. And for a long time, the fitness industry largely ignored all of this.
The common thread – from hysteria to Fowler’s syndrome to fitness programming – is the same: female bodies are different to male bodies but it’s easier to treat them as the same or dismiss the things that aren’t than to treat each person by their individual needs.
If you care about your mate or your mum, your partner or sister or daughter having access to what they need to live well – regardless of whether you understand it or need the same things – you’re a feminist too.
You don’t need to take that label on if it bothers you, you don’t need to attend rallies or wear “this is what a feminist looks like” t-shirts; instead, I’d just ask you to recognise that you don’t know what the person next to you is going through but shouting at them for taking care of themselves is obviously and needlessly problematic, no matter whether it’s online or in-person.
But that’s enough from me.
Fitness & Thinking #35 with Nicole
This week’s F&T podcast is huge as, further to the above, we discuss and debate:
why the contraceptive pill feels like such a blanket prescription for girls – for everything from acne to irregular periods to painful cramps
whether the pill is unethical given it can affect not just mood, libido, bone density and nutrient absorption – but also personality and preferences
if, hypothetically, there’s a case for putting female athletes on the pill for improved performance
whether cycle syncing is helpful and if can you train “against” your cycle and still make progress
if your cycle hasn’t come back after coming off the pill or after hard training
supplements women should look into – and what marketing guff to avoid as well as Nicole’s experience of
ADHD and AUDHD.
I can’t wait for yas to check it out – click the link below for the platform that makes most sense to you and make sure to subscribe to never miss an episode and leave a five star review or comment to help show the robots and folk of the internet that we’re standing on business and the shoulders of giants as we explore what it means to be physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually and financially fit together in 2026.
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Much love, and I’ll see you in the next one
J x