You don’t have to look far to find a group protesting COVID measures and vaccination. They’re on Facebook, they’re in the media and they’re on our streets. In fact, I saw some recently, a group made up largely, as far as I could tell, of “far-right men” and “wellness-spiritual women”. I thought to myself what strange bedfellows these two groups were.
I am a dedicated female healthcare professional, who also spends a lot of time in the spiritual community. I have a strong yoga, breathwork and meditation practice, attend women’s circles, splash around the occasional essential oil, take probiotics and in general keep myself well, through reasonably healthy living. It’s been over a decade since I took a prescribed medication. However, I am double COVID-19 vaccinated.
Like many women, I turned to wellness practices when I did not like the answers I got from conventional medicine. In my early 40s I developed diverticulitis. A painful inflammatory condition of the colon which usually occurs in people decades older than me. I was told by my surgeon that I caused the condition through poor diet and if it occurred again, they would cut out a part of my bowel. I was also told I could do nothing to prevent it reoccurring. I did not like this one bit. So, like a good health professional I turned to Pubmed, a well-respected online search engine for biomedical literature, to help me navigate a more acceptable path forward.
I am lucky – I found the information I wanted. However, over the years, many women have had their concerns dismissed, symptoms minimised or treated like they have a psychological condition not a physical one. In what is still a largely patriarchal system of conventional medicine, this is not a new issue.
In the late 1500s – early 1600s, maternal death rates increased because the ‘witches’ (mostly midwives and women healers) were burnt at the stake, and male doctors took over the role of birthing. Doctors were often performing autopsies before attending to labouring women and in doing so spread infection from the dead bodies to the new mothers.
Over subsequent centuries, women have been subjected to uterus removal (hysterectomy), electric therapy, sedation, and high-dose hormones for a whole range of complaints, largely thought to be related to their unstable emotional state (hysteria). In more recent times we have come to recognise that many of these complaints were, in fact, auto immune diseases which because of chromosomal and hormonal reasons, affect many more women than men.
So, how does this relate to the strange bedfellows I saw at the protest that day?
As someone who straddles both conventional medicine and the wellness-spirituality world, it has been very difficult to watch so many women over the course of the pandemic become radical anti-vax, COVID denying, New World order conspiracy theorists.
I believe this is happening because far-right groups – largely made up of men – saw an opportunity to recruit the wellness-spiritual women and broaden their influence. These groups have been honing their radicalisation techniques over a number of years, using social media, gaming platforms, YouTube and chat rooms, to groom new followers. COVID has been fertile ground for them.
During the pandemic, these two unlikely bedfellows have found a common enemy – authority. Social media sites and encrypted messaging platforms have not only allowed the spread of vast quantities of misinformation but also the ability to organise groups of people, under the radar, allowing the radicalisation to occur, unfettered.
Is there a way back home for these radicalised women? Will they wake up one day and realise that their voices and bodies were just a pawn in the far-right agenda? That they have sacrificed theirs, their children’s, and the community’s health, and maybe even their lives, with their misplaced devotion. That the enlightenment they seek will not be found in the false prophets of the far-right.
I hope so. And if women want the health outcomes they are striving for, they must be united in challenging patriarchal medical assumptions and integrating holistic wellness practices.