> My daughter is in her 20s now and is still small -- it's just the way she is. When she goes to see her primary, do you know what their first question is? "When was your last period."

Is that supposed to be a problem? How does it connect to the story in your comment?

The question seems to be warranted to me, since being underweight can stop you from menstruating. So if you find someone thin and her last period was off in the distant past, you can conclude that there's a problem and something should be done about it; if it was a couple of weeks ago, you can conclude that she's fine.

(It could also just be something that is automatically assessed as a potential indicator of all kinds of different things. Notably pregnancy. For me, it bothered me that whenever you have an appointment at Kaiser for any reason, part of their checkin procedure is asking you how tall you are. I'd answer, but eventually I started pointing out to them that I wasn't ever measuring my height and they were just getting the same answer from my memory over and over again. [By contrast, they also take your weight every time, but they do that by putting you on a scale and reading it off.] The fact that my height wasn't being remeasured didn't bother them; I'm not sure what that question is for.)

I’m a normal weight, and get asked the same question. More importantly, I can tell them, “I have a regular cycle” and they WILL NOT take that as an answer. I HAVE to give them a date, and they will ask me to make one up if I can’t remember or want to decline giving them that information.

Particularly given the alarming stories of people being prosecuted for having miscarriages, it feels ridiculous.

If anything I hope more automated diagnostics and triage could help women and POC get better care, but only if there’s safeguards against prejudice. There’s studies showing different rates of pain management across races and sexes, for example. A broken bone is a broken bone, regardless of sex or race.

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could have been. My point was that doctors treat women differently than men, even when they're the parents. I don't think that it's inherently malicious, but there is absolutely a bias.

You are asking how it connects, and it absolutely doesn't. But they keep asking and won't accept "it's regular" as an answer.

She's in her 20s and is seeing her primary for routine things, not because of her weight -- that part of the story was about how they chastised my wife for giving her whole milk but said absolutely nothing to me about it later on.

You're very much over thinking this. That's the first question every doctor asks a woman, and legitimate problems are often overlooked because of it.