Let’s state the truth. Doctors do NOT care about women one bit, unless said woman is actively pregnant. And then it is ONLY to ensure the baby is ok. Otherwise I’ve yet to meet a doctor (male or female - doesn’t matter) who fines one damn about women.
ETA to add that doctors need to be told to give women pain relief is proof.
Yeah, that opinion is rather over the top. You’re surely right when saying that doctors need to be more aware of issues that women might face, doctors should be more aware that female bodies work different and as such respond differently to medication, these are known issues
But to claim that they simply don’t care is simply not true. I’m sorry if you had bad experiences with doctors but this is not the normal
That’s extreme. If doctors don’t care then why did they become doctors? Why go through all of medical school and residency with years of lost sleep and exhaustion to become a doctor? Why not become a lawyer instead? High end corporate lawyers make far more money than even the highest paid doctors.
It’s still money. But with the moral superiority too. “I’m a doctor”
But also, they’re saying that people don’t care about women. There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for that. Have you SEEN the tool that’s used on the cervix for this procedure? It’s actually insane.
Upwards of 80% of OBGYNs are women. Saying that none of these women care about other women, that they went into a field that specializes in caring for women’s health without caring about women, is an extraordinary claim.
I think what we’re seeing here is not at all a lack of caring but a mismatch in expectations vs reality. Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life. At the same time, it is a routine outpatient procedure and a specialist doctor can perform thousands of IUD insertions over the course of her career. Do we expect this doctor to react with the same intensity and outpouring of empathy every single time? Or would it be more reasonable to expect that she’d get used to seeing her patients in pain and be numbed by the experience? Compassion fatigue is a real and extremely common phenomenon. Furthermore, I would expect that a doctor who is unduly influenced by the pain of their patients may be compromised in their ability to perform under pressure.
As for the procedure itself, my understanding is that the majority of the pain is not caused by the tools but by the cervix reflexively producing intense cramps in an effort to expel a foreign object: the IUD. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
So just shrug and give a midol? Like we don’t have plenty of other effective, targeted pain relief that would 100% be given to a man who was going to be given an incredibly painful procedure? Especially if that procedure were routinely given to men.
We actually don’t have much in the way of pain relief besides NSAIDs (of which Midol is one), local anesthesia (which I believe is not indicated for IUD insertion), and opioids (I’m sure you’ve heard of those in the news).
That’s some real great condescending language there. I think I can guess what’s between your legs lol. The CDC recommends lidocaine as a local anaesthetic. Themoreyouknow.jpg.
Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life.
…
There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
Erm…“oh you’re having the worst pain of your life, here have a combination muscle relaxant and acetaminophen mix that’s available over the counter. And also loose a days income”
I’m curious what a doctor taking the pain seriously would look like to you. Are you expecting something like a locally injected anesthetic or full in-patient sedation?
Maybe bathing the IUD in a numbing lubricant, and coating the lady’s internals using a gentle wand with the same stuff? Assuming that sort of thing isn’t already done.
I talked to a woman right after she had one inserted and that’s what she told me: intense cramps. I believe her. I’m not just spouting my opinion based on nothing.
If only science would study women as much as men, this procedure from the 1800s could be understood. It’s getting better for sure, at least you believed the one person who you talked to about it. You ever see the device they use to “pinch” and open the cervix? I could never. It’s called a tenaculum and looks like a torture device from the 1800s.
It’s well discussed and documented that medical science regularly ignores and brushes aside women, and is constantly several decades behind men’s science. So regardless of male or female obgyns or doctors, the scientific understanding SYSTEMICALLY of women’s issues AND women in general are more often brushed aside than not, so this push for actually doing something about the pain is a step in the right direction.
We already have rampant sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism in society as a whole - why would you believe academia and medical and scientific communities would be immune to those problems?
Science does ignore women a lot of the time but it’s not because they hate women. It’s because of medical ethics rules which make it a lot more expensive to include women in studies. You have to pay for pregnancy tests for women in the study and you have to do all kinds of corrections and extra analyses to make sure women’s menstrual cycles are not interfering with the data. Women who do get pregnant during the study need to be detected and removed from the study because any effects from the study that harm their baby can expose the researchers to enormous lawsuits.
So many studies, which don’t have a lot of money to begin with (we’re talking university studies run by grad students, not massive clinical trials run by big pharma) exclude women because it’s cheaper and easier and they get to run more studies as a result. The major exception to this are psychological studies that don’t carry the same risks, but these are usually run on the psychology students themselves (many of which are required to participate in them in order to receive course credits).
Considering men default humans and women an “other,” is the exact bias that has held back medical care for half the fucking population.
Everyone’s hormones are always in flux, every day. Eating food can drastically affect your hormones. Aerobic excercise can affect your hormones. Men have hormonal cycles as well.
What you wrote here about costs associated with medical research on women seems paraphrased from some out-of-date medical journal. Unless menstrual cycles are being studied, you do not “have to do all kinds of correction and analyses” to make sure they’re not affecting that study. I have no idea where you heard that, and would go as far as to say you just made it up. I don’t even know where to begin with the pregnancy test thing, unless you’re thinking of only medical trials, specifically.
Pragmatism and idealism are almost always opposites, morality often lies on the side of idealism, and pragmatism is often used to sidestep morality.
We need to do better; it’s far better and efficient for society to do so.
I understand that explanation is not justification, but even if you assume this is a complete and wholly true explanation, do you really not see the problems with potentially justifying these things? Imagine like never feeding a few of your kids “because it’s too expensive”. That’s completely unacceptable, incomplete, and deeply flawed, scientifically, and leads to MASSIVE problems in society.
These are systemic oversights that needn’t happen in almost all cases. It’s the exact same bullshit as promoting the men’s sports teams, budgeting, and prioritizing them more for resources and time. It’s literally systemic oppression.
I hear what you’re saying about budget, but this just goes to show how women are considered like some special kind of human. As if men, with all their hormonal and biological peculiarities, were the default.
Women are kind of a large part of the human population – over half of it. It’s not like some nice demographic.
That’s way too broad of a statement, and one that I would question is true in even a small minority of cases. You’re thinking of Republicans.
As for the quality of care, there are many systemic issues with women’s health. Since this is a procedure that is exclusive to women’s anatomy, we can confidently exclude factors like women being excluded from the trials.
There is, however, a very simple explanation: Medical staff cannot sympathize with a pain they’ve never experienced. Men have no personal experience with the anatomy/physiology involved, on any level. We cannot truly understand how a vagina feels, nor any of the other parts. The best we can do is infer based on our own parts and experiences. The same is true in reverse.
But what about the women involved? They have the parts, but maybe not the experience. If they have never had an IUD, or the pain described in the article, they must also infer from their own experiences.
You seem to not understand that empathy actually does work even if you’ve never personally experienced something… maybe you don’t have empathy if you think this is how everyone else works because you apparently can only learn from or extrapolate from your own experience and you figure if you can’t do it no one can. Beyond that why would you assume none of the medical staff are women?
That’s way too broad of a statement, and one that I would question is true in even a small minority of cases. You’re thinking of Republicans.
While it’s true that Republicans would get off to a video of someone stomping a kitten, it goes beyond that. Men never take women’s health issues seriously. That’s why I exclusively seek out women doctors.
While I agree it’s too broad of a statement, I doubt it’s really split along party lines. I feel like most people irl don’t really lean heavily into politics while doing jobs and probably even have well-defined politics. I also don’t think you need to have experienced something firsthand to sympatheze better
Let’s state the truth. Doctors do NOT care about women one bit, unless said woman is actively pregnant. And then it is ONLY to ensure the baby is ok. Otherwise I’ve yet to meet a doctor (male or female - doesn’t matter) who fines one damn about women.
ETA to add that doctors need to be told to give women pain relief is proof.
I think its incompetance/negligence rather than malice here.
It’s fear of having to explain why you are writing scripts for 1-2 pills when no one usually covers that.
Occams razor stopped existing with the advent of social media. There is only intentional malice now
That’s Hanlon’s razor
Yeah, that opinion is rather over the top. You’re surely right when saying that doctors need to be more aware of issues that women might face, doctors should be more aware that female bodies work different and as such respond differently to medication, these are known issues
But to claim that they simply don’t care is simply not true. I’m sorry if you had bad experiences with doctors but this is not the normal
That’s extreme. If doctors don’t care then why did they become doctors? Why go through all of medical school and residency with years of lost sleep and exhaustion to become a doctor? Why not become a lawyer instead? High end corporate lawyers make far more money than even the highest paid doctors.
It’s still money. But with the moral superiority too. “I’m a doctor”
But also, they’re saying that people don’t care about women. There’s an overwhelming amount of evidence for that. Have you SEEN the tool that’s used on the cervix for this procedure? It’s actually insane.
Upwards of 80% of OBGYNs are women. Saying that none of these women care about other women, that they went into a field that specializes in caring for women’s health without caring about women, is an extraordinary claim.
I think what we’re seeing here is not at all a lack of caring but a mismatch in expectations vs reality. Many women who receive an IUD report some of the worst pain they’ve felt in their entire life. At the same time, it is a routine outpatient procedure and a specialist doctor can perform thousands of IUD insertions over the course of her career. Do we expect this doctor to react with the same intensity and outpouring of empathy every single time? Or would it be more reasonable to expect that she’d get used to seeing her patients in pain and be numbed by the experience? Compassion fatigue is a real and extremely common phenomenon. Furthermore, I would expect that a doctor who is unduly influenced by the pain of their patients may be compromised in their ability to perform under pressure.
As for the procedure itself, my understanding is that the majority of the pain is not caused by the tools but by the cervix reflexively producing intense cramps in an effort to expel a foreign object: the IUD. There’s not a whole lot that can be done about that besides giving the patient some Midol and a day off work to rest.
So just shrug and give a midol? Like we don’t have plenty of other effective, targeted pain relief that would 100% be given to a man who was going to be given an incredibly painful procedure? Especially if that procedure were routinely given to men.
What painkiller do we have evidence for being more effective other than possibly acetaminophen that isn’t an opiate or won’t come with other problems?
Lidocaine
We actually don’t have much in the way of pain relief besides NSAIDs (of which Midol is one), local anesthesia (which I believe is not indicated for IUD insertion), and opioids (I’m sure you’ve heard of those in the news).
That’s some real great condescending language there. I think I can guess what’s between your legs lol. The CDC recommends lidocaine as a local anaesthetic. Themoreyouknow.jpg.
…
Erm…“oh you’re having the worst pain of your life, here have a combination muscle relaxant and acetaminophen mix that’s available over the counter. And also loose a days income”
I’m curious what a doctor taking the pain seriously would look like to you. Are you expecting something like a locally injected anesthetic or full in-patient sedation?
Either! Both would be better than throwing up from the pain, passing out, and then being sneered at for both.
Perhaps at least a prescription pain killer taken orally?
I would certainly support some sort of local, along the lines of what dentists use.
Maybe bathing the IUD in a numbing lubricant, and coating the lady’s internals using a gentle wand with the same stuff? Assuming that sort of thing isn’t already done.
I was gonna say, dip the thing in lidocaine gel first
(Or maybe cocaine; not sure if lidocaine’s vasoconstriction would be a problem)
Do you know what actually causes the pain or is your understanding just an assumption?
I like how even in the article it calls out medical gaslighting.
I talked to a woman right after she had one inserted and that’s what she told me: intense cramps. I believe her. I’m not just spouting my opinion based on nothing.
If only science would study women as much as men, this procedure from the 1800s could be understood. It’s getting better for sure, at least you believed the one person who you talked to about it. You ever see the device they use to “pinch” and open the cervix? I could never. It’s called a tenaculum and looks like a torture device from the 1800s.
It’s well discussed and documented that medical science regularly ignores and brushes aside women, and is constantly several decades behind men’s science. So regardless of male or female obgyns or doctors, the scientific understanding SYSTEMICALLY of women’s issues AND women in general are more often brushed aside than not, so this push for actually doing something about the pain is a step in the right direction.
We already have rampant sexism, patriarchy, and male chauvinism in society as a whole - why would you believe academia and medical and scientific communities would be immune to those problems?
Science does ignore women a lot of the time but it’s not because they hate women. It’s because of medical ethics rules which make it a lot more expensive to include women in studies. You have to pay for pregnancy tests for women in the study and you have to do all kinds of corrections and extra analyses to make sure women’s menstrual cycles are not interfering with the data. Women who do get pregnant during the study need to be detected and removed from the study because any effects from the study that harm their baby can expose the researchers to enormous lawsuits.
So many studies, which don’t have a lot of money to begin with (we’re talking university studies run by grad students, not massive clinical trials run by big pharma) exclude women because it’s cheaper and easier and they get to run more studies as a result. The major exception to this are psychological studies that don’t carry the same risks, but these are usually run on the psychology students themselves (many of which are required to participate in them in order to receive course credits).
Considering men default humans and women an “other,” is the exact bias that has held back medical care for half the fucking population.
Everyone’s hormones are always in flux, every day. Eating food can drastically affect your hormones. Aerobic excercise can affect your hormones. Men have hormonal cycles as well.
What you wrote here about costs associated with medical research on women seems paraphrased from some out-of-date medical journal. Unless menstrual cycles are being studied, you do not “have to do all kinds of correction and analyses” to make sure they’re not affecting that study. I have no idea where you heard that, and would go as far as to say you just made it up. I don’t even know where to begin with the pregnancy test thing, unless you’re thinking of only medical trials, specifically.
Pragmatism and idealism are almost always opposites, morality often lies on the side of idealism, and pragmatism is often used to sidestep morality.
We need to do better; it’s far better and efficient for society to do so.
I understand that explanation is not justification, but even if you assume this is a complete and wholly true explanation, do you really not see the problems with potentially justifying these things? Imagine like never feeding a few of your kids “because it’s too expensive”. That’s completely unacceptable, incomplete, and deeply flawed, scientifically, and leads to MASSIVE problems in society.
These are systemic oversights that needn’t happen in almost all cases. It’s the exact same bullshit as promoting the men’s sports teams, budgeting, and prioritizing them more for resources and time. It’s literally systemic oppression.
I hear what you’re saying about budget, but this just goes to show how women are considered like some special kind of human. As if men, with all their hormonal and biological peculiarities, were the default.
Women are kind of a large part of the human population – over half of it. It’s not like some nice demographic.
Private medicine is why people distrust doctors in America. They like to believe they are corrupt because of the costs and drug scandals.
That’s way too broad of a statement, and one that I would question is true in even a small minority of cases. You’re thinking of Republicans.
As for the quality of care, there are many systemic issues with women’s health. Since this is a procedure that is exclusive to women’s anatomy, we can confidently exclude factors like women being excluded from the trials.
There is, however, a very simple explanation: Medical staff cannot sympathize with a pain they’ve never experienced. Men have no personal experience with the anatomy/physiology involved, on any level. We cannot truly understand how a vagina feels, nor any of the other parts. The best we can do is infer based on our own parts and experiences. The same is true in reverse.
But what about the women involved? They have the parts, but maybe not the experience. If they have never had an IUD, or the pain described in the article, they must also infer from their own experiences.
You seem to not understand that empathy actually does work even if you’ve never personally experienced something… maybe you don’t have empathy if you think this is how everyone else works because you apparently can only learn from or extrapolate from your own experience and you figure if you can’t do it no one can. Beyond that why would you assume none of the medical staff are women?
While it’s true that Republicans would get off to a video of someone stomping a kitten, it goes beyond that. Men never take women’s health issues seriously. That’s why I exclusively seek out women doctors.
While I agree it’s too broad of a statement, I doubt it’s really split along party lines. I feel like most people irl don’t really lean heavily into politics while doing jobs and probably even have well-defined politics. I also don’t think you need to have experienced something firsthand to sympatheze better