
The Lengths They’ll Go To, to Justify Their Sexism
So upon reading Gretchen’s story I felt it was worth adding one of my own.
Like most women, I’ve dealt with sexism in my medical care, in varying forms and to varying degrees, most of my life. And obviously not all of it came from men. When I was in labor, every time they’d check my dilation the next contraction would be 10 times more painful than the others. The agony was overwhelming and I screamed loudly through each of these contractions. Ironically, if I’d actually had ANY ability to manage that pain, I’d have stopped mid-shriek to stare at a nurse who actually told me, “Okay, you need to quiet down now.” And this wasn’t a passive and silly comment she made in a soothing tone. She was stone-cold serious, her tone and demeanor suggesting that somehow I was overstating the level of my pain, or capable of experiencing that level of pain without vocalizing it. Neither of those things were true.
But one of the quotes from Gretchen really hit home to an incident that still boils my blood.
But having to repeatedly insist, I’m not pregnant — it’s not even possible that I’m pregnant (or have a STD!) isn’t thorough, it’s offensive, and wastes time that could be used to help other patients instead of harassing them.
Now here are two important factors to know for context. One is that I’ve had two prolonged periods of celibacy in my adult life. The first began while I was pregnant with my son, and lasted about 13 years. This is not ambiguous or vague. I had no sexual contact of any kind, with anyone but myself, in those years. The second bit of information is that I have never been drunk a day in my life. Do to another (genetically inherited) oddity of my physiology, I have a tolerance for alcohol that amounts to being completely immune to its effects. I have never even been tipsy. I’ve also never done any drugs other than cannabis, and even if there are strains of cannabis in the world which can make you forget what you did the night before, I’ve certainly never smoked any such strain. In other words, I have absolutely no zero experience with waking up in the morning thinking, “Oh my god, what did I do last night?”
So when I went to the doctor for a non-gynecological issue, and mentioned I had not had my period in several months (later determined by an actual gynecologist to be a hormone issue), I wasn’t that surprised to have the doctor inquire if I could be pregnant. I was surprised when, after I told him no, he pressed the issue. I again reaffirmed that it was impossible that I could be pregnant. He pushed again. I told him, that unless he believed it was possible that I conceived without having sex, it was impossible for me to be pregnant… as I had not had sexual intercourse… of any kind… in years. I think I even made some kind of an ‘immaculate conception’ joke (before I knew that wasn’t a synonym for virgin birth).
Did he move on, you may ask? Oh no, he did not! I am not going to claim this is exactly verbatim, but I am in no way editorializing or exaggerating what he said to me next, “Well, it’s not uncommon for women to go to a party, have too much to drink or get too high, and not remember having had sex.”
I can’t remember exactly what year this conversation occurred, but I can tell you it was back in the day when I seethed internally and kept my anger bottled up, when I was treated poorly by ‘authority figures’. And you know that, because if it had happened more recently, this post would be linked to a series of nasty letters to the doctor, the medical board, the hospital board and the local press — and that would’ve just been an appetizer. I was absolutely enraged.
I am sure that for some women this kind of drinking-drug induced forgetful sexual behavior is common, and that’s their prerogative and nothing I’m judging. But if I were such a woman, do you imagine I would be ignorant and asinine enough to insist I couldn’t be pregnant when it was a possibility? Especially if I’ve only given birth a few years before, and I know damned well what being pregnant entails?
Oh, and for that matter, this guy was hinting I might’ve been pregnant for months, and not realized I’d even had sex. Which was even more ignorant given I had spent 9 months tossing my cookies all day and night with my pregnancy (and yes hyperemesis gravidarum does run in my family too), so the odds of my having another bun in the oven, without my being aware of it, were slim to none.
There is a vast difference between asking leading questions to see if a patient is keeping something embarrassing to themselves and implying that a single mother is out getting so shit faced that she doesn’t even remember having sex, in order to justify your stupid sexist insistence that, if the woman in front of you is under 40 she’s probably sexually active in some capacity.
All these stories make me wonder; why is there no watchdog network for this behavior? While it’s not just sexism, that alone represents a huge bias in medical care that is effecting millions of lives. But there are other biases and bigotry inherently going on in medical care. Imagine being a disabled, black, transwomen — she’d have better health outcomes relying on magic crystals than trusting many doctors.
Making formal complaints that could cost someone their license is not something most people are going to do unless their doctors actions go well past being offensive and insulting — people don’t usually file such complaints like that unless they were physically harmed or their life had been in danger from the doctor’s carelessness. But does that mean we should have no recourse to deal with this? There should be a place to report biased and bigoted behavior from doctors, which compromises patient care but isn’t worthy of challenging their credentials. Something which involves counseling and working with doctors, showing them how their behavior is ignoring the tenant of “first do no harm.”
But no, we’ll all continue to fly blindly into this kind of obstinacy, never knowing if the doctor in front of us is actually treating our bodies, or their perceptions of our personal lives, until we plow into the sliding glass door of their prejudice.

