To think men should not be allowed to be gynaecologists

Thanks @MacNCheeze for responding to my completely statistic-free commentary with your far more detailed and informed one. Fascinating and terrifying.

Not to mention the proportion of sexual offences committed by men against women that go unreported according to the British Crime Survey for England and Wales.

And that from a Police report to prosecution, only 3% end up in conviction according to Rape Crisis England.

You might be able to recognise elder abuse, but your reading comprehension is nearly as poor as your understanding of statistics.

I did not say that women don't abuse via coercive control, I said that men do too and neither male nor female coercive control has been properly measured and added to the statistics, so when you add both to the statistics at the same time, they are highly likely to cancel each other out.

The studies can only cover a certain period in time and accounting for those specific cases would still be highly unlikely to cancel out the figures reported as part of findings in peer-reviewed research published by reputable sources such as the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine because they compare BOTH men and women over a single period in time.

And if we take the example of the nuns, we would also need to include the incidences of abuse committed by Priests to enable us to compare the incidences committed by both genders. Just using nuns for example and not referring to Priests, is disingenuous.

The Morgan and Long study I cited covered allegations of female sexual assault/ abuse reported by survivors of sexual abuse who were receiving care and support from a Rape and Sexual Violence Support Centre.

That is NOT the same as reporting a crime. The figures cited by Morgan and Long will not be represented in official crime statistics. They are for all intents and purposes "unrecorded" and examples of women who may have indeed slipped through the criminal justice net.

No one is arguing that crimes committed by women are "not as bad". Stop twisting my words please.

I am saying that your claim that women are "just as bad as men" in the sense that equal proportions of women as men can and do commit these crimes, is not borne out by the evidence and you haven't provided a single source to back up some of these claims.

You still haven't explained why economically and socially disadvantaged women in developing and third world countries are not routinely being charged and prosecuted to the same extent as men if their inherent biological drive to commit these crimes is basically equal to that of men.

I used to work in social housing / social care. Coercive contol is very much perpetrated by women, they are most likely to abuse an elderly relative, not partners like men do. We had many awful cases of women taking pensions and benefits, using violence and threats to stop their victims from getting help, whilst playing the role of the dutiful daughter or niece whilst their poor old mum/uncle was denied medical treatment. Seriously, there are many sick and manipulative women out there. I had my eyes opened, elder abuse is often done by women.

You're prob going to come back and tell me that's statistically insignificant too, but I'm trying to tell you the statistics are not there - the campaign to root out elder abuse only really started in the 00's, i bet most people have never heard of it and aren't looking out for it.

Anyway, i don't want to labour the point too much. Women are abusers too, we don't think they are as prolific as men, but we should be wary as they don't present in the same way that male abusers do and often get overlooked. But we have to remember that their victims are just as real.

But simultaneously we'd have to add all the coercive control perpetrated by men to the stats that has also previously gone under recorded which will likely go a long way to cancel out the female perpetrated abuse in the stats.

And nuns make a statistically insignificant cohort of the UK population, so yes their crimes should be recognised, but i doubt they will make much of a dent in the numbers.

But, for one example, if all the nuns running the children's homes were never investiged, charged, interviewed or studied, then they're not part of the statistics or numbers that get reported.

Women tend to slip through the net. Either their crimes are seen as 'not so bad' or they evade prosecution completely.

We're only just beginning to uncover the amount if domestic abuse that gets perputrated by women, and still people's attitudes are that it's 'not so bad'.

I think we need to be a bit more wary and open minded about the amount and seriosness of abuse commited by women, and not always looking in the direction of men alone (not that we should stop looking at men, obvs).

So you want access to gynaecologists to be even harder?

Personally I have not experienced any issue with male gynaecologists. In fact when dealing fibroids I found male gynaecologists far more empathetic at me wanting to preserve my fertility.

Why should a doctor not care about what their patient is comfortable with?! I think that’s a pretty important quality in any doctor, regardless of gender, and particularly when they’re carrying out invasive procedures with semi-naked patients in sensitive, intimate areas!

I think there are many people on here who think men should just not be allowed, full stop.

As I said, I don't dispute that there are female abusers, whether that be physical or sexual abusers or cases where they are found to have been responsible for committing egregious harm and neglect.

The statistics I have cited are not focused on men. They are population-wide and forensic sample statistics which compares the prevalence of sexual offences and paraphilias across both genders.

They almost always point to a significant difference in the propensity and incidence of sexual offences between the two sexes.

The British Society of Criminology has found that females make up 1 - 5% of sexual offenders in official Criminal Justice Statistics.

Is your argument that women are just as likely as men to commit these offences but don't get caught?

There is one study that has looked at that. A study published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine in 2018 by Louise Morgan and Lisa Long suggested that the true rates of female perpetration could be as high as 5 - 12%.

Again, not dismissing the severe consequences of female-perpetrated sexual offences but even at rates of 12%, that's not equal to men - not even close.

If you really believe that women are just as likely to have the same biological drive to commit sexual offences as men (unlikely in my opinion, they don't have equal levels of testosterone and physical strength for one thing), why are they also underrepresented in global statistics?

In countries where women are significantly economically and socially disadvantaged, you might expect more female sexual offenders to be more easily identifiable, caught, convicted and sentenced. But again, the rates still show that overwhelmingly, men are more likely to commit sexual offences than women.

I just wanted to add to my earlier comment - because everyone says it's fine to have male gynaes with a chaperone - that I requested a female chaperone for the intimate examination. I've never had a gynae examination without one!

The creepy comments about how my vagina looked were made after the chaperone had left!

Fucking hell - it must be friday - the posts are starting to become crazy. Yes, YABU. Grow up!! Hes a Dr - he doesn't care about what you're comfortable with - hes trying to help you get better.

I don't mean that sexually deviant women are necessarily as numerous as the men, i mean that certain women are capable of just the same levels of sexual deviance as men.

There was a woman jailled just the other day for sexual abuse of childern in care. She would touch and humiliate them in the showers, and sit on them until they couldn't breathe (she was a large lady) to get her disgusting kicks. And we all know about the convent mother and baby homes.. child abuse, neglect and murder, and yes sexual abuse too, to such levels that it would have needed every woman to be complicit in those collective crimes.

The problem is that, like so many things involving women, the research and studies are just not there. Men of course are studied at length (like with everthing). I believe that we don't actually know the full extent to how many women are sexually deviant offenders, but the numbers are increasing as we learn to catch them. Women are not risk-takers like men, we're harder to spot, harder to catch, and victims are less likely to come forwards because they are less likely to be believed if their abuser is female.

My childhood friend's abuser was her aunt. No one believed her, and they still don't.

When you say "women can be just as ... Sexually deviant as men", do you have any sources to back that up?

I'm not saying for one moment that women in certain disciplines are angels. Yes, many have been caught on camera in some instances, neglecting and abusing children and older people in their care. That women can be cruel is not in dispute.

But to suggest that women can be as "sexually deviant" as men doesn't match up with the evidence.

First of all there are the crime statistics. And even clinical research backs up the theory.

Males are significantly overrepresented in clinically diagnosed paraphilias and forensic populations according to an American study (Office of Justice Programs, Chapter 2. Etiology of Adult Sexual Offending). One theory is because testosterone plays a major role in governing sexual thoughts, motivation and drive.

Now, I am NOT saying this applies to all men. And I am not debating whether women should not have a choice on who they see.

But to say that women can be "just as sexually deviant as men" isn't factually accurate and certainly isn't borne out by any of the evidence.

There’s no need to be defensive; I didn’t dispute any of those points you made at all - I agree with you! (As should be apparent from my post.) I was simply pointing out that urologists treat both men and women.

Yes but the argument made by some is that female urologists should not be treating male patients.

Whether choice exists or not (not guaranteed by any means due to staff shortages), people are entitled to hold that belief as are women who believe gynaecologists should only be women based on the provisions in the Equality Act.

I was merely pointing out that legally, it isn't inherently discriminatory or sexist to hold that view or want to discuss it.

Through personal experience, I also prefer male dentists.

I prefer a male gynaecologist. I think they can be more understanding about something they’ve learned about in theory.

For example, I’m a woman who has never experienced PMT or period cramps. I always (privately) think my sister and friends are being dramatic when they moan about menstrual issues 🤷🏼‍♀️ P.s. I’d be a terrible gynaecologist 😂

Yep. Men are the best. Got it.

Urologists treat women too. I needed to see a urologist when I was experiencing horrendous recurrent/chronic UTIs. An invasive procedure was recommended, which I ended up not going through with, largely because I didn’t feel comfortable with my male urologist. That’s not to say I agree that men should be banned from gynaecology or urology; I’m sure there are some fantastic ones, and this thread shows many women are more than happy under their care. But it would be nice to have the choice. In my case, it took 6 months to even get a foot through the door with him, and there were no female urologists available to request.

That's a very touching story. I had a similar experience with a breast lump i was having investigated, the female consultant was training a male doctor and asked if i would let him do the initial examination and patient history, etc. I agreed, as he had to learn on someone. She left us to it. He was about 10 years younger than me and was exteremely caring and professional. It was quite funny as my breast lump was hard to find, i had to get in a particular position for it to be palpable, but we got through it. He was a natural and it didn't feel weird at all, i like to think he's out there doing a brilliant job for women to this day.

This is true, and it happens in all sorts of professions, people who seek out positions of power over others so that they can abuse the trust of (mostly) women, children, and the vulnerable. We all know a teacher from our youth that seemed to love humiliating or bullying kids, for example (esp. if you grew up in the 80s or before). There have been numerous cases of carers abusing the elderly or mentally ill - simply bc they get a kick out of it. Nursery workers abusing babies... We know that women can be just as corrupt, cruel or sexually deviant as men, and they have been better at hiding it up until now.

It's hard to completely prevent people like this from getting into positions of power, but we are getting better at spotting it and setting up mechanisims to call them out.

I certainly agree that banning men from certain professions will not prevent abusers, in some ways it can just open the door to more crafty abusers who are better at pretending to be caring. We can't just be blindly trusting of women and direct all our suspicions towards men.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I will put money on there being posts about how the best gynaecologist/midwife someone has ever seen was a man. The same goes for men in ANY traditional women’s role. They’re always the best, the most empathetic, the most popular, the smartest….I can only assume it’s linked to the narrative that makes a man who changes a nappy or is seen in public alone with his baby the BEST DAD EVER!!!

It will never make sense to me.

I have Vaginismus and a male gynecologist told me I didnt have it

Shock to him when he found i was a physician myself.