Male midwife facing 29 charges of misconduct,

The men in a women’s spaces and abusing that power.

As has been mention women are socialised to defend men, to say ‘but these women were bad too’, also the phenomenon of men undertaking ‘women’s work’ specifically childcare (professionally or otherwise) being lauded- absolutely unnecessarily and I can’t help but think it not wise when such high percentage of the small number of men in these areas are found out for their abhorrent behaviour.

You do not need to defend these men by shouting ‘but look at these women, they are bad too’ you don’t need to do this.
Please please don’t teach this behaviour to the next generation.

@greenmarlin Sorry but that makes no sense. If a woman wishes to have a female midwife she can have one. To go on to conclude that having men as midwives is a danger to women does not have a basis in logic and appears to be simple prejudice. I speak as a woman who has to operate in a largely male environment and where for many years men would argue about how women lacked the skills and natural acumen for the job- using any case where a woman failed to highlight this as a classic example. We cannot have it both ways.

I’ve worked alongside two male midwives who were almost universally liked by colleagues and women alike. However they were very obviously camp and not interested in females sexually so I wonder if that had an impact on how welcome they were in a delivery room or how threatening they were perceived to be.

It’s an interesting topic. I’ve seen some great work done by male midwives and obstetricians (and actually I understand way more why obstetrics was male dominated, it’s a cool specialty with both surgery and medicine given an equal platform which is fairly unusual). Having said that pregnancy and childbirth is about women and nothing should detract from their comfort.

@Wreath21
Are you saying that abuse by women HCPs is worse or more prevalent than by male HCPs?
Where’s the evidence for that?
I’ve yet to read or hear of a female putting bodily fluids in a cup of tea given to a patient (like Dr Chapman), persuading young women to have inappropriate examinations (vaginal and breast) like Dr Manish Shah, hide in a colleague’s loft to spy on his teenage daughter in a shower, lasting their initials into transplanted organs, filming themselves carrying out intimate examinations, sexually assaulting a patient while examining them for a sore throat in front of their young child…
If you are trying to say women are more likely to be rude or cruel to female patients- where’s the backup evidence?

I don't have a problem with men being midwives, but I think you should be able to request female only, and female obstetricians also.

How does it work with supervision though? Quite often a female midwife was with me on her own, I thought any internal examination by a male doctor or nurse had to be chaperoned these days, so surely male midwives would not be on their own with women either?

I just can’t understand the appeal for any bloke in becoming a midwife. I think the fact that there’s only about 150 of them in the country shows that most other male nurses feel the same. However, we have to remember that these monsters do still represent a tiny minority. It’s hard though that in these days of equality, which I’m all for, we can’t just stop men from training as midwives. All we women can do is say ‘no’ if we don’t want to have one involved in our care.

How about we just google midwives who've been struck off...

• Christine Speake
• Karen Foster
• Lesly Puertas
• Kirsteen Stewart
• Marie Teresa Ratcliffe
• Anne Facchini

If we're looking at struck off midwives, it's clear we've got some terrible women out there too.

Those poor women, giving birth you are about as vulnerable as can be. To have someone who is supposed to be a caregiver, abuse women in this way is horrific.

I do also feel for the non scum bag male midwives.
I don't quite understand why any man would choose this profession, and cases like this just point to the worst motives. I would definitely think twice before having a male midwife

I think we would be unwise to ignore this, because I fear that a culture of not properly asking for medical consent, places women at greater risk of sexual assault in a medical setting, because of the erosion of boundaries and the normalisation of patients not being worth of respect.

RedToothBrush

I have a friend who is a psychologist, and relation to the Me Too movement she says medicine is next (after the Catholic Church and before the family). I assume she believes that based on her work.

You can see on this thread alone women bringing up stories from decades ago of things they had buried or been too exhausted with a newborn to follow up.

I agree with you that there should be an inquiry, but failing that it may be public disclosures/downfalls and more women coming forward as happened in Hollywood.

I wouldn't want a male midwife with me during labour or in the period after birth. It was a very vulnerable time- through most of my labour there was just one midwife there and I wouldn't have felt comfortable with that midwife being a man- I would have felt exposed and inhibited.
After I gave birth I ended up in theatre and I wasn't bothered that there were a mix of male and female staff - I think I felt safe because there were several of them.

Why are you trying to take the focus of the thread away from these men and onto some female midwives from the past?

Why are you so keen for men to he able to be able to intimately examin women

Grim, and absolutely creepy

So again women solving the issue , by dragging friends along, who shock horror might have work and responsibilities. Rather than just saying no to a man?

Why are you so keen for men to he able to be able to intimately examin women

(Also, while you might be safer from sexual assault if you insist on no male HCP, you are still potentially at risk from abusive behaviour from female HCPs - as more than one PP has described.)

My thought is always to consider what is unstudied as part of assessing stats. Is there a part of the story, we need to examine further to nail down something definitively?

We know the problem of when you replace sex with gender you generate a bunch of 'facts' which are not necessarily telling the whole truth.

A key part of ANY research is to ask questions about the quality of facts and whether there is inherit bias to those 'facts' as well as looking at the facts.

When you get a bunch of facts, you ask - what does this really show, what does it not show and how realiable are these facts - could there be something else going on that these 'facts' are concealling?

Good quality medical research relies on these principles being used to be critical of facts.

What I'd be interested in, is stuff like, were complaints raised against these individuals and if so, how many and how were they handled? And then did other staff know things, and then fail to report it and if so why did they fail to report it?

'Facts' are not necessarily reflecting the bigger picture.

I do think, you have to ask things like 'were male staff in midwifery being protected by the hospital in order to protect themselves in someway' - either for staffing levels or to avoid accusations of sexism? Or were female staff intimidated by a male member of staff in someway?

Whats striking in many very high profile cases of abuse, is that basic safeguarding failed because the offender had fostered close relationships with other in power and then complaints were brushed away by the 'oh but he's not like that, I know they wouldn't do that' mentality or because there is a fear in someway (for example, they'd lose funding or they'd end up in a legal case).

I think the sheer number of examples of male HCPs offending against women and children in recent years, there is a case to be made that the NHS should be having an inquiry into this and why its happening so often?

The fact no one seems to be even thinking of it never mind calling for it, in the context of the me too movement, really does show how far down the priority and political list this is.

All it does it allow the NHS to carry on and not change things. There's clearly something wrong, and I don't think its just that males do these things. Its that something is also enabling them to get away with it for a long time.

99% of all sexual assaults are committed by males

I think it's worth repeating this, for those on the thread who seem to think women have reservations about male HCPs for 'bigoted' reasons.

Not all males are sexual predators, but almost every sexual predator is male.

That's before we even get into the issues of: women of various religions who are not allowed to touch or disrobe in the presence of males, women whose modesty or sense of proprietry means they'd prefer female only healthcare, those suffering from trauma effects (conservatively, one in five women experiences rape or sexual assault, so that's likely to be a sizeable part of the female population), and those who just prefer not to receive care from males.

Which is a valid personal choice. To say it's 'bigotry' to ask for or prefer same-sex HCPs is exactly the same as suggesting someone is 'bigoted' for not considering sexual partners of one sex or the other.

Consent is absolute, and boundaries are personal. Nobody should ever be mocked, attacked or impugned for stating their personal boundaries when it comes to consent.

I ended up with a male midwife when my DD was born in 2015. I was unsure at first but he was totally amazing and the care I received was top notch. Maybe I was lucky? Maybe I was more open to receiving care from a male as had been under the care of a male professor following multiple miscarriages and seen other male consultants throughout those investigations.

blue

I was responding to a poster who said that a transman would need to be able to request male care. In that it assumes that a male care giver would actually even consent to being put into that situation by actual request. And that health care is sex based and there's no getting out of that.

The idea that the provisions for wonen should be left to be less safe on the basis that some females who still need that female based intimate care would need to access a male dr who might not even consent to that is not a good idea.

Childbirth is an entirely female experience and men shouldn't be part of it in my opinion. They should not even be the first option for a birthing partner. Only those men who have genuinely studied up on what is expected of a birthing partner and who have the stamina and emotional intelligence to be genuinely present and supportive should be any where near the labour ward or delivery suite. No male midwives!

So how can women protect themselves other than by asking for female HCPs? Though even though that doesn’t guarantee that a female can’t be abusive.

Given that 99% of all sexual assaults are committed by males (of whatever gender), it's pretty good odds that you're going to be safe with a female HCP.