To have hated ‘This is going to hurt’ by Adam Kay?

[SweetMelodies]

Just that really. So many recommendations to read it from others, it seems to have so much praise and is a number 1 seller.

I like to think I have a good sense of humour and sometimes a pretty dark one at that but I just found the book absolutely dripping in misogyny. Sure it IS well-written and he is obviously a very talented writer and some bits were indeed funny... but a lot of it really turned my stomach, the language, the way he speaks about women, his really narrow-minded attitude towards birth that isn’t evidence-based at all, just based the very limited picture of birth he has. He clearly puts the women in a category of ‘other’ and ‘less than’.

I did feel terrible for him having experienced the dreadful situation at the end and it did highlight how overworked drs can be... but at the same time I think the language and attitudes displayed in it really summarised the paternal and disrespectful attitudes in the maternity system that lead to so many women traumatised by childbirth.

Despite this I appear to be completely alone in this way of thinking, did anyone else not get a great feel from this (or parts of this) book?

One thing I did think is that he's quite dismissive of the consultants - and of course that's the level of doctor he never was, because of when he left. I did wonder if he'd have found it wasn't quite the easy ride he often suggests!

Are you expecting him to lie about the culture he was part of and the training he got? That’s all stuff he thinks should change.

That didn't come across for me. I might have got more out of the book if he had made me want to take up cudgels about how the NHS is being starved of funds.

I really liked it and it was really interesting to see things from the dr's perspective. I wish it was possible to have more Drs so that they can do their job properly instead of rushing through everything.

@ChelseaCat yes all midwives HATE doctors don’t you know 🙄 weirdo.

Well I enjoyed the book warts and all, and never knew he had a husband, thank you James OBrien podcast interview. Not that it matters either, just to mention. But an interesting biopic fact anyway.

Really enjoyed it and have recommended it to multiple people. I'm normally very sensitive to misogyny and didn't get that vibe from the book at all.

Anybody who says there isn't professional tension between nurses/midwives and doctors is kidding themselves. Doesn't mean they can't work well together,they do, but are very different professional perspectives.

I've read this book and work with doctors and nurses every day. The book is written by a surgeon, that's very apparent. I don't think the book is anti woman. Just dealing day in , day out with the general public makes you fairly cynical about people.

I've just finished re-reading it.

I find it very funny in parts and also very, very frightening that in time of real peril in childbirth he describes doctor's operating after hours and hours of caesarians.

The final section where the baby is delivered dead and the mother lives on as a compromised person is heart-breaking in the guilt he feels.

He constantly highlights the bare bones of the facilities he works in, the decisions that exhausted still in training doctors need to make.

There are times when he is terse in his attitude to men and women, times when he is astounded by human resilience, times when he is dismissive of a birth plan when the mother is a fag paper away from losing her baby. I suppose when you're looking at the process from the barrel of the gun it's a different proposition.

OP yanbu! I am so glad to hear someone say this as I thought I was the only one.

The woman who he prescribed anti depressants to as he failed to understand the cause of her pelvic pain was particularly awful - he then played for laughs her explosion of frustration. Zero self awareness of his own privilege. Awful, awful man.

I loved the book. I thought that while parts of it were very funny, it became very clear how tough the reality of being a junior doctor is. I completely missed any misogyny !

I am a doctor, a mother, a feminist and a woman. Honestly I thought he was a bit moany and immature. I heard him on radio 4 and was dissappointed to hear a lot of the same stuff that's in the book, struck me as something of a one horse trick.

I’m a doctor. I’ve read it and thought is was both funny and moving. I didn’t particularly find it misogynistic, I thought at times he demonstrated real cynicism about the situations he found himself in. I’m sure that some things were exaggerated for dramatic effect, that’s just what happens when people retell stories. As a consultant though I agree, he perhaps never quite saw everything that they did.

I read it in the wrong frame of mind and didn't enjoy it, I have worked in jobs where you have to look at many things with a tinge of humour to get through the day and doesn't reflect on your ability or compassion; but to know that when I was most vulnerable they were probably thinking the same as he did I found really upsetting. Meh.

He doesn't prescribe anti-depressants to that patient. He refers her to the pain management clinic, who he imagines will do so. She then throws a sharps bin at his head.

“He doesn't prescribe anti-depressants to that patient”

I’m so glad you said that- I thought I must have missed a bit.

I'm a nurse and didn't notice misogyny either.

I really enjoyed it, it was funny, interesting and moving - actually it helped me understand my traumatic delivery more than my midwife did. The diaries were written 10 (?) years ago - I'm sure we're all more "woke" now than we were a decade ago.

He sent every Tory MP a copy of it during the leadership election to remind them of just how awful Jeremy Hunt is. I think he's great.

I’m a woman, doctor and a feminist. I work as a consultant gynaecologist, but also did Obstetrics for the majority of my career - stopped practising obs for a variety of reasons, but certainly because of ingrained misogyny and poor quality of care in the NHS - contributed to by the abysmal way in which postfpgraduate medical training was organised, at least at that time - around the same time as Adam Kay.

Christ on a bike, I laughed and wept all through the book and have enjoyed re-reading several times since. Not a hint of misogyny - quite the reverse, I felt - that as as well as the personal cost to doctors, he could no longer tolerate the impact of the system on poor care for women (in his specialty). Gallows humour and cynicism, sure, but that’s what made the book enjoyable for me.

OP, your comments about having control over your body, birth plans etc .... with the greatest of respect, you seem to have missed several messages of the book .... chief of which is that we can never have total control over what happens in labour, whether patient, midwife or doctor. That’s what broke him about the tragic final incident. The last patient on my last shift on labour ward was a maternal death, in completely unavoidable circumstances, so can completely identify with his feelings.

My impression is that birth plans came about because of a lack of continuity of care, so that this was a way of expressing a preference. E.g. some women would say they wanted an epidural straight off, others would say they'd like to see how it goes. Ideally with some continuity of care the midwife/doctor would have got to know the woman and know how best to support her.

Hmm, didn't David Cameron promise more midwives and continuity of care back in 2010?

Are you expecting him to lie about the culture he was part of and the training he got? That’s all stuff he thinks should change.

No, didn’t get that from what he said. I’m talking specifically about the way he refers to women’s expectations. Why would I expect him to lie? Odd.

@quince2figs but as I said before my birth plan helped me massively despite things absolutely not going straightforward (emergency team rushing in and so on), I think they are a very important tool in helping women be part of the decisions that need to be made during a huge range of situations and scenarios and women should absolutely be the key decision-makers. birth plans, and the idea that some women may want to actually be involved in their own bodies, is mocked in the book as ridiculous and peddles the myth of a naive and unintelligent ‘hippy’ with whale music who doesn’t even think beyond what might happen if problems arise in labour.

As though women fall into those two categories- either laughably ridiculous with a laminated 10-page plan that doesn’t actually involve anything worthy or good, obedient women who recognise they are not clever or important enough to make any decisions and that it must be left entirely to the dr to decide what to do to her without question.

I loved it, but also heard the audiobook and I wonder if possibly more emotion comes through that than if it was just written down.

Now the fact he is partly responsible for Mrs Browns Boys is unforgivable!!

I agree with you, OP. I found it misogynistic & condescending & I didn't expect to.

I listened to it on Audible. He narrated it himself and I just thought he just came across as a bit of a twat really. The bit where he talked about women wanting a home birth as 'a certain kind of woman in a floaty dress' for instance - he really came off like he didn't see us as equals. I felt he had scant regard for why women might be frightened of hospital; for the fact that although contemporary medicine does save lives a lot of women are traumatised by their births and then chucked out of hospital 24 hours later to deal with the consequences. The conversation around this doesn't have to be black and white - we can recognise both sides.

Same with the woman apparently imagining her pelvic pain. A lot of women have issues being listened to with gynae issues, being dismissed by drs and not taken seriously and suffering badly as a result. You see many women online being vocal about this, about how women know their own bodies and there is obviously imbedded sexism allowing this to happen.

Then the part of his book that touches upon the issue of women being dismissed and not listened to for pelvic pain of course contains another ‘hilarious’ caricature of a hysterical woman who is obviously deluded and unhinged for thinking she could possibly know her own body.