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Original poster

To think This Is Going To Hurt is awful to women?

390 replies

justanoldhack · 13/02/2022 13:39

Watching the show and can't help but shake a really uncomfortable feeling that its writer just...really doesn't like women.

I get that doctors are super overstretched, so tired, giving the job everything at the expense of their personal lives. I also get that it's a 'comedy' and not real, although it is based on his true life experiences.

But the way the women are portrayed as silly, a nuisance, stupid, battleaxes, or simply a vessel that 'covers his pubes in blood'... feels so off. These are women at one of the most vulnerable moments in their lives, but they're just props, the butt of the jokes. I can't shake the feeling that Adam Kay really, really doesn't like women. Definitely does not respect them.

Thanks goodness, I guess, that he's not longer practicing medicine. And not surprised either to learn that when he was younger he wrote 'comedy' songs about babies with Down's Syndrome and women from the North.

OP posts:
Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 23:51

@Blossomtoes

And yet women are supposed to do it naturally. I wouldn't have a natural appendectomy or amputation

Ridiculous comparison. Childbirth is a natural process. Women have been doing it for millennia.

So what, we’ve got pain relief available nowadays, just because it can be done like it was in the stone ages, doesn’t mean it should be.
Youarefakenews · 13/02/2022 23:54

I haven't finished the tv series yet, but have read the book. As I recall Adam left the medical profession for the very reasons he is getting slated here. He knew he wasn't good enough and empathetic enough to continue, and that the NHS needs major reform.

As for the dark humour, in all of the emergency services it is used as a way of letting off steam. Please do not think that the piss-taking of patients is reserved to women. It is just apparent because of the maternity aspect of Adam's work. The same type of horror stories would come out if it was for example geriatrics.

AutomaticMoon · 13/02/2022 23:54

@Cbtb Thank you for taking the time to respond, that sounds like overwhelming structural problems 😞

I feel like the money for more doctors shouldn’t be debatable. We need proper health and care of it in this country! Aren’t there too many paper pushing staff, etc in the NHS, perhaps less paper pushing and more health making, preventing illness rather than waiting until it gets desperately bad to treat. It’s a false economy. This gov had billions to spend on useless contracts for mates, could have put that money to training more doctors.

I think in Germany, even France, they have much more efficient and smooth running healthcare. In France you don’t have to wait a year or however many months to get a scan or referral, usually it’s in the same building and day. In Germany there’s a more holistic view of health and doctors use many different modalities for healing, which is why people go over there for things like Hyperthermia Therapy.

Why are we not looking at what other countries do that works and learn from that?

It’s not the done thing, to admit we’re not the best, so everyone suffers, the patients and the doctors and everyone in between. If the NHS was a more humane organisation, they wouldn’t treat workers like this, they’re a health care organisation and don’t seem to grasp the concept of life work balance, that’s pretty basic.

Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 23:59

@RosesAndHellebores

I had two DC one 7lb 5oz, one 8lb 13oz. Epidural both times. The second was also induced. I refused the syntocynon until the epidural was in place. Labour was 2.5 hours, no stitches, minimal pain.

Good for you. And the antenatal class - so f*cking weird. Childbirth gets massively fetishised, and is employed as a social differentiator.

I really enjoyed Zoe Williams’ series of columns a while back where she talked about the insidious pressure to forgo some of the options available to you, routinely leaving epidurals till it’s too late, etc. and what you need to be sure to say to ensure you’re not fobbed off.

I had an endoscopy recently without sedation - just gas and air - and it was.... unpleasant. I would def go for more intervention next time. And that was really nothing in the scheme of things.

I also had an epidural once and it was bloody painful, so I can only imagine what the pain it’s treating is like (don’t have kids).

Flowersandhearts · 14/02/2022 00:11

I thought exactly the same thing OP. It's disgusting how the protagonist of 'This is going to hurt' treats his patients- I really hope that's not what Adam Kay was really like as a doctor.

Goooglebox · 14/02/2022 02:55

That's what it's about. Not everything is a feminist issue.

You can make a cry for help without being gratuitously insulting to women and their babies.

Demeaning women is not a feminist issue as much as a human rights issue and no, there is never a time when it's appropriate to turn a blind eye to that in the name of some greater good.

Solodreamer · 14/02/2022 05:57

@ComDummings

The NHS hates women full stop
Don't be rediculous.
milkieway · 14/02/2022 06:28

It's portraying him as a complicated imperfect human being working in a broken system going through traumatic events with no support for it

It also gets people talking about the nhs and how doctors are going through post traumatic stress and just being told to toughen up

Yes some of the language used people will find offensive etc but the male patients are portrayed in an equally "bad" light eg drunk dad weeing in the corner, I didn't watch it and find it misogynistic

MotherWol · 14/02/2022 07:38

Not everything is a feminist issue

Maybe not everything, but if obstetrics and gynaecology isn’t a feminist issue, what is?

Toanewstart23 · 14/02/2022 07:40

It’s from years ago
The nhs has changed so much
Junior docs do their shifts and then leave on the dot

I enjoyed hugely
And the points about how horrendous women are being treated… I don’t get at all. In fact, it makes me squirm that this has been even raised

Appletreechocolatecake · 14/02/2022 08:10

The family member who is a doctor is my brother and I am LC for various reasons now. I spent a lot of time around his friends growing up and into our 20s and 30s. His friends, male and female, would speak with absolute contempt about their patients and share intimate details (anonymised) of anything they’d found particularly funny/gross/stupid. They were all supremely arrogant and considered themselves superior to the rest of society. All from a good UK university.

As a result I can’t stand the way the NHS and doctors are deified. The ones I have known best are all absolute wankers and were certainly not in the job because they cared about their patients.

rifling · 14/02/2022 10:08

I refused the syntocynon until the epidural was in place.
Good for you. I was induced with syntocynon and only then told that no anaesethist was available for an epidural (and no gas and air either) and I would just have to suck it up. Labour was fast, chaotic and resulted in several injuries.

Goooglebox · 14/02/2022 10:21

It's portraying him as a complicated imperfect human being working in a broken system going through traumatic events with no support for it

Nothing to do with cheap jokes at women's expense then.

pistachi0nuts · 14/02/2022 11:23

THANK YOU. I totally agree. Thought I was being over sensitive and silly.

LittleBearPad · 14/02/2022 12:50

@Toanewstart23

It’s from years ago The nhs has changed so much Junior docs do their shifts and then leave on the dot

I enjoyed hugely
And the points about how horrendous women are being treated… I don’t get at all. In fact, it makes me squirm that this has been even raised

The junior docs may leave on the dot but their approach to their patients hasn’t necessarily changed that much. Patients can be and are still treated as inconveniences.
bumsnett · 14/02/2022 13:11

@Littlegreeneyedone

The book is absolutely brilliant. And you can tell there is a man who genuinely loves his job and is just trying to cart on in a broken system. Hated the show. Comes across as arrogant. Please read the book though.
Agree on this
airbalonz · 14/02/2022 13:14

millihill.substack.com/p/the-misogyny-of-this-is-going-to

Really enjoyed this piece

rambleonplease · 14/02/2022 13:35

I am a HCP in the NHS have been for 22 years... have not read Adam Kay's book, I am not really interested in reading about anything related to my job and the same applies for TV. Having read this thread I am very glad I did not bother. HCPs do often use humour to cope, but those poems are just grotesque and go way over that line. Just read this article which pretty much says the same about his misogyny as I have read on here.

unherd.com/2022/02/adam-kays-dangerous-misogyny/

Blossomtoes · 14/02/2022 13:37

@airbalonz

millihill.substack.com/p/the-misogyny-of-this-is-going-to

Really enjoyed this piece

Even the shameless self publicity?
airbalonz · 14/02/2022 13:45

[quote rambleonplease]I am a HCP in the NHS have been for 22 years... have not read Adam Kay's book, I am not really interested in reading about anything related to my job and the same applies for TV. Having read this thread I am very glad I did not bother. HCPs do often use humour to cope, but those poems are just grotesque and go way over that line. Just read this article which pretty much says the same about his misogyny as I have read on here.

unherd.com/2022/02/adam-kays-dangerous-misogyny/[/quote]
Another great article

Thymeout · 14/02/2022 14:17

@BadHairDayExpert
Thankyou for quoting the Simon Armitage 'Poem'. It's so relevant to this binary age, where it's either/or and we seem to have lost the ability to cope with contradictions.

I've bee a thinking about it since I watched Responder. Many similarities with Adam Kay's drama - frontline worker on the edge of a breakdown, an essentially good person trying to do good things which turn out badly, and flashes of same dark humour as a coping mechanism. And both actors previously known for softer roles. Hence, I think, the shocking first episodes, to make clear that it is not the Ben Whishaw/Martin Freeman you were expecting.

Re feminist issues. Of course, Gynae/Obs is an of special interest to women, but it's only part of the picture. The series also covered racism, ageism and classism. I don't think it showed women being singled out for bad treatment by male doctors and pps who are fixating on misogyny have spent too long in their echo chamber and are missing the point.

Chimchiminie · 14/02/2022 14:22

@airbalonz

millihill.substack.com/p/the-misogyny-of-this-is-going-to

Really enjoyed this piece

Found this a really lightweight, lazy piece.

No genuine curiosity evident or attempts to examine the subject with any rigour.

ManicPixie · 14/02/2022 14:25

Haven’t read the book but in the show it’s pretty obviously calling Kay out on how he treats everyone. It’s not a ‘woah is me’ tale. You could say it’s unfair he made a career out of failure but I don’t think you can say he wasn’t willing to view him honestly (in the show, at least).

ManicPixie · 14/02/2022 14:25

*woe is me!

Blossomtoes · 14/02/2022 14:33

Found this a really lightweight, lazy piece.

Completely agree. It’s just a puff piece to publicise books