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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:
airbalonz · 19/02/2022 13:48

I think a lot of the female patients are portrayed as ‘idiotic’ as obviously Kay has full control of the characters and how all the anecdotes go.

So of course we are not going to see examples of all the rational and intelligent women who are routinely not listened to and dismissed by doctors. Of course he is not going to address or acknowledge that issue. Instead he flips the situation where the ‘not listened to’ woman is clearly ‘crazy’ and he becomes the victim.

In the same way there is zero acknowledgment of the large proportion of women who have been raped or suffered sexual assault before walking into the hospital and are often the ones who seek to have some control. Instead the women who want choice or control are portrayed as selfish and idiotic and divas. He writes that talking through treatment options with patients for informed consent is silly and a waste of time, and that it’s better to give them one option and have them ‘trust him’ to do with what he knows is best.

Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 13:57

@airbalonz

I think a lot of the female patients are portrayed as ‘idiotic’ as obviously Kay has full control of the characters and how all the anecdotes go.

Conveniently forgetting the laughably inept male doctor, who faints and comes across as totally thick
The male father who makes stupid unfunny jokes
The senior consultant who comes across as an uncaring twat

The domestic abusing father

Blossomtoes · 19/02/2022 14:06

[quote Toanewstart23]@airbalonz

I think a lot of the female patients are portrayed as ‘idiotic’ as obviously Kay has full control of the characters and how all the anecdotes go.

Conveniently forgetting the laughably inept male doctor, who faints and comes across as totally thick
The male father who makes stupid unfunny jokes
The senior consultant who comes across as an uncaring twat

The domestic abusing father[/quote]
And the drunken idiot who pisses in the corner of the delivery room.

velvet24 · 19/02/2022 14:08

I didnt pick up on anything towards women, he was working in a obs and gyne ward!!
I don't believe any doctor though would speak to patients that way or the way some of the others do?

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 14:29

@airbalonz

Interesting interview in the Guardian online today with Margaret Atwood.

She seems to see the current obsession with misogyny as a sort of cult.

'People are very ready to tell the writer that a bad person he or she is because he or she has not produced the sort of book or essays the preacher feels he or she should have produced.'

Does the cap fit?

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 14:31

what not that

Ionlydomassiveones · 19/02/2022 14:55

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn at the poster's request.

airbalonz · 19/02/2022 15:08

Instead of seeing everything from the rosy tinted world of whale music, gentle massage and a Four Seasons Hotel

??
No I’m viewing it from the world where at least a fifth of women treated by Kay have experienced rape or sexual assault, where the women with a ‘plan’ or wanting their boundaries respected are often carrying trauma, where a third of mothers have trauma from childbirth which most of the time is not caused by them being ‘selfish’ but the way they were treated, where rational intelligent women are routinely not listened to and dismissed and don’t have their pain taken seriously, where informed consent is routinely not a thing in maternity care (see the Montgomery case, the ruling goes completely against Kay’s views on maternity care)

Bu I guess it’s hardly surprising a posh privileged bloke doesn’t really care about this, it’s nothing new shrug

DrSbaitso · 19/02/2022 15:18

[quote Thymeout]@airbalonz

Interesting interview in the Guardian online today with Margaret Atwood.

She seems to see the current obsession with misogyny as a sort of cult.

'People are very ready to tell the writer that a bad person he or she is because he or she has not produced the sort of book or essays the preacher feels he or she should have produced.'

Does the cap fit?[/quote]
The quoted paragraph doesn't imply at all that she thinks there is a current obsession with misogyny or that it is a cult.

What did Atwood say that gives you that impression?

Ionlydomassiveones · 19/02/2022 15:31

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn at the poster's request.

Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 15:36

* guess it’s hardly surprising a posh privileged bloke doesn’t really care about this, it’s nothing new shrug*

And now conveniently ignoring the female doctors in the programme

airbalonz · 19/02/2022 15:41

Sorry was on about the actual Adam Kay rather than the tv version

Blossomtoes · 19/02/2022 16:16

@airbalonz

Sorry was on about the actual Adam Kay rather than the tv version
The TV adaptation is based on the book.
Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 17:11

@airbalonz

Sorry was on about the actual Adam Kay rather than the tv version
The TV version is very close adaptation of book

Have you read the book?

Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 17:11

@Blossomtoes

It’s another one I suspect

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 17:40

@DrSbaitso

The word 'preacher'. Cult-leader or maybe cult-member. Ime, those going on about blatant mysogyny in either the book or the series are not willing to provide examples or engage with a different point of view, but instead preach or lecture the rest of us as if their opinion were an incontrovertible fact.
Even when some of them haven't even read the book or watched only one or none of the series.

Sorry I can't link but It's quite a detailed article, well worth a read.

DrSbaitso · 19/02/2022 17:48

[quote Thymeout]@DrSbaitso

The word 'preacher'. Cult-leader or maybe cult-member. Ime, those going on about blatant mysogyny in either the book or the series are not willing to provide examples or engage with a different point of view, but instead preach or lecture the rest of us as if their opinion were an incontrovertible fact.
Even when some of them haven't even read the book or watched only one or none of the series.

Sorry I can't link but It's quite a detailed article, well worth a read.[/quote]
The word 'preacher'. Cult-leader or maybe cult-member.

You're reaching, to say the least.

Ime, those going on about blatant mysogyny in either the book or the series are not willing to provide examples or engage with a different point of view, but instead preach or lecture the rest of us as if their opinion were an incontrovertible fact.
Even when some of them haven't even read the book or watched only one or none of the series.

Ah, in your experience. In other words, you're completely projecting your feelings about this on to Margaret Atwood, who is quite capable of talking about a cult of misogyny-hunting if that's what she wants to say.

And yes, it is worth a read, not only so that people can see you've completely hijacked it to make it look as if Atwood stated what you wildly projected on to her.

AlwaysLatte · 19/02/2022 17:56

I think it's brilliant, I'm a woman and I'm not offended. It's not real!

Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 18:02

@AlwaysLatte

I think it's brilliant, I'm a woman and I'm not offended. It's not real!
Er It is
Toanewstart23 · 19/02/2022 18:03

A very very close adaptation of a non fiction memoir

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 18:16

@DrSbaitso

Why would someone as careful with her words as Margaret Atwood choose 'preacher'?
How would you interpret what she said?

2Gen · 19/02/2022 18:36

@anEnglishTERFinBerlin-
Oh that is stomach-turning! I have nether watched the programme nor read the book and have no desire to now either after reading that. It was a deep dive into a very dark, twisted mind! Ugh!
I was a nurse for nearly 20 years. I have come a cross a fair few medics who may well be good at their actual job, but seemed to have very genuine contempt for their patients. Some real pigs! They would treat junior nurses like shit too! Doctors aren't saints and as it's a profession with a good deal of power, can attract some very disordered characters! I would include this gowl-bag in that category!

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 18:41

@airbalonz

The series covers both domestic violence and sexual assault. In both cases, Kay played a decisive part. What made you think he didn't care?

Consent is tricky in an emergency situation. There are two patients in obstetrics - the mother and the baby. The mother may have said in her birth plan that she didn't want an instrumental birth, but what if that's the only way of saving the baby? The bottom line is that mothers aren't obstetricians.

When it comes down to it, a birth plan can only be a wish list.

Or have I got that wrong? When I had my 3, we didn't even have scans. It was a tape measure and an ear trumpet. Pethidine and gas and air. No epidurals. I don't remember being asked for my consent at any stage.

Blossomtoes · 19/02/2022 18:56

When I had my 3, we didn't even have scans. It was a tape measure and an ear trumpet. Pethidine and gas and air. No epidurals. I don't remember being asked for my consent at any stage

Same. And a pubic shave and enema, no choice.

Thymeout · 19/02/2022 19:01

But the post-natal care was super-deluxe by today's standards. I was shocked by the way my dd and ddil were treated - or rather not treated. Just left to get on with looking after the baby when what they needed was good food and a good night's sleep.