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

[justanoldhack]

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.

They were all flawed in some way though .

I found Shruti just as bad when she slammed down the files and informed her patient very bluntly there was no hearbeat and what did she want to do about her "bunch of cells"

Maybe people don't like the actor rather than the character ?
I thought the Consultant (Mr Lockhart) was rqually as blunt and I'd freeze in hell before I let Miss Houton get her hands on me

It's a dramatised for TV show though based on real life .
Not real life

It was awful there was the odd good bit that showed how stretched doctors were/are I quite liked his books but this series made him look like a total arse, typical of entitled, born to be doctors men!

I won’t watch it as my 8YO son loves hIs books and now wants to be a pathologist because of them. I’m sure finding out about him will put me right off!

Adam Kay is absolutely vile and trying desperately to get the lyrics to “Your Baby” and “Northern Women” scrubbed from the internet. I can’t imagine why.

I didn’t get that from it at all.

It’s a black comedy view of the experiences on a labour ward, just because it is from the perspective of a man doesn’t automatically make it misogynistic.

It was pretty clear to me that the comedy came from the detached attitude the system forced on you in order to survive. The same with Shruti and the “bunch of cells” comment.

Yes I take the point that to some extent he's a product of an overstretched system. But he's made a boatload of money essentially laughing at women's expense, and confirming all my fears about what doctors think about their patients.

Not surprised he's considering returning to medicine.. he can't dine out on a 6 year career forever.

Years ago I saw him play with his band at the Edinburgh festival. He came across as awful, his songs were deeply smug, and he got so drunk he throw up over some audience members. He just seemed to be an extremely unhappy but quite conceited London medic. It was pretty painful to watch. I found his book oddly cold. Im not sure I will be rushing to watch this.

I read the book and am almost finished the TV series.

I really don't see it in the same way as most of you. For me, rather than despising Kay, I see it as a depressing reality of the NHS today. The working conditions are portrayed horrifically - it's a million miles away from my comfy desk job. I wouldn't last 1 minute doing that role. I can see why NHS staff end up viewing people as numbers and obtaining a cynical, negative dark humour to get through the days. The staff are shown to struggle daily with keeping even a mediocre relationship going outside of the hospital, and how difficult it can be to switch off after work.

I think it shines a sad light on the NHS as an institution - not necessarily the person (Kay). The NHS is chronically underfunded and understaffed and we all know this. In that respect, the show/book shouldn't be too shocking?

Incidentally, the book itself follows the journey from junior doctor - before he becomes a registrar in obs/mat. The TV series appears to focus only on his work in obs/mat/gyn though which is a shame.

I get misanthropy from this show, not just misogyny - Adam portrays most people in a bad light, and it’s a reflection of his own built up frustration at the world he lives and works in.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/telly_addicts/4467900-this-is-going-to-hurt-starts-8th-feb

Whole thread on it here (as well as the one on the book itself)

@luxxlisbon

I didn’t get that from it at all.

It’s a black comedy view of the experiences on a labour ward, just because it is from the perspective of a man doesn’t automatically make it misogynistic.

It was pretty clear to me that the comedy came from the detached attitude the system forced on you in order to survive. The same with Shruti and the “bunch of cells” comment.

Does the development of a detached attitude mean that you become incapable of addressing patients with a modicum of respect?

The book Adam Kay compiled/edited in 2020, Dear NHS, 100 stories to say thank you raised thousands. He also did volunteer during the pandemic but was not needed.
So has done more good in his lifetime than I have. Our ledgers of good and bad deeds always takes me back to Simon Armitage's Poem.

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn't spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

Should Adam Kay be cancelled for something he did 17 years ago?
David Baddiel (who always has Jason Lee brought up/Baddiel: I wore blackface in TV sketches 25 years ago. I have apologised. I will apologise now again: it was wrong. It was racist. I am sorry. Now.) did an excellent documentary on Cancel Culture, available on iplayer. His main point being that apologies never stem keyboard warriors or those carrying pitchforks - there is no apology deemed adequate enough, which leaves no room for remedy or forgiveness.
one could argue a personal apology to Jason might help, but even so, the internet does not forgive or forget

Medical staff are encouraged by the media and some of the public to see themselves as heroes doing their best against the odds. The actual patients seem by the by, especially with women and maternity.

That’s why he was able to write his book and have this tv series and be applauded for it, with hardly anyone saying hang on, your attitude towards these women and the way you’re treating them is appalling. So many people are forgiving because he worked for the NHS and is therefore a ‘hero’. Quite easy to cover up misogynist attitudes in that sort of atmosphere. I’m not saying it isn’t difficult but his attitude is shit and people are justifying it.

That’s a fucking awful poem. And once punched his wife in the face but he loved his mum!

@FinallySomeNormality

I don't see the NHS as chronically underfunded. I see it as a sprawling, chronically ill-managed black hole in need of significant reform.

At present, I don't think that any increase in budget would solve its problems.

YANBU. It’s why I loathed the book and won’t be watching the TV series.

I couldn't help wondering if his mother really was that appallingly cold and cruel and snobbish towards him. If so, you can imagine how early in life he had to put up a shell of mistrust and cruelty as a preventative against attack.

Yes, that does interest me - how his mum in real life feels at her fictional counterpart? (Harriet Walters)
I would be really proud of my son's success and achievements, and would be thrilled their book was so successful it had been adapted.
But I would be gutted, if everyone watching it - knowing it is based on my son and that he, himself, had written the script- thought I was anything like the fictional one or that he thought that of me. I'd want a disclaimer!
Clearly, you need to be able to separate the fact from the fiction, and the Mum is given a different name. But - ouch! - that would hurt me a tad, even knowing in drama you need antagonists.

There are 2 other very active threads on this, many echo your views (myself included!)

I think as a woman who has given birth you’re much more likely to watch those scenes with acute awareness that the ‘patient’ in the background is a very real human being with a name, a job, a family, friends, a life and very real feelings and memories. You’re also very aware that everything happening in that scene will have an impact on her life forever on.

WTF is that poem?! Terrible.

He was a dick, a dick to his coworkers, patients, friends, family and partner.
That isn’t misogyny just because his patients happen to be women.

What the show explored was that the more chat, small talk and rapport you build with patients the more it smacks you in the face when something goes wrong.
When you deal with 20+ patients in a shift it isn’t hard to see how it you eventually become desensitised to it and they become just a problem to solve.
The more they care the more their personal life gets completely fucked in the process, ie getting over attached and not being able to turn if off, staying late or being guilted into coming in/ double shifts over important things in your own life and ultimately destroying your relationships. Adam with his partner, his best friend, Shruti with her parents, possible love interests and even Tracy and her daughter.

that’s a fucking awful poem. And once punched his wife in the face but he loved his mum!

Indeed - but it makes the point - people are not black or white, they are grey: we are all capable of good and bad. Just ask Saint Peter or Christie Malry!

That poem is awful
Adam Kays book was awful he came across as a dickhead.
I won't be watching the TV show.

If it were any other group of people portrayed with this level of disdain, the book would never have been published and the series never made.

NOW is it becoming clear just how much men as a class hate women?