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.

I enjoyed the book very much. I found him likeable. I am only three episodes into the tv series but friends and family who work for the nhs all tell me it is an accurate portrayal. I suppose they complain about patients the way teachers complain about parents and sales assistants complain about customers. I certainly don't care really, if it gets them through the shift, as long as they do their job competently.

'Sorry to derail but I don't think it's an awful poem at all.

I think it's a great example of "he's such a great dad but..." threads we see on here all the time'

Agree! Think a lot of people are missing the point of it

I was an NHS clinician for 17 years. The burnout and compassion fatigue were absolutely crushing for a good 5 years before I managed to get out. Many days I felt like I had to put my psychological armour on just to get through, and I wasn't in a high powered role where the stakes were life and death. It was BRUTAL. The public honestly don't realise, and doorstep clapping and talk of 'angels' and 'superheroes' really do not help. I read his book a few years ago, haven't seen the TV series yet so will reserve judgement on the misogyny for now. That song referenced upthread about a baby with 'trisomy' is absolutely vile though. Cruel and heartless. No amount of 'black humour' defence could excuse it

I read the book that the show is based on and I didnt get that impression at all

He's a gay man. It's not an uncommon attitude in my experience.

Even if they don’t, patients aren’t there as a source of amusing dinner party anecdotes

With the best will in the world, this is totally unrealistic. Everyone lets off steam about work by talking about it, whether it's about colleagues, customers, clients, or anything else. And that includes people in occupations where there is a duty of confidentiality. If you don't understand that, you really aren't paying attention.

I found it to be as I imagine it to be, which does mean yes, an awful attitude to women. I think however the portrayal of the female medical staff is no worse than that of the other mail staff, in fact by far the most odious character is male.

I am a lesbian, so I have spent a lot of time around gay men, and I have observed, and I’m by far not the only woman to have observed, that as a class gay men are misogynistic as hell.

The medics in the show have severe burnout and the patients stop being people in their minds , it's pretty common, sign they need to take some leave. Many HCPs have a dark sense of humour to cope with the job can be a pyschological defence mechanism.. I'm not saying this is right it's not, but it's where the attitude comes from.

I won't watch it - the past vileness about babies with Down's Syndrome and women tells me all I need to know about Adam Kay.

@DePfeffoff

Even if they don’t, patients aren’t there as a source of amusing dinner party anecdotes

With the best will in the world, this is totally unrealistic. Everyone lets off steam about work by talking about it, whether it's about colleagues, customers, clients, or anything else. And that includes people in occupations where there is a duty of confidentiality. If you don't understand that, you really aren't paying attention.

Did you miss the part of my post where I said I was an ex nurse?

The public honestly don't realise, and doorstep clapping and talk of 'angels' and 'superheroes' really do not help.

Oh, this, a billion times. NHS clinical staff are flawed individuals just like anyone else, under insane amounts of pressure, plus they're completely fucking knackered all the time. Basically most of them are burnt-out before they've even finished their training.

Not excusing bad behaviour at all, but this is the reality for lots of clinicians. It's utterly shit, and one of the reasons that I would never go back to clinical practice even if I lost my current job tomorrow.

@roarfeckingroarr

He's a gay man. It's not an uncommon attitude in my experience.

Well yes, there's this as well, unfortunately.

My local hospital outpatients calls all the women into their appointments as Jane Smith; all the men as Mr Joe Bloggs.

It is outright sexism and discriminatory to treat one group of people less favourably than others.

It's gravely worrying that they can't get the basics which came into statute in 1974 but have an EDI Manager, and claim to fulfil their statutory equality obligations.

I complain every time. Every time I am treated to the carefully curated NHS Eye roll.

@BringBackCoffeeCreams

Why would anyone put themselves through seven episodes of something they clearly didn't enjoy? I came to it completely new, never heard of it before just saw positive reviews on The Jeremy Vine show. I couldn't get through the first episode, and I'll usually watch any old shite. I found the tone really unpleasant, nothing funny about it at all.

I think people are saying this because, without revealing some quite significant spoilers, the tone of the first episode is not the tone of the whole series (in my opinion) . We are seeing things mainly from his point of view in that episode but in other episodes we see things from other points of view, and some things that were presented as funny then (not saying they were funny, but he thought they were) are revisited as not so funny later on. But of course you don't have to watch the whole series if you don't want to!

I really enjoyed it! He’s also quite scathing of the male characters - the consultant and the new junior doctor are painted poorly.

The only positive is that nearly every comments section I've seen has said the same thing - at least some people are waking up to misogyny. Although who would have guessed The Times' comment section would have got there quicker than TV producers and commisioners.

I qualified as a doctor in 1980, and worked those same gruelling 100 hour weeks as Kay did. And unlike him, I stayed for 36 years.
I can honestly say that, however knackered I was after a 72 hour continuous shift, I have never treated a patient with the casual contempt and disregard evident in Kay’s book.
My colleagues and I would share gallows humour in the doctors’ mess, but never in front of patients. We did our best even when exhausted to be supportive to patients, especially frightened mothers in painful labour, or emergency cases needing theatre.
I think Kay was wholly unsuited to a medical career - he more or less admits this, saying it was just expected he would follow the family into it. However intellectually bright he may have been, he lacked empathy, and was horrifically misogynist.

It's been done before: TLC with Reece Shearsmith and Alexander Armstrong.

Never really took off here, but I understand it was a real hit in Germany.

@justanoldhack

There does seem to be something seriously wrong with a system that encourages medics to dehumanise women to that extent, and also be proud enough about it to write about it (and make a shitload of money out of it, too)

You do know he left the NHS because he felt it was impossible to provide the care he wanted to? He’s far from proud of it.

I read the book and thought exactly the same. Repulsed by women, their bodies and childbirth. "Brats and twats" sums it all up.

I'm reading this book at the moment and I didn't think he was that much of a misogynist just the circumstances he was working under.The woman who he asked how many weeks are you and answered I'm 32 so must be a thousand weeks has to be a made up story.

I actually really enjoyed it and I've given birth. I am a HCP when I have birth I wasn't and I felt ignored and scared. I kind of get it now when you have seen a 1000 births you become hardened to it, I'm hardened to a lot of things in my work now which when I first started it really affected me. I'm professional and I care but when I leave a shift I forget about what's happened I don't dwell on it. If I did dwell I would have a break down. I think the medics were all suffering from compassion fatigue and burnout.

We went to see him live. It started off funny but wasn’t at the end.
He came across as a one trick pony. He’s left medicine but is earning off the back of his experiences there. There’s only so many times you can tell the same story

@Babdoc

I’m a retired doctor, and the majority of my colleagues were nothing like this. Kay is just a particularly unpleasant misogynist shit. Even the narcissistic consultant surgeons I worked with, who could be complete knobs to colleagues, were always unfailingly courteous and kindly to their patients, who revered them. Anyone prepared to give Kay the benefit of the doubt should listen to the lyrics of his “comic” song “Your baby has trisomy”, to the tune of My baby just cares for me. It includes the lines “A bit of a Mong, your baby Your baby has trisom, it’s what he will die from” If he was still a doctor, I’d be phoning the GMC.

That is horrendous.

I didn't feel that it was misogynistic. By the nature of his job, his 'customers' are women and so of course he is going to talk about his experiences and poke fun at them. If he worked in the fracture clinic he'd be taking the piss out of equal numbers of men and women. If he worked in a care home, he'd be telling stories aimed at the elderly. He's changed names to preserve anonymity but if you doubt that nhs staff come into contact with people just like those portrayed I think you're being a bit naive.

A lot of people are talking about this very positively. I think it's only on mn that people are overlooking that he worked a 12 hour shift after a night in his car, did two 12 hour shifts back to back, saved a woman's life by refusing to send her home and so on. All of that dedication, which shows how he cares about his patients in every way that matters, is sidelined because he takes the piss out of a thick woman who thinks her baby weighs two stone.

Things have changed a lot since the European working time directive was introduced in about 2008. There seems to be no reference to that at all in this TV show set in 2006. This should be pointed out to the public. Junior doctors shouldn't be working those horrendous 108 hour working weeks anymore.
I can remember starting my weekend on call Sat at 8am and not sitting down until 5pm the following Monday in my surgical discipline. All this having been in work Mon to Fri 8-5.30pm and working one of those weekday overnights on call too. It was punishing, but same as babdoc, I'd like to think I was polite and respectful to patients despite falling down the hospital stairs with tiredness several times !