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 thought it was superb

Not my experience of being a gynae patient in the slightest though.

But brilliant tv and absolutely no cause for offence as far as I can tell

@M1212

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 !

Exactly

The new breed of junior doctors have a very very very different life! Set hours and they absolutely do clock off on time!

I’m really glad you posted this.

I loathed the book fir these reasons.

He seems wholly unsuited to be a doctor, with his contempt for patients and surprise at the hours as a junior doctor. Horrible.

AFAIK Suman Biswas who sang those songs with AK is a practising anaesthetist in the NHS.

The NHS is not interested in individuals, it's a numbers game.

The book is well known for being for of misogynistic rubbish - there have been a few threads about it on here over time.

*full of

I'm a doctor, I thought the book was horrible although a little more nuanced. I suspect he was trying to illustrate compassion fatigue but actually I think he is just a misogynist who is better off out of medicine.

I started training around the time his book was published and I recognise very little of what he describes. The way junior doctors, along with many other healthcare professionals, are treated at times is grim. But I didn't witness the kinds of awful attitudes to patients that he writes about.

I found most of the songs by the amateur transplants pretty unpleasant too.

You're not being unreasonable not to like a TV programme. But it's not misogynistic because there's no evidence that he's behaving this way because the patients are women. So YABU for being precious.

I think it's brilliant, funny and incisive. Unfortunately realistic - though, thank goodness that many disasters - and awful patients - are usually spread out over years rather encountered in a short space of time!

Some of the jokes in the book are grim. One anecdote was a woman anxious about opening her bowels during delivery and the loss of dignity. The ‘punchline’ was that she’d eaten a huge curry the night before so the end result was even worse🙄

It’s far easier to make those types of jokes when you’re not frightened, humiliated person half-dressed in front of strangers.

He was interviewed by James O'Brien a while ago and I thought he came across well. He was saying that the only entry criteria for medicine are academic, and how ridiculous that is. People go into medicine because, like him, their parents did, and there is no testing for whether these people are going to actually be able to cope with the job. He fully admits he couldn't cope with it.

I also think he has written himself as an awful person in the TV show, much more so than in the book. So he is well aware of how flawed he is. I didn't necessarily think he was misogynistic, or uncaring, although I do now understand why the jokes would make people think that. I actually think the fact that he struggled so much after losing a patient that he had to quit the profession altogether shows he did care - a lot.

Ridiculous. This is what it's like! Childbirth is difficult and dangerous. This isn't spoken about enough because people don't want to acknowledge it. Watch the episode about the private hospital. Doctors do what they need to do to emotionally survive it. Walk a mile in the shoes then you can talk

And I have to disagree with the previous poster.
It is unfortunately very realistic.
I liked the amateur transplant songs, so perhaps that says something about my attraction to dark humour.
The NHS song was gold. www.dailymotion.com/video/x3ov698
Replacing Tony Blair with all the subsequent Tories, the NHS just got worse!

I found the book unpleasant in this way also. He has a total indifference to pain and I'm not sure he would find his empathy after a good wash and sleep.

It's a pity this is acceptable.

Doctors do what they need to do to emotionally survive it. Walk a mile in the shoes then you can talk

No. Standards of behaviour apply to everyone. It's not acceptable to be a prat because you're tired or overworked. Many labouring women ml are just as tired and overworked. They're expected to treat professionals with respect and courtesy in response for clinical excellence and professional respect/empathic treatment.

Yes yes on the gay man thing

But a lot of comedians are rather obnoxious. He was in the wrong job, now he's in the right one. He just needs to stop using women's personal tragedies, pain and general experience as material fodder.

The shorthand for the ob/gyn ward is "brats and twats"... what did you expect?

I really like Ben Wishaw but I found this uncomfortable, misogynistic and misanthropic. Dear Paddington would give it a very hard stare.

Try work those hours and see what happens to your empathy

"No. Standards of behaviour apply to everyone. It's not acceptable to be a prat because you're tired or overworked."

Tbf he has said that he was tempted to make the character into a kind, empathic superhero but settled on a complicated and flawed character even though he knew it would open him up to criticism.

I honestly don't know how anyone can read the book and not feel that he cares, a lot.

@XingMing

The shorthand for the ob/gyn ward is "brats and twats"... what did you expect?

Not just him calling it that though.

Realise I sound like his mum.

Just read so many positive reviews this weekend, only mn heavily critical really.

Yanbu, I saw the trailer and couldn't watch it. Theres an important storyline about how a once in a lifetime event for a woman is a normal day's work for a doctor or midwife but the trailer looks so dismissive. I had assumed the show would be an improvement on its outwards appearance, what a shame to read this thread.

@XingMing

The shorthand for the ob/gyn ward is "brats and twats"... what did you expect?

Or “runts and cunts”. I heard both when I worked in the NHS.

16:40raffegiraffe

There is respect and compassion to be found among inmates of hellish gulags the world over. I have no tolerance for the victimish legitimisation of petulant, dickish behaviour in the medical profession and see no evidence of it in the many many doctors in my family. This is how you get to be a dickish consultant and they are a real problem.