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.

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

Probably as it’s a platform mainly consisting of women, including many who have given birth

Not that the NHS is a hellish gulag but simply there's no logic in your argument. Tired and busy does not equal prick.

@raffegiraffe

Try work those hours and see what happens to your empathy

So bridging across from this—people would have oceans of empathy for carers and informal (family) carers who work long and taxing hours.

What about the language? Should we accept that the appalling WhatsApp exchanges reported among various Police officers are fine because some of them work very long hours in difficult circumstances? Should that be wholly accepted as in-group humour?

I read the book and enjoyed it. The tv adaptation I thought was awful. Watched about half of the first part and won't be watching any more.

I wonder how many would magically find their manners if patients had choice and they were in commission...

@twominutesmore

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.

So this is acceptable?

Your baby has Trisomy/ You shouldn't have kids at 53/ He'll have severe mental retardation/ How would you feel about a termination?'

The next verse says: 'A bit of a mong your baby/ Your baby has trisom, it's what he will die from/ Your baby's got trisomy.'

And from personal experience, it is AMAZING the personality change that occurs when consultants walk into their private practice.

www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/a/adam_kay_suman_biswas/your_baby.html

Can you see, that's baby's heart beating there on the monitor.
And look there are it's little arms and it's little legs.
Um, I'm not quite sure what that bit is, no.

Your baby's got a flattened nose
A widened gap between it's toes
It's smaller than it's supposed to be
The scan shows your baby's got an imperforate rectum
And there's a big hole in his atrial septum
He's got signs of Left Heart Failure
And quite abnormal genitalia
I'll print out the scan so you can see
There's something quite wrong with your baby
Your baby's got Trisomy

He'll have abnormal motor function
That's to meiotic non-dysjunction
You shouldn't have kids at 53
He'll have severe mental retardation
How would you feel about a termintation
I doubt he'll live past 10 years old
Check out his epicanthic folds and his single palmar crease
A bit of a mong your baby
Your baby has trisom, it's what he will die from,
Your baby has trisomy.

I watched the start of it but turned it off. It just made me feel so uncomfortable.
I had a male doctor who told me off for making a fuss when in Labour with my first child, who was facing the wrong way round and stuck. He told me I was making too much noise and waking up the other mothers, tutted at me, told me he’d have to use forceps if I carried on so noisily then did a massive episiotomy, snatching the scissors off the midwife. He then left me 2 hours in the delivery room whilst he had a break before he came back to stitch me up, having told the midwife that they mustn’t do it, it was too complicated. Bastard!

@Faevern

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

Sounds about right. At least his patients are mostly asleep.

I think, if I’m not mistaken, the selection process for med school has changed quite a lot since Kay was a student. My DD’s friends who went on to do medicine had to pass something called the UKCAT as well as getting top grades, and I think this aptitude test measured not just subject specific knowledge but ability to make decisions under pressure, attitudes to others, teamwork and all sorts. From what I gather it was very tough and would have weeded out not just the plodders that couldn’t take the pace, but quite a lot of entitled personalities with the right academics and the wrong fit.

Of course, you do have to question a system that provides the conditions for such dreadful attitudes to thrive.

Women as punchlines just isn’t funny. Pregnant women as punchlines less so. I’m with Milli Hill on this

Do complain to the BBC about the unacceptable offensive misogyny in this programme. I have. They need to know that women are not impressed by this.

www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/

@airbalonz Probably as it’s a platform mainly consisting of women, including many who have given birth

Exactly. Criticism doesn’t have less validity if it comes from a concentration of mothers

The guy has burn out. Really common. Causes fatigue, cynicism, irritability. It's actually an illness but it's caused by the job. The job is the problem.

I studied for my undergraduate degree in the late 90s/early 00s at a university attached to a teaching hospital, so met a lot of med students.

Some of them were wonderful human beings, became lifelong friends and have had terrific careers in the NHS, but some of them were utter pricks (both male and female, but tbh, mostly male), who should never have been allowed to have anything to do with other humans and I shudder to think how they treat their patients.

I believe the selection process has changed, and I can only hope that's true.

I can’t watch it, mainly because it’ll trigger my ptsd from previous births where I didn’t get the best care but, I saw him on the one show and he came across very nonchalant which put me off even further I’m afraid. I really enjoy Ben whishaw as an actor too so I was gutted.

@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.

Holy shit.

@thegreenlight

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!

Are you sure that’s not down to Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd the Pathologist- I e seen him speak and he came over really well.

Police officers have never ever worked the contracted hours of junior doctors in the 90s and 00s. It just never happened.

Haven't read whole thread sorry but having read this book I totally agree. Haven't watched the TV series on this basis. The book came across as woman hating and having had a traumatic birth experience it upset me.

I agree. I really disliked the book and am not watching the series, I cannot understand how he has been so successful. There seems to be an almost total lack of compassion for people who are at the most vulnerable points of their lives. And that's not my experience when I have been in contact with health professionals I should add, they are mostly (some exceptions) wonderful under very challenging conditions.

@raffegiraffe

The guy has burn out. Really common. Causes fatigue, cynicism, irritability. It's actually an illness but it's caused by the job. The job is the problem.

I thought that, and I thought the TV show expressed it so well. That's how come someone as lovely as Shruti becomes so brusque with the couple about the heartbeat. It was interesting that Shruti was empathetic and chose death rather than staying in that brutal set up. Adam just about managed by being cold and hard and horrible until picked up, and then being shocked into humane behaviour.

The consultants were frankly odd - one was a comfort eating boozer who cracked silly inappropriate 'let's all be cheerful' wisecracks clearly as a coping mechanism and th eother was cold blooded and utterly heartless with no c=moral compass. he was the one who thrived. By not caring but playing the game.

No one on that war coped well, except perhaps Tracy.

ward not war

@raffegiraffe

Convenient and very selective way to define it: He gets a pass due to his "contracted hours", but Police Officers' experience of traumatic events, their physical safety etc being at risk would not be an excuse.

Gallows humour....... common in any environment where people die . Childbirth is an entirely normal life event, unless there are complications, otherwise the world's population would not be increasing. Bad news for some, but a happy event for most.

My BF is a retired GP, and given the everyday pressures of the job (you never see anyone who's not a little anxious in the consulting room) the humour is bleak, but there's a lot of it. It's a coping mechanism but for obvious reasons, it doesn't extend to patients.

A recent breast cancer has taken me to hospital more often than I would have wished recently, and I just loved the belly laugh I got when I told the surgeon I had borrowed the dog's antibiotic stash on the basis that it was a broad spectrum antibiotic of similar strength to what he was giving me, but easier to swallow.