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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:
cansu · 13/02/2022 17:13

I think putting people under huge amounts of stress and overworking them to the point of exhaustion does induce a response of compassion fatigue. I also think people need to remember it's a fictionalised account of his time. Whilst people are describing him as vile, they need to also remember that he probably saved some people's lives, worked countless hours for nothing and essentially had to walk away from a job he gave his all to as it was so traumatic. Mumsnet has become incredibly smug and intolerant.

raffegiraffe · 13/02/2022 17:14

But it's different work as a Cons in private practice. You've proved my point for me.Not emergency care. It's not days and days on call slave to your bleep. Did you watch the show and understand that part?

Zolla · 13/02/2022 17:15

I’m a woman. I really liked it, didn’t think it was remotely degrading .. thought it was pretty amusing in places!

Yeahthat · 13/02/2022 17:16

@cansu

There's current and former members of the medical profession on this thread who have said they also find his behaviour appalling and unacceptable.

I note that he managed to interact appropriately with the consultant. It was only his patients and subordinates which he dealt with with a total lack of respect and dignity.

Faevern · 13/02/2022 17:19

@XingMing gallows humour definitely a coping mechanism but, as you mentioned, should not be shared. It should be left on the hospital ward, prison wing, police station, funeral parlour etc. Not used to make a shed load of money.

Not sure of the relevance of the dogs antibiotics Hmm

Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 17:22

Could be indicative of the general attitude to patients, who in this case as it’s a gyn ward also happen to be women.

oakleaffy · 13/02/2022 17:23

@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.
The words to that doggerel piece are really awful.

Would he be jesting about CF or Cancer?
It’s a shame someone so callously disregarding another human - in effect De - humanising them is entrusted with their care.

Hopefully now there are many more women in Medicine.

Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 17:23

@cansu

I think putting people under huge amounts of stress and overworking them to the point of exhaustion does induce a response of compassion fatigue. I also think people need to remember it's a fictionalised account of his time. Whilst people are describing him as vile, they need to also remember that he probably saved some people's lives, worked countless hours for nothing and essentially had to walk away from a job he gave his all to as it was so traumatic. Mumsnet has become incredibly smug and intolerant.
Aye agree with this
XingMing · 13/02/2022 17:23

There's not a lot of dignity involved in childbirth really. It's as primal an experience as nature involves before death. You evacuate your bowels and that's really normal. It's removed and you are cleaned... it is only digested food waste. More of a problem if your bowels are static really.

veevee04 · 13/02/2022 17:24

I think it's really common and it's brilliant TV show . I became really burnout working in one particular area of mental health when I stopped caring I knew it was time to move on. I got another role in another area of MH and I'm much happier and some empathy returned.

Diva66 · 13/02/2022 17:25

Having been through a horrendous experience with an arrogant uncaring gynaecologist I can’t bring myself to watch this. I’m sure if it was men undergoing a painful procedure pain relief and sedation would be available as a matter of course.

XingMing · 13/02/2022 17:26

@Faevern, the joke was that I had taken the dog's meds because A&E had a 16 hour wait.

ClaudiusTheGod · 13/02/2022 17:26

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.

On the contrary. My impression from the book was that he didn’t get the pay and the respect that he thought he personally was entitled to. He came across as an extremely money-minded individual. I thought he should have done his research beforehand. Anyway it’ll be rolling in now, but he’d better invest it well because I don’t know how much more he can milk (excuse pun) his experiences with women at some of the most vulnerable parts of their lives.

Perhaps he should go into men’s health on his return to medicine and we can look forward to a number of ‘hilarious’ anecdotes about enlarged prostates and ripped foreskins.

Littlegreeneyedone · 13/02/2022 17:27

The book is absolutely brilliant. And you can tell there is a man who genuinely loves his job and is just trying to cart on in a broken system. Hated the show. Comes across as arrogant. Please read the book though.

Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 17:27

@Soontobe60

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!
That’s fucking awful
XingMing · 13/02/2022 17:29

...and my family are forces, as is our local hospital. You joke about everything, especially when you are ill, to help the professionals who are doing their best for you.

cansu · 13/02/2022 17:30

yeahthat
There are also people from the NHS who do not agree with this analysis too. The fact that some people agree with you doesn't make your views 'right' and mine 'wrong'!

ThomasinaGallico · 13/02/2022 17:31

@sanbeiji I quite agree, that ‘Trisomy’ song wasn’t remotely funny then and it’s utterly disgusting now. I quite liked a couple of the band’s songs that didn’t mock patients, in the first couple of years. But by the time they put an album together, the humour had gone off.

RosesAndHellebores · 13/02/2022 17:31

I've said it before and will say it again. The general.public need to stop being grateful for sub optimal clinical care and pastoral care that leaves too much to be desired. The NHS is funded by the people, for the people. It is not free, it is free at the point of delivery and in no other sector would people accept the manner in which some NHS staff behave towards them.

The actuals may appear a tiny proportion of GDP but what isn't factored in is the time the public have to spend to access care. Dealing with incorrect diagnoses, referrals that are inaccurate, referrals made without the requires tests in place (wasting cli ical and patient time), the 20 minutes or so it takes the NHS to pick up a phone. I had a misdiagnosis in the late summer. I think k it has taken me 35 hours of my time to begin to get it sorted. It still isn't. And this against a backdrop of infantilisation and condescension.

Vive la revolution.

KeepingAnOpenMind · 13/02/2022 17:31

All these media doctors come across as complete ego maniacs. Dr Hilary, ‘Trust me I’m a doctor’ Sara Jarvis and the ‘I’m so cute because I feed the birds’ Dr Amir Khan. You wonder if any of them manage to fit in any pesky patients.

Chimchiminie · 13/02/2022 17:31

I read the book and enjoyed it.

I bought it for several friends who are drs (one a woman, one a man) and both really enjoyed it.

Re the attitude to women in healthcare, I’ve not had kids but my observation is that it’s very fucked up how heavily birth without pain relief is pushed. Fits into the wider picture of women’s pain being minimised and trivialised.

jacks11 · 13/02/2022 17:33

Have you read the book? I think you get a better understanding of things from the book. I agree the programme appeared a bit flippant.

Ohyesiam · 13/02/2022 17:34

I really liked the books and all the comedy he’s done on the radio, it was funny and poignant and realistic ( I was a nurse for 16 years). He was compassionate and genuinely cared.

But the tv is all wrong, not funny , not realistic, just grim. It really hasn’t translated well.

WouldBeGood · 13/02/2022 17:35

@RosesAndHellebores

I've said it before and will say it again. The general.public need to stop being grateful for sub optimal clinical care and pastoral care that leaves too much to be desired. The NHS is funded by the people, for the people. It is not free, it is free at the point of delivery and in no other sector would people accept the manner in which some NHS staff behave towards them.

The actuals may appear a tiny proportion of GDP but what isn't factored in is the time the public have to spend to access care. Dealing with incorrect diagnoses, referrals that are inaccurate, referrals made without the requires tests in place (wasting cli ical and patient time), the 20 minutes or so it takes the NHS to pick up a phone. I had a misdiagnosis in the late summer. I think k it has taken me 35 hours of my time to begin to get it sorted. It still isn't. And this against a backdrop of infantilisation and condescension.

Vive la revolution.

@RosesAndHellebores I wholeheartedly agree.
Yeahthat · 13/02/2022 17:36

@cansu

That's not what I was implying; my point was that you put this interpretation of the show down to mumsnet being "smug." My point was that it's not the case given that some HC professionals also agree.

Hopefully next time you have to deal with, say, a police officer or emergency call handler, they treat you in an equally dismissive and undignified manner, and we'll put it down to "empathy fatigue" and tell you not to be so smug as to complain.