This Is Going to Hurt

[Wouldloveanother]

I read this book a while ago but just re-skimmed it while bedridden with pregnancy sickness. I’d forgotten how funny it is, although the ending is tragic and poignant. I thought it gave a really good insight into the pressures on maternity staff and why it’s not always realistic for us to have the exact care we want in labour. I think it’s a shame he left medicine, but can see how he lost his nerve and didn’t feel able to go back. Anyone else read it?

I suspect several of us on this thread have been through the same, and know how difficult the life of a doctor is.

It doesn't excuse the misogyny and disrespect for patients.

You can be a misogynist and a prick in general as well. It isn't mutually exclusive.

@Wouldloveanother Adam Kaye is gay I think.

But what’s the difference between being a prick in general, and being a misogynistic prick in general?

Extra hate for women as a group.

Oh give over with your Jeremy Paxman wannabe interrogations. You sound more like a whining "but whyyyyyyy" toddler tbf.
You post on AIBU (with, erm, interesting opinions) and some people disagree with you. For various reasons. Deal with it. Or come up with reasons why your opinion may be right, and the majority of others may be wrong.

I watched a couple of episodes of the TV version and I hated it.

Where’s the proof of that here?

How much attention were you paying?

In the private hospital scenes, he realises its WORSE than the NHS, he realises these people are being fleeced for huge amounts to line fatcats pockets, like those of his bullying arsehole consultant... but the care provided is worse, the services fewer and when the woman he is treating is at risk.. she has to be ambulanced to a real, NHS hospital to save her life.

The grass is very much NOT greener and it clearly sickens him.

his junior colleague killing herself - he realises she's been bullied and he has been part of that, because he was bullied and thats how the system worked, everybody shits on the one below them. He tries to break that but its really way too late and she's been under pressure from many more people than just him.

Im not saying hes a nice guy, im certainly not saying he is hysterically funny or that any of this dark humour is particularly clever or new or groundbreaking - it isn't.

But if he'd simply written a book about how dire the NHS is, how awful it was doing his job and how bad at it he was... no one would read it, no one would have made it into a TV series and we would not be talking about it for the umpteenth time.

Have you lost the ability to read entirely? Or is your comprehension just poor? People have given you multiple reasons, the lyrics to those songs for one thing.

You think he's a perfectly nice bloke and the majority disagree, you are being obtuse and refusing to see reason. The burden of proof is yours, if he's the pinnacle of niceness, explain why. With sources, like others have given you.

OR, spend your pregnancy reading time to read a book written by someone with more than 9 braincells while you've the time.

But if he'd simply written a book about how dire the NHS is, how awful it was doing his job and how bad at it he was... no one would read it, no one would have made it into a TV series and we would not be talking about it for the umpteenth time.

So instead he chose to write a wholly unpleasant book which will get turned into a tv programme so that he can make money from insinuating that this is how all HCP's feel towards their patients. He shouldn't have bothered either way.

With sources 😂 given we’re discussing a named book that really shouldn’t be necessary should it? Do you have a source to prove you’re a nice person?

If people like the book then crack on and read it, whatever. Why does it matter to you that so many of us find it misogynistic and won’t be changing our minds?

You're the one consistently asking for proof.

I hated the book, that's a pretty good indication of not being a misogynist arsehole. You carry on though.

As a side note, thats not how citation works, regardless of whether you're discussing a 'named book' or not..

How would you feel though if he'd recounted this story referring to you as a dumb slag or an idiot or any other phrase to show his contempt for you? Anecdotes can be funny, but not when they dehumanise people.

Because I started the thread to discuss the book and you’re posting on it so I’m replying? Why does it matter to you that I don’t find it misogynistic? It’s clearly irked many posters that I don’t.

This in spades

Absolutely this 👆

@Wouldloveanother

u do u have so much internalised with OP?

set the bar higher for yourself and your fellow women

@Wouldloveanother

this

don’t kno y u r so set on defending him op

he think you and your female body parts are gross

There was an excerpt from his new book in The Times this week. Even when writing about an incredibly traumatic event in his life he can't stop himself making comments like this...

I haven't read it or seen it, so I can't really comment beyond noticing that it has caused a lot of offence and accusations of misogyny. There was never any such response to Drs Max Pemberton and Benjamin Daniels, to name but two.

I don't think I'll be reading it. He's got every right to say it but I currently have a lot of trust and faith in my medical practitioners and I don't want to risk it. Of course I don't know if that's fair, since I've not read it, but it isn't a risk I want to take.

Hadley Freeman called him out on this on Twitter. He apologised and is removing it from the ebook and future prints.

Kay, whose father was a doctor, regards medicine with Oedipal rage. I don’t think he ever wanted to do it. He has valuable testimony on the plight of junior doctors, and the chaos of parts of the NHS, but he confuses righteous anger with his own pain and, in doing so, makes a bonfire of the privacy and dignity of his patients. Saving their lives is only his permission to despise them. He is utterly oblivious to the intensity of female shame; in his metier and his chronic self-absorption, he courts it, but he still thinks himself decent. When he says, “this is going to hurt”, he is not speaking of his patient, but of himself.

This nails it really. Saving lives is not permission to despise them or turn patients' deeply personal life events into your own content.

There is none. His humour is dark. Sometimes (often) in bad taste. I can absolutely see why people don’t like him. But he applies it to everyone. Do people believe that, had he chosen a different specialty, he would have had nothing but admiration and praise for his male patients? I highly doubt it. Not every instance of negativity towards women is due to misogyny.