Sally Clarke has died....

[ZZMum]

Poor poor woman... how awful for her family after all they went thru...

I've just read his piece in the Lancet and I am utterly shocked that he was ever considered an expert on that basis.....

I think this last bit is particularly poignant:

"Whatever label one chooses to describe them, these cases are at times a reminder that at times doctors must accept the parent?s history and the laboratory findings with more than usual scepticism. We may teach, and I believe should teach, that mothers are always right; but at the same time recognise that when mothers are wrong they can be terribly wrong.

Asher began his paper on Munchausen?s Syndrome with the words ?here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written?. The behaviour of Kay?s mother has not been described in the medical literature. Is it because that degree of falsification is very rare or because it is unrecognised?

This paper is dedicated to the many caring and conscientious doctors who tried to help these families, and who, although deceived, will rightly continue to believe what most parents say about their children, most of the time"

VVV, what was your particular objection to that? I couldn't work out what it was getting at. We can't always believe parents but genreally they're right about their children. Sometimes they burn, maim and kill them, though and that's not invented and happens sadly all the time as any child protection officer knows.

I think that the issue with MbP, or Factitious and Induced Illness as it is now referred to, is that Meadows seems to argue that it is common whereas in fact although many paediatricians would recognise a description of it although they would also recognise it as being extremely rare.

Where did I say I objected to it Xenia?

Psycho, no-one AFAIK ever said anything about 'all' doctors or 'all discrimination'. You chose to make generalisations.

People have been arguing that Roy Meadows is a misogynist and that he got away with it due to institutional misogyny, akin to the insitutional racism of the Metropolitan Police exposed by McPherson. It's hardly a startlingly new argument that people who hate women (who can be women themselves) have a particular problem with mothers. Given that motherhood is such a powerful state of being and such a powerful symbol of femininity.

In the past, hatred of women has led to unmarried mothers being forced to surrender babies over for adoption, for instance. Beceuse control of female sexuality is key to controlling women.

But it's really bizarre to have a conversation about whether misogyny exists on a thread about the tragedy of Sally Clark's brief life. If there was ever a clear cut case...

psychiatry has a particularly vivid and horrifying history of misogyny too.
'Hysteria' 'Penis envy' (and the rest of Freud's bizarre woman-hating/fearing agenda) women being put in asylums for their entire lives for being sexual, lobotomies, the ability of men to 'put away' their wives and daughters on any pretext, aided by doctors. It's not a distinguished history, frankly.

Agree aloha. Completely. RM's paper mentions "hysteria" to describe the two (yes - only two) mothers in his 'cases' rather regularly too.

That does not surprise me in the least.

He is a terrible man, but he did not work alone. He was very, very much part of the establishment. See the way they all rushed to his defence? Institional misogyny indeed.
And a real hatred & contempt for mothers, that many of us feel when in contact with the medical profession.
When my ds was in hospital with a fishbone in his throat he could not even properly swallow his own saliva, was totally unable to eat and the X-ray clearly showed a fishbone exactly where ds was indicating on his throat. Yet a senior consultant patronisingly told me that the fishbone was actually 'part of the structure of the throat' that my ds did not need an operation and should be given something to eat (he had not eaten all night or morning by this stage, even if he had been able to eat this would just have meant the operation would have be postponed for more fasting). I was horrified and tried to point out ds's symptoms and the X-ray, but he was totally dismissive and I suddenly realised, with utter horror, that if I started insisting that he wasn't given food and that he needed an operation, I could easily be accused of Munchausen's (the 20th/21st Century equivalent of crying witch) and my life and that of my whole family could be destroyed. I had no idea what to do. It was like being gagged. Luckily a couple of his underlings intervened to point out that it was NOT 'part of the structure of the throat' and ds has his operation successfully.
MSBP diagnoses have not just destroyed the lives of so many woman and children (like Bunglie, for those Mumsnetters who remember her tragic story) but has also worked to make mothers terrified, silent and compliant.

Edam it was the institutional misogyny ideas I was arguing aginast.

Institutional misogyny is not the same as institutional racism.

Institutional misogyny defines the motivation behind the discrimaintion; that being the hatred of women.

Whereas institutionl racism only decsribes the discriimation itself and allows for varied motivations behind the discrimination.

It is a huge over simplification to describe discrimination of any kind, against women, race, disability as having one extreme motivation such as hatred.

Discrimation against women may occur for many other more complex and subltle (but no less damaging) reasons.
Such as:

Historical/traditional views on the role of women
False bekiefs about the nature of women
Generational resistance to change of these
Limited experience of other ways of being
Assumptions about gender roles in families
Failure to understand and empathise with others experience and viewpoits
Fear of change and the unknown
Failure to comprehend and assimilate to new social norms.

Varying degrees of all these reasons could exist and bring about discrimination without a prerequisite or inevtiable hatred. They represent human failings with potentially damaging effects, but hatred is not necessarily inherent within them.

To me hatred implies an extreme loathing with some malicious intent and a desire to harm.

Many of the above reasons I could see as bringing about institutional discrimation of women, but not necssarily motivated in most cases by hatred and all that implies.

I believe that what occurs all too often in debates such as this is that misogyny becomes used as word to describe discrimation against women, in the same way that racism describes discrimation.

That is not what misogyny is. Misogyny can exist witbout discrimination amd discrimaination can exist wothout misogyny, and have other causes.

I think to attribute all discrimation against women to a hatred of women, looses all the sublties and complexties that are in fact behind the discrimation, and becomes in danger of becoming a simplistic mantra that in fact looses all meaning and actually stifles debate on the whole complextity of the phenomenon.

And part of my original point (poorly made I concede Caligula) is that I sometimes feel that on Mn a particualr mantra must be adhered to and a view that does not adhere to this is quickly quashed. My irritation (vs your irraitaion caligula) was that a simplistic and generally accepted mantra of misogyny was occuring repetatively without challenge.

And I think all mantras should be challenged.

Obviously i take on board all comments (constructive I presume)about crap arguing.......

...amd will try harder next time

(surely to God I've said everything i have to say about misogyny)

well *I8 have indise info and am not telling oyu bout it
so ner

Thanks Psycho.

I pretty much entirely agree with your most recent post.

You are not a lone voice on this thread.

lalal i know somehting oyu dont know

Do you want me to beg?

I could give it a half hearted try if you guarentee a snippet...but it's pretty late...so it'll be lame.

Oh go on Cod please, please

Oh please, Psycho, I have actually opened a book once or twice in my life, you know. In fact, I write for a living. So I do understand words and their derivations.

Hatred is exactly what Meadows was about and it was institutional misogyny that let him (and Williams, and Southall, and the rest) get away with it.

I hate to use the phrase 'in denial' but why is it so impossible for you to accept that it is reasonable for me and others to argue that these modern-day Salem Witch Trials are about hatred of women? Are ludicrous claims that having a baby in your 30s (and, horrors, a career!) makes someone a bad mother who hated their children so much they killed them not bleeding obvious enough for you?

CODallmighty, please tell..............

Just glad you read it ladida!!
I thought no one will be arsed reading all this they'll just skim it whilst constructing their own argument (as we all do).

I'll go to bed happy knowing 1 person bothered. Thanks.

Please Cod please.

I understand where you are coming from psycho, when you mean in general terms on MN. But I disagree with you completely with regard to RM and the institutions that allowed to him to continue with this proposterous theory that indicated his dislike for women that resulted in his testifying about women without having met them to the effect that they are baby killers.

Im sure there should be punctuation in there somewhere but its late and im shattered.

Cod - give it up.

VVQ agree about RM.

Disagree about institutions.

But shall we agree to disagree?
Think we've said it all and explained our positions.(weak smile as i'm knackered)

Edam why such hosility? it's this reaction to being 'off messaage'(that is: concensus of MN viewpoint) that I find depressing.

Or maybe that's just because it's too late and really i should be in bed.

which is where I am going.

If RM wasn't working within a misognystic institution, how did he get away with saying what he did, in the way he did?

For so long....

Hunker, you should be in bed too lady....

Psycho, off topic. May I ask how you came to chose such a nickname.

Curiosity is my motivation, of course.

Psycho I really think you're seeing hostility where there is none. Edam is disagreeing with you, not in a particularly hostile way imo.

Thanks for your clarifications. I agree with Aloha and Edam - there is no doubt that there is a massive strain of mysogyny within a) the medical profession and then b) various bits of the medical profession such as psychiatry. TBH you sound as if you're in denial about it. Why not change it from the inside, instead of going native?

Aloha's story is one of those ones that taken out of context, you could say: "but one bad doctor doesn't equal mysogyny". However, there is a mass of evidence out there of similar stories to hers, which when looked at as a whole, show a serious problem with the medical profession's attitude to women. I don't think it's helpful to deny it, or pretend it applies to men equally. Some men too were burned as witches; but that's not an argument for denying the mysogyny that motivated the witchfinders.

It is really quite patronising and rather lame to suggest that as I disagree with you, for reasons I've clearly explained and which I think if you care to look at closly and acknowledge make sene even if you do not agree,that I am 'in denial'.

I diagree with your intellectual viewpoint and hold a valid one of my own.

I really think you have ignored my explantions which are intellectually vaild and do not reqiure an 'in denial'explamation. Which insidentally is meaningless psychobabble, and a very weak justification to apply to some one who does not agree with you.

I beleive Ewas unecessarily hostile:

'Oh please, Psycho, I have actually opened a book once or twice in my life, you know'- did I ever suggest anything to think she hadn't?

'not bleeding obvious enough for you?' This is obviously hostile and misses all my pints, my point being i don't think it's simplistic and obvious I think it's much more complex then many of you suggest.

LOL, let's all accuse each other of being patronising.

Cod, spill!