Gym thinks only men can be Drs

[DrElizabethPlimpton]

I've just seen a link to a Daily Fail article (I won't link obviously) about a gym in Cambridgeshire

A paediatrician joined and she found that her electronic key wouldn't allow her access to the female changing room. The 'glitch' was explained by staff - apparently her title Dr automatically defaulted to the assumption she was male.
I'm currently speechless.

I'd like to think I'd have left the gym and gone and kicked up a fuss in the papers - and I like that she did.

I don't see why it would be so wrong to demand it be sorted out, though. As alex said, the better way for them to have dealt with it would have been 'ah, there is a problem, so sorry, let me give you another code'.

There is this constant expectation that women shouldn't dream of complaining, and that we should accept 'oh, I'm sure it will be sorted soon ... I'm sure no one meant any harm, little lady, now, just wait a few centuries and we'll evolve our way to a solution'.

It is absurd.

It's not a parallel, though, buffy, because for most men that would be such an unusual, novel experience. There's no context for it, for them.

The nearest parallel I can think, would be the sort of experience you might have if you're a male nurse.

It seems like this company failed to take it seriusly.

No shit, Sherlock. That is what we have been trying to get you to realize for quite some time.

This stuff happens to women all over the shop. Sometimes they could sort it; sometimes they could only apologize.

It'd be sorted if a man kicked up a fuss, though.

I can say that with faux-certainty, because I have precisely as much knowledge about this as you do. Yet, I suspect you will still throw your toys out of the pram at me making this unsupported statement, while you expect your own unsupported statements to be taken as fact.

Straw man argument.

No one else thinks it's necessarily the fault of the person on the desk. We just think they had a perfectly simple way of solving the problem, which has been outlined by alex, and which wouldn't involve dismissing the problem the way you recommended.

alex already covered that. What's the problem?

I do speak for everyone. I learnt it from you, when you started explaining how you knew exactly what was going on and could tell us all that it would not have been fixed for a man either.

You wouldn't be being hypocritical would you?

And btw, I know the reason. We've covered it, many times. It's ingrained misogyny in the system. Why you are so resistant to acknowledging that, I don't know. It's as if we explain something, you grasp it for a second or two, and then you're back to 'but what if there was [insert tenuous possibility here]? Maybe misogyny isn't real!'

It's hard to define, buffy.

In some contexts, it means 'making a rational, reasonable and firm complaint, and accepting no discrimination, as part of a fair and equal quest to make the world a better place'.

In others, it means 'a silly strop about insignificant things, which are simultaneously near-impossible to solve, and would no doubt be sorted out very soon anyway'.

I'll leave you to imagine what those 'contexts' might be ...

Kicking up a fuss - verb, when cis women get all hysterical about wanting to be treated with the same respect as men.

I wouldn't accept "change your title to Mrs / Miss and wait until we never get around to fixing this". If the woman concerned hadn't gone to the press, i can't imagine a business going to the expense of changing their database on the complaint of one woman, particularly when she now has the workaround of using the wrong title and that gets her into the changing room.

This is just more of the sort of crap women are expected to put up with so as not to be seen as the wrong type of feminist. Coming up with some spurious piffle about why women shouldn't be angry about this feeds the problem.

You have no idea it would be 'a few days'. That is, once again, minimizing the issue with your 'kim knows best' approach.

It has obviously escaped your notice that the system was designed to treat 'dr' as a default male title: so men are never going to have to accept this particular situation, are they?

You are trying to imply that women are just making a 'fuss'.

Do you realize this is actually quite a serious issue? It's not just one individual, 'fussy' woman wanting to be called by her proper title. It's about having basic respect for people's identities and achievements. I am surprised you cannot relate to how it might feel to be told you are not allowed to use the title you prefer, simply because of your gender.

And, for quite a lot of woman, this isn't something that happens once or twice - it happens all the bloody time.

Wasn't there a post last year about a school who thought a pupil had two dads because both parents used "Dr" as their title? As someone said at the time, that's a wonderful indication of how far gay rights have come and a depressing indication of how far women's rights have not come.

People are not being asked to accept this, women are. Frankly I find it laughable you think this would be resolved in a few days, Kim. Even with the best will in the world to fix this (which is a huge assumption), there will be a cost and a lead time involved. How lovely it must be to think that companies will jump to fixing problems based on the request of one woman. What are all these women complaining about?

lesbians of course would be stuck at the bottom as usual, as the very last thing anyone would assume is that it's two mothers with doctorates

And yet lesbians get told all the time that M2Fs experience much more discrimination than they do.

Maria - you're forgetting that a large number of MTFs are also lesbian which means that they're doubly discriminated against!

And how are they doubly discriminated against? If they pass, they get treated like lesbians, just like all lesbians. If they don't they get treated as Trans, and not lesbians.

I don't think it's that simple.