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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • That’s not what I am saying at all. Let me rephrase: I believe it is much more likely that whoever you’re talking to will listen to what you have to say - and properly consider it - if you’re saying it in a tone that puts them in a comfortable position where they feel safe.

    This is anecdotal for my experience but whenever I was talked to in a calm manner I would consider the other side geniunely. When it was screamed at me (e.g. what usually happens in politics) all I think about is “how I make this person leave me alone”. I don’t care about the content, I just want this situation to end.

    The end goal is to make that junior paramedic consider the perspective, and there are ways that are much effective to do that than rants.


  • That wasn’t my intention. It’s not “woman dramatic, man calm”. It’s just that I’ve found people to be persuaded to change their ways more when they’re not yelled at or being ranted towards.

    If OP was the one talking calmly and the man was the one yelling at him I would still say that about the man.

    Edit: I also agree with you that people should be able to rant, but I feel it works against anyone who rants when the objective is to try to make the other side change their ways.


  • I guarantee any fat man in the world can walk into an ER with chest pains, and they’d check his heart, not put him on a diet.

    This is anecdotal, but my dad who is a very fat person (180 kg) has been told by a variety of doctors that his chest pains are because he is fat. He should lose the fat and the pain would disappear. No screenings done, for years. They usually just gave him some generic painkillers and told him to lose weight and sent him home.

    At some point the pain intensifies heavily and he had an heart attack. In the ER they stabilized him, blamed it on him being fat again and let him go again.

    My dad decided enough was enough, and sought out private clinics. It turns out he had a rip somewhere in his chest that created cysts - or something - I was 6 years old at the time and never really understood what it actually was - which had nothing to do with him being fat. They put him in a surgery, fixed that and he was good as new. Still fat to this day, but has pains mostly from being old.

    I think the bias against fat people is cross gender, unfortunately.

    EDIT: spelling.


  • As a man, I personally don’t believe male doctors should be in charge of these types of medical conditions anyway, we lack the required organs to even begin to understand where the pain comes from, so we have no frame of reference when women talk about their internal issues

    I was thinking about this sentence for a while before commenting and I ended up deciding that I disagree.

    For me, the issue isn’t that the doctor is male. Even women that have been through regular GYN visits and even births wouldn’t be able to describe their body parts and functions beyond just the outside parts - if they weren’t educated about this. And most doctors are probably healthy people that do not have those kinds of symptoms so they would be able to reference it.

    So when we educate both male and female doctors about the human body of both genders, I tend to believe the knowledge is equal.

    But if that’s the case, then it could mean a few things. First, it would mean that women are being misdiagnosed often by both genders. I’ve read many threads in TwoX in reddit before, and it seems to be the case - there are a lot of stories of female doctors who also dismiss women’s symptoms. There are also stories of male doctors who did not dismiss them as well, so it’s not really based on their gender.

    And secondly, it means the problems comes from elsewhere. It could be lack of research on female patients, or generally a lack of full understanding of women’s bodies that contribute to it - I’m not educated enough to make a factually correct statement here. But this is my opinion: this happens because of our culture. Doctors are not immune to it, and in many cultures in the US and Europe, women are often viewed as dramatic, bitchy, vengeful, drama queens, exaggerating, and flat out attention seekers to the point of lying.

    This view is ingrained into many people from childhood. It is very hard for a person to even notice that the culture is skewing their point fo view on women. You can see it everywhere in media.

    Since that affects doctors (of both genders), I think they tend to use this skewed view of women when they diagnose them. I’m sure it happens subconsciously and they don’t mean it, but that’s what hapoens. And if you just assume the person complaining about stuff is lying or exaggerating and is just a drama queen, you tend to downplay their complaints, which usually ends up in a dismissal. Case in point - the girl in the article.

    So how do we fix this? We need to make sure more doctors are aware of this. Increase awareness of women specific illnesses, even rare ones. Find more ways to test women for possible causes for the symptoms they complain about. Increase difficulty for doctors to dismiss a woman’s complaints (e.g. a doctor must refer to a second opinion first, for instance). Take women’s complaints to the board (like Aston did in the article) much, much more seriously and make sure the responsible doctor is discouraged from repeating this behavior, and so on.


  • I enjoyed this comment until the last part.

    Nothing against you personally but I think that when you make it into a rant, it begins to fall on deaf ears. Instead of actually listening and thinking, the other party becomes defensive and focuses on kind of ignoring you, waiting for you to finish your tantrum. I think it was better if you had let your partner handle it, because he said it calmly: “it is not your fault, the source is much bigger, but we’d like you to be more aware of it and assess how you can do it better”.

    I understand that it’s a sensitive subject and I don’t blame you for ranting. But if you want the other side to actually change for the better (because he can), you should think how you persuade him to do so.