Letters to the Editor
calcareous
Published Letters: 286 Editor's Choice: 48
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sexism
[Read the article: Does the sex of your doctor matter?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]sex·ism
1: Discrimination based on gender, especially discrimination against women.
2: Attitudes, conditions, or behaviors that promote stereotyping of social roles based on gender.
If you are making a decision about what doctor to see, and taking their sex into account, you are being sexist (see def #2 above). It is no different than not wanting to have a woman auto mechanic work on your car because you think men are better mechanics.
As for the matter of personal comfort, it is really no different. If I told you I prefer to see a white doctor, because I'm not as comfortable with a black doctor, wouldn't you think I was at least a little racist?
To discriminate is to make judgements based on the characteristics of people that aren't relevant to what is being evaluated.
When dealing with gender-based health issues, people seem to think that a doctor of a different gender is somehow intrinsically less capable. This is nonsense. Would you expect your doctor to have had cancer before you would let them treat your cancer? A doctor don't know how to treat disease based on personal experience with the disorder, they know how to treat it based on familiarity with the medical literature and thru extensive training.
By all means, seek medical care from whatever doctor you want to see - it is a free market. But if you are choosing a doctor and taking gender into account, then you are making a sexist decision. I would advise you to try to open your mind a little, and if you care for your health, make your decision based on things that really matter - like expertise with specific disorders.
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@ brightstar65
[Read the article: Does the sex of your doctor matter?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]> many female doctors got into medical school not on their merits but to fulfill gender quotas
Lots of people get into med school due to influential parents as well. Unless you are making an argument that female doctors are less capable, why even bring this up? Some doctors are simply better than others, and you can't predict which ones based on their gender. This is true for both your suggestion, and the article's inconclusive premise.
>...risk people's lives... that only makes you accessory to murder.
That is a pretty unreasonable and far reaching claim, which if generalized, would make us all accessories of some sort or another. Do you drive a car? Well, then you are contributing to climate change, which can cause floods, which can kill people, so you too are an accessory to murder. You might as well be filling up the tank with the blood of children. (see what I mean about unreasonable?)
> I would think this would be a stellar opportunity for feminists to help put together a doctor rating system that can easily be accessed on the internet by anyone.
This isn't a cause for only feminists, even the most regressive traditionalists deserve quality medical care. You'll be pleased to know that the foundation of a rating system for doctors is already in the works - electronic medical records and outcomes tracking will allow this to be done in a meaningful fashion within a decade. More reliable than any sort of patient feedback, it will actually track results and not be skewed by patient bias.
As for sweet_byrd's unfortunate case, that is NOT sexism. Her aversion is quite understandable, given what she has experienced. She isn't in a position to make an even handed evaluation of a physician, because she can't get past the strong emotional response she has based on prior experience. That she chose to see a male doctor at the time she was attacked shows that sexism isn't behind her current situation.
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Life presents difficult decisions
[Read the article: What I wouldn't do for my cat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've had to deal with sick pets before, and it is never an easy decision to euthanize a pet. However, the same difficult decisions come up in human medicine as well. Should a family drive themselves into economic ruin to buy an ailing parent 6 more pain filled months? Once the inevitable happens, the survivors have to continue to carry the burden for as long as it takes to pay it off. What then if they get sick?
As our ability to cure disease has increased, our tolerance for pain and sickness has decreased. It has now reached the point where people think they are entitled to lives free of difficulty, and this is clearly an unreasonable expectation. When choosing whether or not to consume an expensive medical service, we need to consider what we are giving up when we are doing so. While the consequences of the decision can be stark (life or death) the decision itself is complex and nuanced.
Such is life. We can only do the best we can, and try to consider the needs of everybody, with sympathy and compassion.
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will pay down the second mortgage
[Read the article: What will YOU do with your fiscal stimulus check?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...which is the same thing I do with all my spare income.
Managed to leverage myself into a small home in a moderately expensive urban area 4 years ago, and since then my full focus has been on getting control of the situation. It is an older home, so I needed to take out a second mortgage after a year or so for some high-priority repairs and also I used it to consolidate prior credit card debt at a low rate. Once it is gone (maybe another year or two if things go well) I will breathe more easily and start to entertain notions of expensive TVs, or vacations, or the like.