This is old, but horrific: Medical abuse of women
Graeme Reeves: Medical rape culture and collegiality (found here)
NineMSN’s Sunday reports: “Who Watches the Doctors?”:
A woman goes into her local hospital for routine minor surgery to remove a tiny lesion on her labia. But just before the anaesthetic is administered, her doctor leans over her - out of earshot of the operating theatre staff.
“I’m going to take your clitoris too,” he whispers.
Carolyn Dewaegeneire then slid under the anaesthetic, and woke up mutilated. Her entire external genitalia had been removed - nothing like the diagram she had been drawn during the surgical consent process.
....This isn’t a borderline case, a known but unfortunate side effect, a medical slip: this is a seriously impaired doctor practising for many months in completely inappropriate ways, mutilating, and raping patients - and nobody around him, not his colleagues, not nurses or other staff, were able to stop him. Did they convince themselves that it “wasn’t that serious, really”? Did they convince themselves it was none of their business? Did they fear personal repercussions should they blow the whistle? Why did nobody so much as check his registration when he was employed?
Those of you who read me or other disability bloggers: Amanda or Blue or so many others, know what my comment on this is going to be already. Why is this form of abuse so consistently invisible?
The post I quote from ends with the sentence "I smell the Patriarchy at work." I wish it were that simple. I smell more at work here: whatever it is that's made this kind of abuse invisible, which is the same thing that makes what happens to people with disabilities invisible as well.
NineMSN’s Sunday reports: “Who Watches the Doctors?”:
A woman goes into her local hospital for routine minor surgery to remove a tiny lesion on her labia. But just before the anaesthetic is administered, her doctor leans over her - out of earshot of the operating theatre staff.
“I’m going to take your clitoris too,” he whispers.
Carolyn Dewaegeneire then slid under the anaesthetic, and woke up mutilated. Her entire external genitalia had been removed - nothing like the diagram she had been drawn during the surgical consent process.
....This isn’t a borderline case, a known but unfortunate side effect, a medical slip: this is a seriously impaired doctor practising for many months in completely inappropriate ways, mutilating, and raping patients - and nobody around him, not his colleagues, not nurses or other staff, were able to stop him. Did they convince themselves that it “wasn’t that serious, really”? Did they convince themselves it was none of their business? Did they fear personal repercussions should they blow the whistle? Why did nobody so much as check his registration when he was employed?
Those of you who read me or other disability bloggers: Amanda or Blue or so many others, know what my comment on this is going to be already. Why is this form of abuse so consistently invisible?
The post I quote from ends with the sentence "I smell the Patriarchy at work." I wish it were that simple. I smell more at work here: whatever it is that's made this kind of abuse invisible, which is the same thing that makes what happens to people with disabilities invisible as well.