saw a woman talking about how betrayed she felt by her female gyno who really hurt her during a pap smear & claimed the cervix has no nerve endings. & i really do feel for her but also I think this is the problem with people only viewing medical bigotry and abuse as a problem that is the byproduct of other forms of bigotry & not tied to how the medical establishment works inherently.
it's not just "that doctor has internalized misogyny" it's that western medicine is, as in so many parts of our culture, deeply authoritarian. the patient is meant to be a passive problem to be solved by the active doctor. there is meant to be a stark harsh line between you and the doctor, where you are pure of any medical knowledge and simply report the raw data & let the doctor interpret it. this is how the system works. it fucks over marginalized groups the most because that's how marginalization works, but even a thin white abled cis man could get fucked over by this shit if he's unlucky.
female doctors will not save us! trans doctors will not save us! doctors of color will not save us! these are all GOOD things and we DO need more representation in the medical field, it DOES help. but it will not save us. the same goes with teaching as well frankly. these issues cannot be reduced down to simply getting more people from columns B C and D into the same fucked system. nothing can make up for the societal change of heart we really need.
