A few days ago I published an article about the sense of humor of the Spanish Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics and the public complaint that, in this regard, has made the Association El Parto is Ours.
The jokes, published in the official Bulletin of that society, which represents the group of gynecologists who care for women in their pregnancies, their deliveries and the diseases related to their reproductive system, have aroused an intense controversy in the network.
Controversy that reads in the comments of the readers and that has already jumped to the public opinion in general thanks to the echo that the news has had in the main mass media.
Let's analyze first the jokes. In all those I've seen, except in one, the mockery is not made about the medical group itself, but of its patients. Women, because their patients are women, are reflected as uneducated, cows, ugly, ignorant, sexual objects or prostitutes.
Their illnesses and their rights, as is the fundamental right to be informed and give their consent to medical acts, are ridiculed to a limit that I can only describe as denigrating.
It is true that if there is a joke about a gynecologist, who, in the cartoon, can even be recognized as one of the most important defenders of natural uninterrupted labor. Of him if they laugh, and it would be perhaps the least serious joke, since it is directed towards a current of attention and not against a patient, which should be something sacred.
However, the fact that the joke about a doctor refers to the one who attends natural births (smoking and drinking repanchingado without providing support to the parturients, everything must be said) demonstrates the lack of knowledge and acceptance of the recommendations of the World Organization of Health and the Normal Delivery Care Strategy of the Spanish Ministry of Health. A normal, non-pathological birth should not be operated if there is no medical need.
I do not care about the obsolete protocols of some hospitals, the opinions of some Hospital directors who deny their patients a natural birth, this, for a responsible doctor, should be something to fight, not a rule to abide by. Doctors take an oath, respect their patients and continually learn advances that improve care. It's your duty. Your duty is to learn to attend according to the most advanced research, not to repeat bad practices.
But returning to the most serious issue, the denigrating mockery of his patientsI would like to explain in detail the reasons why these jokes deserve the rejection, the complaint and the public denunciation of the patients and, specifically of the women and of those who position themselves against machismo.
They are macho jokes where it is presented a degrading image of women. We can accept, which I still do not understand, that some find sexist jokes funny, but not that doctors who care for women do so, as we would not accept that UNICEF published jokes about hungry children or CARITAS about poverty in its newsletter. Or the urologists' bulletin showing men on all fours in an examination, with a micropenis or laughing at their erection problems.
In addition, they are jokes where the patient degrades, his intelligence, his feelings, his sufferings and worries. Something unacceptable, in my opinion and not only in my opinion, as we will see later.
A doctor may make fun of the suffering of his patients at the bar with his friends, although, the truth is, I don't think he was the doctor who would choose him to help me, because I want to be respected when I'm in front and when I'm not. But of course an official medical society considers it worthy of being published in its newsletter a mood based on patient denigration It seems disgusting.
And, let's not forget, these jokes are made by people with power over women in especially delicate and sensitive processes: their pregnancies, the birth of their children, their sex life. Of them, not gynecologists, is one of those who make fun of them, making them appear as beings who are not respected and with whom they do not empathize.
They are doctors' jokes about their patients, not anyone else and their grace lies in laughing at the intelligence, rights, sexuality and pain of their patients.
Stop, the most bleeding is that these jokes are not limited to making them in private, they blatantly make them public and on top they do it in an official bulletin of the professional association of gynecologists.
The lack of sensitivity towards women who come to them is notorious, they appear, as I said, as deformed genitals, people without intelligence, who are not respected, who do not deserve a minimum of sensitivity and who, in addition, deserve even a deal denigrating if his sex life is active, if he is attractive or engages in prostitution. Misogyny, machismo and denigration of the patient, that's what these jokes look like to me.
But, as I said, my impression could be described as something personal. However, the media, gynecologists, the Patient Advocate and the Women's Observatory have already spoken as I tell you in the following topic. Meanwhile, the SEGO, is still silent.
