Why don't doctors trust women? Because they don't know much about us

[Amw66]

I just don't see that, having spent my life working on a disease that mostly affects women. I find it hard to see where bias would come in there - it does affect more women.

And as pointed out, most doctors are women now anyway. And when it comes dismissing people they seem to be some of the worst. I worked with both male and female colleagues and the females were at least as likely to diagnose problems as psychological.

In our experience women doctors can be worse than males

 

[Sasha]

What about when I had renal colic and I pointed out to the nurse that the entonox machine was not delivering any gas. She pretended it was, because she had been told to, despite it being switched off, presumably because someone said I was just being hysterical. She was too junior to realise that I knew perfectly well what was going on.

Regardless of any gender bias, what do you think is going on with doctors and all this denial of patients' pain?

 

[V.R.T.]

Responding to a deleted post:

I entirely accept that there are specific ways in which women have it worse, and that there are different dynamics for women who are chronically ill.

However, there are specfic dynamics to how the expectation and performance of masculinity play out among men that are subtle and hard to explain if you haven't personally experienced them. And as a man who has gone from being able bodied to severely disabled, I can tell you that the privileges of masculinity do largely go away once you're percieved as disabled, especially with an illness many don't understand or even believe in. And for an autistic man like me they were always unevenly distrubuted based entirely on how I was percivied/how well I was able to mask in a particular interaction. Which doesn't mean people are going to tell a cis man that having a baby will fix it because that's a specific prejudicial thing that women face.

And I don't think it is as simple as 'be a man as opposed to a woman'. I think there is an extent to which both ableism and misogyny (and a lot of homophobia etc) stem from a hatred of perceived weakness, of all the things that fall outside the circle of being 'strong' in the narrow concept of strength in the patriarchal conception of it.

Which is not to say, again that there arent specific tropes about chronically ill women. Of course there are, I've been aware of them my whole life. But there are also specific ways people treat men that they percieve as hypochondriacs or anxious or weak.

I don't think acknowledging these things takes anything away from our ability to discuss the experiences women have. It doesn't mean 'women don't face prejudice' or 'misogyny isn't real'. But patriarchal society confers a specfic set of expectations, rules and codes onto all men which were are punished for not abiding by. And that's very important to acknowledge.

 

[Braganca]

And I don't think it is as simple as 'be a man as opposed to a woman'. I think there is an extent to which both ableism and misogyny (and a lot of homophobia etc) stem from a hatred of perceived weakness, of all the things that fall outside the circle of being 'strong' in the narrow concept of strength in the patriarchal conception of it.

Agree.. it comes down to basics of presentation too. I’ve seen quite a difference in how I’m treated (by male and female doctors) from when I became ill at 36, and their perception of me was “young athletic successful executive” and now at 47.. if I’m in jeans w minimal makeup all they see is “depressed middle aged woman”.

Recently I tried to get around this by wearing a dress, jacket and red lipstick for an appointment. The female doctor wrote “background of ME but otherwise very fit and well”. People are lazy and make snap judgements regardless of being told repeatedly “I’m housebound and mostly bedridden”.

 

[Utsikt]

The bias against women throughout western history is undeniable. You don’t have to look further than the basic civil rights like voting.

Is there a point where we should assume that bias against women is the default?

 

[rvallee]

It's a systematic problem of "evidence based medicine" where trials are just designed to get approval rather than optimized for the best patient experience (which costs more money)

Always just enough to get above the arbitrary threshold, whether legitimately or not. The race to the bottom has, unsurprisingly, led to bottom-level performance, by incentivizing shaking those results up hard enough to get a few blips above the line, and only counting those when preferred.

I guess it feels easier this way. It's not, but this is a vibes thing. It's all about getting a foot in the door. Once you're there, you can stay there indefinitely, never have to bother doing any real work.

 

[MrMagoo]

The bias against women throughout western history is undeniable. You don’t have to look further than the basic civil rights like voting.

Is there a point where we should assume that bias against women is the default?

Only if you ensure you add “not all men” otherwise the debate gets hijacked by “I don’t do that/a woman was as bad/but <insert whataboutery>” there has to be about 75% of any debate of women’s issues overtaken by these diversions so the women don’t get to speak about what’s affecting them. They’re not “special”.

 

[MrMagoo]

Note that the problem wasn't that they didn't include women in the trials, the problem is the trial design itself - they didn't consider trialing lower dosages for women. Also note that age makes a huge difference in dosage as well, with elderly people often needing half the dose of some drugs (eg antidepressants).

The point is that it isn't the numbers of women in the trial that is the problem, it is the design of the trial eg not listening to women that the dosage is too high that is the problem.

It's a systematic problem of "evidence based medicine" where trials are just designed to get approval rather than optimized for the best patient experience (which costs more money)

So it’s still a problem for women, it just isn’t the exact problem that was specified.

 

[V.R.T.]

Replying to a post saying that when a disabled woman experiences bias it’s the bias against disability compounded with bias against women:


I want to point out that this discussion morphed into one about the experiences men and women have with chronic illness before I posted in the thread. So I'm not sure why I've been singled out. I didn't mean to undermine anyone's experience or derail the conversation. I can see what is broadly what has happened here though.

My point was that being seen as 'a man' is not just a static thing. 'Be a man', 'man up' etc. mean perform the actions associated with masculinity or you will forfeit its privileges. The status of 'man' is something that can be conferred or removed depending on how you and your actions are percived. And because of that there are experiences of prejudice that are unique to being a chroncially ill or autistic man.

I don't think we can call the fact that male pwME dont get treated quite as awfully as female pwME 'privilege' outside of a very rigid academic construct of the word, considering how awful both experiences are.

My entire life was destroyed by ableism and toxic masculinity, essentially. I feel I should be able to share that experience. If this was the wrong place i apologise.

I won't reply further because Ive gone far beyond my available energy reserves.

 

[Trish]

Mods have decided to lock this thread.

The topic of whether women and men are, or are not, treated better or worse by doctors has been discussed several times on the forum already, and while we can all agree both women and men may have particular problems with both male and female doctors, and most people with ME/CFS have experienced bad treatment, the discussion tends to descend into tetchy arguments about which groups are treated worse.