244. Halo-Effect of Male Doctors as Saints

Halo-Effect of Male Doctors as Saints

There are huge cultural differences between Germany and the USA concerning the cross gender choice of doctors.

I wrote entry 241 after googling 'male doctor female patient' and finding a lot of discussion in favor of accepting the female right to choose female doctors and nurses.   I found like minded people, who agree that forcing a male doctor on a woman is a form of sexual assault and that the woman has a right to be protected from forced intrusion into her intimate space.  

There is no such sensitivity in Germany, absolutely none.   Whenever I have dared to mention to any person, male or female, that I consider a male doctor forced upon me in a hospital as an outrage, I am considered and treated as if I were in some way mentally ill.  
For Germans of both genders, a woman feeling uncomfortable with a male doctor is like someone feeling uncomfortable getting cold and wet in the rain.    Rain and male doctors are considered unavoidable events of life.    Even the German feminist movement, who ardently fights for the right of abortion, against pornography and many important issues, is oblivious to this issue.   The most prominent feminists seem to consult male doctors without thinking twice about it. 

I made the same google search as above in German:  männlich Arzt weiblich Patientin. 

I perused the first 100 findings.   Some major topics:

1. Statistics about the number and specialties of female and male doctors.  
2. Different communication styles of female and male doctors
3. Male doctors may lack understanding for the female way of experiencing sexuality
4  Female doctors may be the better qualified doctors for selected illnesses
5  Female gynecologists can be more knowledgeable by knowing, what they are examining and more rough for the same reason
6  General behavioral differences between male and female doctors
7  Male doctors' ignorance of the needs of female patients

But there was absolutely nothing about the suffering of women forced under male intrusion into their intimate space.  

Cases of doctors drugging and abusing women are reported once in a while in the media.   Only a few days ago, there was a case in the newspaper of a male nurse aged 27 having abused 7 women between 72 and 98 over a time of several years, some of them demented or in a coma.
http://www.mt-online.de/lokales/regionales/4222217_Pfleger_missbraucht_aeltere_Patientinnen.html
In this article, it is reported that some people expressed strong outrage and shock.   But it all focuses only on the misconduct of this one individual nurse.   

"Weder seine Zeugnisse oder die Bewerbungsgespräche noch seine Arbeit hätten Zweifel an seinem verantwortungsvollen Umgang mit den Bewohnern erkennen lassen"  
Translated:  Neither his references, nor the job interviews nor the performance of his work have led to any doubts concerning his responsible interactions with the inpatients.

That one bad guy is considered as personally guilty.   There is not even a hint of the question, if forcing helpless old women, who cannot even protest, into the power of a male nurse is a wrong decision and should be reconsidered.  

Whenever children are concerned, either when directly abused by adults or when indirectly abused by paying for child pornography, there is an outcry about what to do.   Child pornography is illegal, and when a child is abused, all those, who have not prevented it, bosses of institutions, child protection authorities and others are also hold responsible.  
But as soon as a victim is an adult woman, nobody bothers really, who enables the abuse, who could have prevented it.   There is no responsibility ascribed to anybody except by the direct felon. 

When the bishop moves a pedophile priest to another job, where he can continue the abuse, everybody holds the bishop responsible.    When the manager of a nursing home orders female patients to be nursed by male nurses, nobody here in Germany holds him responsible. 


I have only one explanation.   Even 66 years after the overthrow of the nazi dictatorship, some of their mentality is still ruling the German culture in a subtle but very detrimental way.  
It is the submission to both the authorities and to the authority of dominant and high status men.   It is not so much an external but even worse, an intellectual and emotional submission.    People are brainwashed, that authorities are right as are all men with the authority given to them along with high status and a high position on a hierarchy.

In nazi times, women were supposed to produce as many children as possible and raise them.   Doctors were men, they were supposed to help deliver the children.    

Doctors in Germany are considered as gods in white and by halo effect also as saints.   One reason is the German university system.   University is tuition free for all, who have passed the high-school end examination called Abitur.   So there are by far more people wishing to study medicine, than there are places available.   Accepted are only those with the best marks.   That means, those, who are both, the most intelligent and the most conforming to the requirement of school.   They were the most submissive to their teachers, later on they want to experience the submission of others. They choose to become doctors for the high status and the high income.  But there is neither a selection nor a self-selection for emotional intelligence, ethical fitness or altruism.  

Confronted with doctors with high status, considered as a sort of saints, women brainwashed to accept subtle male domination as something to be taken for granted are too much in awe to even doubt their obligation to be sheep to the doctor's treatment, whatever it is.     

There is also the islam problem.   When in the 60s Germany brought in lots of foreign workers, who then stayed and immigrated, all nationalities integrated, except the Turks, whose islamic culture kept apart.   I dislike any religion, that allows polygamy and male domination over women, so I also dislike the islam.  
Yet islamic women in Germany are the only women, who refuse and resent to be treated and nursed by men.    Unfortunately, the same people, who treat me as deranged and prude, also deny, that the islamic women want to protect their dignity the same way as I do.    These desensitized Germans have the prejudice, that it is a part of the islamic women's repression and that they want female doctors only in obedience to religion and husbands and not by their own personal sensitivity to their dignity.  
This is very flawed logic.   An islamic woman wants a female doctor.   The islam is bad for women, ergo wanting a female doctor cannot be good for women, even for German women. 

My only good luck is, that I only live 25km from the dutch border.   If ever I need to, I know, where to go to the hospital.  

"Female patients have the right to refuse treatment by a male doctor. Only in emergency situations can a woman be forced to accept a male doctor."

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2007/12/women_can_refuse_to_see_a_male.php

243. Patients' Cross Gender Choice of Doctors and Nurses - 2

Patients' Cross Gender Choice of Doctors and Nurses - 2

This continues entries 241 and 242.
This is also a reply to Suzy's text, who has invited me to add my comment.
http://patientmodestysolutions.blogspot.com/2010/12/modesty-vs-moralsthe-hidden-battle.html

2.  Why do institutions ruthlessly force treatment and nursing by doctors and nurses of the opposite gender upon patients, even though they protest and resist?   

This concerns institutions like hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, forensic and psychiatric wards, in short all institutions, where people enter, because they have no choice to stay out, either by health issues or by being admitted by law. 

The principle of medical treatment is supposed to be:  primum non nocere.   That means, first of all, do no harm.  

It is by now general accepted science, that psychological factors have a very important part in helping or impeding the healing of any health issue.   
When a woman experiences the handling of her body by a male doctor or nurse as a sexual assault and she is powerless to refuse it and to protect herself, this does serious harm to her.   This may well make her more sick and impede her healing.    It is a violation of the primum non nocere rule. 


There are several factors to consider:

1.  Who has the power to decide the job organization, the institution governance, the rules, the choice to employ male or female nurses?
Who is responsible and accountable, when a male nurse washes a woman in spite of her protest?
Has he decided this himself, is the distribution of the work load decided by the workgroup or by the management and by dominating bosses?
Are there any rules to protect the women, but the staff ignores the rules and nobody enforces them?

Does a male nurse risk his job, if he refuses to wash a non-consenting woman?  

2.  For what reasons do people choose to become nurses, doctors, massagers and other jobs of directly handling human bodies?  
How much maturity and emotional intelligence was in that choice?

• Average:  It is just a well paid and secure job, there has been a role model in the family, or there is any other haphazard but neutral reason.   
• Dangerously immature and lacking emotional intelligence:  Some men are driven by their subconscious sexual wishes to choose a job, which gets their hands on women's bodies.
• Maturity and emotional intelligence:  They are caring persons with a lot of altruism and maybe political motivation.  They want a job, where they feel to do something good and not just be part of the capitalistic rat race.  

3.  Has the institution of their training and the institution of employing them screened for their motivation to keep the dangerous and immature men out?


Assuming for the following considerations, that the male nurse is a person with the motivation to give good care to the patients.  He sincerely wants to avoid harming.    What are the reasons, that he in spite of this does wash the woman, who experiences this as a sexual assault?

1.  The woman suffers but nobody knows it.

1.1.  The woman has been so brainwashed, that she is has begun to belief herself to be a ridiculous prude, whose feeling uncomfortable in this situation were her own flaw, and she does not dare to protest.    

1.2.  She is scared to be punished as a trouble maker.   

1.3.. She has been declared as seriously mentally disturbed, and her protest against being washed by a man is mistaken by insensitive promiscuous men as a part of her mental condition.   In the worst case, if she has the courage to struggle against the sexual assault, they may even force psychopharmaceuticals into her.

2.  The nurse is promiscuous with extrinsic morals only.   For a promiscuous person, sexuality between bodies is principally permissible and acceptable, no matter if it goes as far as copulating like alley dogs or if indulging in any form of allowing or enjoying sexual stimulation.   For a promiscuous male nurse, it is just of no importance, how much or how little washing a woman's body is a sexual activity.    

If he is not only promiscuous, but also immature, he projects his own promiscuity upon all other people.   He has no clue, that a woman, for whom monogamy is a core part of her personality, perceives any sexuality without a committed relationship as a harmful assault.    He is ignorant, how much he is harming her.  
He may well have the morals not to cheat and to respect other people's relationship, and such.  He may well consider himself as a moral man, but based on the assumption of universal promiscuity.    If he is part of a social group, where promiscuity, desensitization, oversexation (entry 237) have become the norm, he may never have a chance to learn, that a woman has her own dignity and that her basic human rights include her right to keep unrelated men away from her intimate space. 
Such a nurse may take the alleged sanity of promiscuity so much for granted, that he may indeed sincerely belief, that a woman's wish for modesty is a sign of mental disturbance.

Only a male nurse, who is monogamy and whose promiscuity-inhibition (entry 101 ) has never been destroyed, can have the intrinsic moral based upon his own values, that enables him to know the limits of morally justifiable intrusion into a woman's intimate space.   

There is the problem:   The woman in the situation of experiencing the male intrusion into her intimate space directly suffers harm from that nurse, but the true cause of the harm is the social norm of widespread promiscuity and oversexation in mainstream society, and the desensitization of those, who have the power to inflict harm on the minority of the sensitive and monogamous people.    

Promiscuity is a scourge of humanity, and the harm of promsicuous male nurses is just one more indication of this.  

242. Patients' Cross Gender Choice of Doctors and Nurses - 1

Patients' Cross Gender Choice of Doctors and Nurses - 1

This continues entry 241.    After writing it, I did some googling, and I discovered lots of discussions on the topic of the importance of the gender of the chosen doctor.   I was astonished and at first also a bit puzzled, how many people defend their cross gender choice.  

With full sensitivity and consciousness for the biological facts, it is obvious, that every intrusion into the intimate space of a person by another person of the opposite gender is connected with sexual instincts.    When the intrusion is forced upon the person, it can be called a sexual assault.   People, who do not experience or define this kind of contact as sexual, are desensitized or in denial.  
Logically, if women would be treated and nursed by women, and men by men, a lot of trouble and suffering from abuse could be avoided.    But in spite of this, this pattern is not the normal case. 

This leads to two questions:

• Why do patients sometimes consciously choose doctors and nurses of the opposite gender?
• Why do institutions ruthlessly force treatment and nursing by doctors and nurses of the opposite gender upon patients, even though they protest and resist?   

1.  Why do patients sometimes consciously choose doctors and nurses of the opposite gender?

The doctor treats patients as they come, he does not choose their gender, usually he does not have this option.    Only the patients sometimes have a choice.   In most cases, it is the power of the institution like the hospital or contracts with health insurances, that assign patients to cross gender doctors.   In a hospital, a female patient may protest to be treated by a male doctor, and he my even sympathize with her wish ready to comply, but he is forced to take her case by the rules of the institution. 
-When a female heterosexual doctor treats a female patient, and when a male heterosexual doctor treats a male patient, it can be expected, that the quality of the treatment depends on the qualification of the doctor, the personality and the actual condition of stress, fatigue and such.    Sexuality does not interfere.
- When a patient is neither objectively nor subjectively troubled by the doctor of the opposite gender, then they are mutually persons, who would not mate, even if they were the only persons on a deserted island, because there is no chemistry, not instinctive attraction at all.   In this case, sexuality may also not interfere.

 

When a patient chooses the doctor by gender, the choice is always based upon conscious or subconscious sexual reasons.  
-When a female patient chooses a female doctor and a male patient a male doctor, they do it consciously for the reason of decency and for being sensitive enough to entering a situation, that they personally would perceive as sexual.   They do not want any sexual attraction without a relationship.   If they have a partner, it is an act of respect for the partner to avoid all inappropriate sexual attraction, they are risking by the examination.
-When a female patient chooses a male doctor, because she feels, that he is especially kind, patiently listening, taking his time for her, this is an expression of subconscious attraction converted into behavior, that is on the conscious level experienced as pleasant.   Assuming that neither the doctor nor the patient would even consider cheating on their respective partners, this does not exclude, that somewhere in the subconscious the doctor imagines a date with the attractive woman.   Maybe the woman is married to a man, who has a low status job earning little money and she subconsciously enjoys the attention of a man of high social status.  

-Some men are no only homophobic, but panicking about ever being either mistaken for gay or discovering any sign of being gay in themselves, it would cause them too much shame.   They are phobic to experience unwanted reactions if consulting a male urologist.   They prefer a female doctor.   Whatever reactions they show and cannot control, gives them a double set of feelings, superficial embarrassment covering the feeling of expressing the masculinity as subjectively for them it should be.   -Female patients are brainwashed to accept a male doctor and the presence of a chaperon as enough protection.   It does protect them from active abuse, but it does not at all diminish the instinctive urges of the male doctor, making him perceive her not as a person entrusted him to cure, but as a potential prey temporarily out of his reach.   

The second question will be answered in another entry.

241. Homage to Medical Patient Modesty

Homage to Medical Patient Modesty

Wow, I just discovered this web page.  
http://www.patientmodesty.org
So much progress seems to come from the USA, this is another example.   I can only dream of an organization like this in Germany.   

Luckily enough, I am healthy at 61, but how much longer I can stay clear of hospitals, I cannot know.   Whenever I mention to anybody, that I am more apprehensive of the ordeal of the sexual assault of being treated and nursed by men against my will than about getting sick, I am ridiculed as a prude.  

But being prude comes from prudence, and  

"Prudence is the characteristic of exercising sound judgment in practical affairs."
"It is often associated with wisdom, insight, and knowledge."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prudence

Finally, and for the first time in my life, I found likeminded people and even an organization, who back up my own perception and my own insights.    
I am sick and tired of being considered as the aberrant one in a pseudo-progressive and pseudo-liberated society, where mistreating and humiliating women is a social norm.   

Here are some examples:
http://www.patientmodesty.org/Case.aspx?GID=1

My reasons for prudence had started with my more intuitive perception of all the more scientific insights that I gained later by learning a lot about evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology.   

I have very good reasons for my prudence:

The necessity of desensitization and denial to enable life in a crowded society does only cover the social and the personal space, but it does not include the intimate space.     Unrelated people can interact and fulfil all requirement of every day life without any intrusion into each other's intimate space.  
As a consequence of the spiral of desensitization and oversexation, as described in entry 237, society has given up the protection of the intimate space in a way, that cannot be rationally justified or warranted at all.   

Based on my understanding of evolutionary biology and psychology, I claim:

1. Nakedness inside the social, personal and intimate space is principally sexual, both as the reason for the display and the reception of the display by the instincts.
2. Touch by a person of the opposite gender of the naked body is principally sexual.   (I am not talking about handshakes etc.)  
3. When people consciously do not experience nakedness and touch as sexual, either on the perceiving or the initiating end, it is a result of psychological dynamics and social norms.    It is an individual disposition, that cannot be generalized by projection upon others. 
4. When two persons agree on defining an interaction involving nakedness and touch of the naked body as not sexual, it is their freedom of choice.   Not experiencing nakedness and heterosexual touch as sexual does not give anybody the right to define it as not sexual for others.  
5. When a woman experiences an interaction involving looking at and touching her naked body as sexual, her subjective experience counts and has to be respected, no matter how the man defines or experiences it and no matter, for what purpose he does it.  

It is a basic human right:
"to be free and protected from unwanted sexuality"
http://www.faqs.org/periodicals/201010/2192565871.html  
That includes a woman's right to restrict, to whom she displays and whom she allows to touch her naked body.   It is her basic human right to restrict these sexual activities to a partner, whom she has chosen, and refuse them to and by any other man.
Touching and undressing a woman against her will is by law considered as the crime of sexual assault, when it is committed by an individual.   

But here in Germany, the same crime is committed on women every day with the consent of the law, social norms and many insensitive and ignorant people.    These completely irrational norms sort men into categories or harmless or harmful, which cannot be in any way justified as rationally.    Biologically, every man is an animal with instincts, no matter his training and professional career.   

Example:   A pair of identical male twins.   One is a warden in a prison, the other a male nurse.  
Every visitor to the prison has to accept being checked for not smuggling in anything.    But a woman has the legal right to only be examined by a female prison employee.   The male warden of the twins is not allowed to do it.  
But when the same woman has an accident and is brought into the hospital, without even being asked for her consent, the twin brother, the male nurse has his hands and eyes all over her naked body.  
The general justification of this is the firm belief, that by habituation and desensitization, for male doctors and nurses, handling a patients body is indeed not different from handling a pig's body or a wooden statue.   But for the woman, it is a sexual assault  without her consent and a violation of her basic human rights.

But the situation is much worse than that a woman is only being handled as if she were an object lacking dignity.  
The social norm forcing women into the hands of male doctors and nurses is based upon the wrong assumption, that indeed the woman's body is always experienced just as a piece of wood by the handling man.   This is a myth. 

The web and the newspapers are full with reports of sexual abuse by male doctors and male nurses.   

Some sources:

http://www.sexualmisconductbydoctors.com/index.aspx

"The database contained 728 sex-related orders taken against 542 physicians between 1981 and 1994 and 321 additional orders taken in 1995 and 1996. From 1989 to 1996, the number of physicians disciplined in each year increased from 42 in 1989 to 147 in 1996,"

http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/279/23/1883.full

"In California, there were disciplinary actions against 2,309 doctors, including 57 for sexual abuse of or sexual misconduct with a patient."
"According to a survey reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 10% of psychiatrists admitted to having sexual relations with their patients. In a July 1997 report, published by the Public Citizen Health Research Group, 28% of psychiatrists were disciplined for sex-related offenses"
"The number of all doctors disciplined for sexual misconduct doubled from 1990 to 1994. Of the total disciplinary actions taken against doctors, 5.1% were for sexual abuse of patients or other sexual misconduct."

http://www.rapetraumaservices.org/settings.html

"...reported elder abuse cases ....  Three percent involve sexual abuse. "

http://www.brentadams.com/library/nursing-home-abuse-statistics-elder-care-neglect-stats.cfm

Sexual abuse of patients is far from an exceptional event, it is an frequent occurrence.  Unfortunately, it is more logical, that it happens than not.   When a male doctor or nurse has his hands on a naked female body, the instinctive urges get triggered in him just as in any other man.  
The doctors and nurses are the direct criminals, as far as they have chosen a profession, that needs more self-control and responsibility than they have.  
When someone leaves meat on the table, and the cat eats it, who is to blame?   The cat for following the instinct to eat, or the one, who puts the meat in the cats reach?
When someone forces a woman against her will naked under the hands of a man and she gets abused, who is to blame?   The man for not controlling his instincts, or all those people, who coerced the woman into the situation?
If a woman asks in a hospital to be treated and nursed by women, but it is denied, and she then suffers abuse, those, who have made and enforced the rules are as guilty as the perpetrators.   When men cannot control their instincts, then women need to be protected from getting under their power.  

The cases of abuse are a clear indication, that nobody can ever guaranty to a woman, that a doctor patient relationship will not become a sexual relationship for him.  The whole myth of the doctor patient relationship as never sexual is the common justification to force women into the hands of male doctors.    Forcing women into a situation, that they experience as a sexual assault, based upon a myth is an outrage.  


The tragedy in our modern society is the denial and ignorance of the power of the instincts and of their real danger to women.    A woman like me, who is fully conscious and sensitive to the fact, that a male doctor is always a hazard of abuse, is ridiculed as a prude.   Being desensitized and in denial in an oversexed world is the social norm and forced upon those, who know better.  

Without reducing or excusing the perpetrator's guilt, those women, who think to be modern and no prudes and who therefore choose to consult a male doctor, bring the getting drugged and abused upon themselves by their own ignorance.    But the male domination of society is responsible for this ignorance.   It is male domination over the forming of rules, laws and norms of society, that has caused this disrespect for women's intimate space and the brainwashing of so many women to participate in this themselves.     

As long as desensitized and stupid women choose to consult male doctors, they unfortunately not only enable and perpetuate the abuse by those doctors for themselves, but also for those women, who know better, but have no choice.      

Women could have a lot of power.   If every woman would only consult female doctors, then the male doctors would be left to treat the men.   If enough women would demand it, there would be the all female treatment and nursing for women in the hospitals and nursing homes.