The medical paradigm establishment narrative
A couple of comments on Jennifer Block’s Facebook post reporting and denouncing the removal of her hit-piece on Jen Gunter:
Maya Shetreat You hit a nerve because you’re taking aim at the misogyny of medicine and of patriarchy in general. How dare you imply women are capable of making educated decisions on their own?! You are describing a paradigm that is deeply threatening to the establishment.
It doesn’t feel good when the haters swarm, but know it’s because what you’re saying is deeply important and resonates with many people. Otherwise they’d ignore you…
Jennifer Lang Maya Shetreat It’s nice to see you here. I KNOW you understand what happens when the dominant narrative gets challenged in a poignant and insightful way. Grateful to have your voice and wisdom here.
Jennifer Lang was cited by Block in the hit piece because she’d written an open letter to Gunter on Facebook hitting the same themes.
All these catch-phrases – patriarchy, women are capable, describing a paradigm, the establishment, the dominant narrative – they can reflect a truth but they can also be used as tokens, symbols, substitutes for thought. It can be true that some doctors are too dismissive of women’s concerns and that Jen Gunter is pretty much the worst example of that that Block could have come up with.
Maya Shetreat Also, can you imagine in a million years someone saying that men should only listen to the medical experts, because they will otherwise be misled by potentially non-scientific options? 😒
Uh…yes? That is, if she means “can you imagine in a million years someone saying that men should pay attention to medical professionals on medical issues rather than Gwyneth Paltrow or Doctor Oz,” then yes, I can easily imagine that, in under a second.
I am so sick of the anti-scientific, anti-expert obsession, especially in women’s health issues. Challenging the patriarchy does not mean rejecting every single thing any man has ever done or said. It does not mean branding science as a “male” field, or branding medicine as something “men” do to oppress “women”. It means getting rid of the things men do to oppress women, while maintaining the things that are in our best interests. It does not mean abandoning all rationality and reason, though I have seen that argued (in my playwriting program, I protested parts of one book my mentor had me read because they implied women don’t do rationality and scientific thinking, we need a mother paradigm and emotional woo-based things).
Women do science. Women do medicine. And women are expanding these fields in new directions, taking women’s needs and women’s “lived experience” into account, to incorporate the unique bodies and experiences of women into the scientific paradigm of the medical establishment. So we don’t kill women with stupidity, or with treating them like deviant versions of men, but as fully functional human beings in their own right.
It is people lie Paltrow and Block that contribute to the patriarchy, because they willingly accept the long-standing paradigm that women just feel things, and can’t think them through rationally. They buy into the language of the male-dominated establishment that told women we couldn’t be what we wanted to be because our brains were fuzzy lady brains, and not fit to do math or science. Women like Jen Gunter are proving them wrong, and too many women are trying to push her back into the box.
Shame on you, Jennifer Block, for aiding and abetting the patriarchy by showing them yet more examples of women who react in an emotional, fuzzy way, rejecting science in favor of woo.
What iknklast said. The chauvinistic male establishment isn’t challenged by women who reject science and expertise: they think that’s why women need male protection. They’re too sweet and dumb to understand the real world.
Maya and Jennifer are like self-identified feminists who feel empowered by wearing the burqa.Take that, Patriarchy!
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