Started by James Cox6 · · 👁 6 views · 57 replies
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Kimberly Davis52 said:A female OB-GYN is still an OB-GYN—I don't see why we need to use masculine pronouns here. Why are you using he to describe her writing medical leave or agreeing and stating things if she's a woman? 😕
Chris Robinson61 said:I actually have this amazing male OBGYN...
I went to see a female doctor once and honestly, I’m never doing that again—not because she wasn't skilled or anything, but just because the whole vibe was so incredibly awkward for me. Like, having a woman examine me? It felt weirdly intrusive, maybe that's just how I'm wired, but that feeling totally overrides everything else, I just can't deal with it.
I'm really not one for being touched by anyone except my man, but when it's absolutely necessary, I'd much rather it be a guy... preferably a decent one, too.
Susan Diaz91 said:I really can't get behind such a sweeping generalization. It’s not just about textbook expertise—there’s also this thing called intuition and, you know, personal experience.
Personally, I've always found female gynecologists to be much more intuitive, even though my private OBGYN during pregnancy was a man (actually, all my private doctors during my pregnancies were men), while my primary care doctor through Medicare who handled my referrals was a woman.
And that woman (my primary doctor) insisted on certain tests that the male doctor never even mentioned. For instance, when I was pregnant, she told me we should run four targeted swabs, but when I brought it up to the guy, he just said there was no need.
Then, when I had to go in for an amniocentesis, the male hospital doctor told me during rounds, "You'll be fine to head home today and get back to work tomorrow." But then, the female hospital doctor came into my room after the visit and told me, "No way. An amniocentesis is invasive; a woman is sensitive, and the baby is even more so. Take a week off for medical leave and just rest."
When I actually gave birth at 27 weeks (everyone knows my story about losing my baby), I was recovering in the hospital, and during the morning rounds, the male hospital doctor told me, "Alright, just lie here until the end of the week and then you can head back to work on Monday."
After his rounds, the female hospital doctor came to my room and told me:"Don't listen to what those men say; they act like everything is easy for everyone."
She went on to say, "According to the textbooks and the attitude of male doctors, a woman is just a statistic and everything is simple, but no two women are the same, and no birth is ever the same."
"Stay home and take care of yourself for forty days—you're in postpartum recovery regardless of whether the pregnancy lasted 27 weeks or not; you're a mother who just gave birth, period."
When I asked her why she felt that way, she explained, "God forbid you develop an infection in the uterus, vagina, or ovaries. According to the books, an infection might not seem that serious, but the danger is that infections can lead to cysts later on, and those are incredibly hard to deal with. I believe you need to stay home for those forty days, no matter how long the pregnancy lasted."
Meanwhile, the male doctor snapped at her, "Colleague, you're talking about extremes and exceptions, not the rule," and added, "Look at the patient; she's a strong woman and quite large, so she can probably get back to work." He even signed my discharge papers saying I was "fit for duty."
I took that whole situation back to my primary gynecologist (the one under Medicare who handles my medical leave), and she completely agreed with the female hospital doctor, saying, "Why would you even risk making an exception?"
So, I wouldn't say it's strictly about clinical knowledge. It's about a woman's perspective on another woman—especially if that gynecologist has been through pregnancy or childbirth herself and has that lived experience—rather than just following what's written in a manual or what medical statistics suggest.
