Bettany Hughes on Radio 4

I've now heard the historian, Bettany Hughes, three times on Radio 4: presenting her two half-hour programmes, Banishing Eve, and as one of the guests on Loose Ends yesterday, when I was horrified to learn of the cruel death meted out to Hypatia. I was very interested in Hughes' examination of the rôle of women in the founding of the Christian Church, and I warmed to her expressive voice, lively delivery and rich vocabulary. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rl4kn

Very clearly there was a deal of misogyny among the early hierarchy of the early church, and clearly there are many members of the church today who are still of that persuasion. I would welcome another series about institutional sex prejudice, this time specifically about the medical profession's ignoble history of prejudiced views about women and damaging treatment of them, which, like the sexism within the church, still has a destructive presence today.

See Women get worse heart treatment than men

and Fighting the System for NHS Complaints

A government consultation paper aims to change and rationalise some of the UK's discrimination legislation, e.g. relating to golf club membership.

Equality bill set to curb golf club discrimination - Guardian

Extract:

"Golf clubs and other private members' establishments will no longer be able to ban women members from their bars or discriminate in any other way on gender grounds under a shakeup of equality laws unveiled today.

The change is outlined in a government consultation paper aimed at rationalising the UK's complex web of discrimination legislation, some of which dates back 40 years, and introducing new protection for some groups.

Planned reforms include compelling private landlords to put in ramps and stairlifts for disabled tenants who request it, although the tenant would have to pay.

Changes to rules affecting private clubs and associations would mean those with mixed membership could no longer treat women differently.

Some golf clubs give female members limited access to club facilities or bar them from the running of the club.

The Carlton Club, the Conservative party's gentleman's club of choice, rejected a move last month to elevate women from "half member" status to full membership.

A source at the Department of Communities and Local Government, which is publishing today's green paper, said: "We firmly believe that people being treated as second class citizens when a club is open to all is simply not on."

However, in a move that will spare gentlemen's clubs without female members and the few remaining all-male working men's clubs, the government will also make clear it will not prevent the setting up of private clubs aimed solely at one gender or group.

While women's groups are expected to welcome the reform, campaigners believe the government must go far further in tackling more fundamental equality issues."

It is so much more important to outlaw the sex discrimination within the medical profession, that results in a woman with the same symptoms (e.g. of heart disease) as a man, finding that she is less likely to be physically examined and less likely to be offered tests and/or treatment than a man. Medics are inclined to regard a woman's reported physical symptoms as imaginary/psychogenic/exaggerated/hypochondriacal, etc despite their physicality, and this is very damaging to women's health. There is a wealth of research that bears this out, but nothing is done to legislate against this harmful practice. We all, male and female, pay taxes that fund the health service, but women usually get an inferior service.

Similarly, the most damaging ageism is practised by health professionals. - It is so blatant as to be a national scandal and it intermittently receives widespread coverage in the press. - But we still lack legislation to outlaw it.

Many doctors are also, in practice, discriminating against disabled people, e.g. people with learning difficulties, and this too tends to get quite widely reported, but nothing is done to prevent it by law.

How does equal membership of a golf club matter compare in importance to equality of access to appropriate health care and equal courtesy from our grossly overpaid, prejudiced medical profession?


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FOOTNOTES - Short Story by Margaret Wilde

FOOTNOTES

The driver parked a lorry on her foot. She hadn’t been standing long. She was just, you might say, collecting her thoughts, when the lorry was suddenly there, on her foot. Not the whole foot, let us say at once in the cause of exactitude, but a good deal of it, including all the toes.

She felt pain of course – my goodness yes – but the initial sensation was mixed with astonishment at the unexpectedness of what had happened and with the academic registering of the crunch, crunch of the bones under the weight and motion of the lorry.

Her mouth opened so wide in an involuntary eldritch scream that it felt as if the top of her head had blown off.

Perhaps the lorry driver was rather deaf, and maybe he suffered from visual impairment at times: at any rate he failed to notice her or her screams. He appeared to satisfy himself that the lorry was not an obstruction to other motorists, secured his vehicle and walked away, whistling, with his hands in his pockets.

Her screams were succeeded by tears. She had dropped her shopping bag and handbag and she desperately wanted to lie down as she felt so weak, partly with the pain, partly from the loss of blood and partly at the sight of her blood – running away down a convenient grating. But the very slightest movement increased the agonising discomfort. The problem was temporarily solved by her fainting. When she recovered consciousness she was lying down and felt no desire to get up.

She called for assistance.

“Sorry, dear. It’s nothing to do with me. I don’t live round ‘ere. I’ve only come on a cheap day return.”

A policeman arrived.

“No, Madam, I cannot move the lorry. I do not have the keys. I do not have the owner’s permission and I do not have a Heavy Goods Vehicle licence. Anyway it isn’t causing an obstruction or anything. You shouldn’t have allowed him to drive over your foot. I certainly wouldn’t allow anyone to park on my feet – they’re less important to a woman, of course.”

“He may be back soon. Probably just gone for his lunch. Have you got a library book with you? You could be reading it to pass the time while you’re waiting for him and it’ll take you mind off your foot.”

“Talk sense! I don’t want to take my mind off my foot. I want someone to take the lorry off my foot! Can’t you call the fire-brigade?”

“Oh I can’t call them, Madam. It isn’t a fire. And it might prevent them from dealing with a sudden emergency.”

“But this is an emergency!”

“Now let’s get this into proportion, Madam. It’s only a foot. It’s not like people possibly burning to death in a blazing building, is it? You must see that.”

“GET THE LORRY OFF MY FOOT!”

“Don’t you think you’re being melodramatic, Madam? You’re obsessed with lorries and feet, aren’t you? We did a bit of psychology on our course. I bet you’re a foot fetishist! Go on, admit it!”

“Imbecile! I never normally think of lorries or feet. I can’t think of anything else now that the one is parked on the other.”

He fetched a doctor.

“Give me morphine and get me to hospital, doctor!” Her voice was strident.

“Don’t try to tell me my job, young lady. I make my own diagnoses, thank you. You are clearly hysterical. Here’s a prescription for tranquillisers. Take three a day and you’ll soon see your problems in a different light.”

She died an hour later.

The police officer was reprimanded for his failure to secure an arrest – of the bleeding, that is.

Margaret Wilde © 1985

BEST FOOT BACKWARD - Short Story by Margaret Wilde

Best Foot Backward.

“What you have to realise, my girl, is that your foot is really there. – The fact that I can’t see it and that you feel the need to wear a platform attached to your ankle is quite immaterial. Your real problem is psychological. Once conquer your obvious but groundless resentment of the surgeon who operated on it and the foot will return, good as new. You need to be open-minded about these matters, you know. We’re learning more and more about the invisibility of physical parts following lack of trust on the patient’s part. It used to be thought, for instance, that if a foot were there it would obviously be visible, but now we realise that this is far too simplistic a view. The mind works in strange ways. We are learning more and more all the time. – Why, only the other day I was reading about this. I could lend you the book. - It would help you a lot.”

“Look, Professor, this is silly. – My foot has been missing for over two years now. I used to fall down constantly without it until someone with a mind uncluttered with psychological hogwash made me the platform. That has enabled me to avoid many of the falls so that I feel somewhat better and can get about a bit and discuss the matter and pursue it.”

“Ah, yes – discussion – that’s right. You need to talk over your imaginary grievance with a psychiatrist – a sympathetic one, of course.”

“No. I have ventilated the issue enough with my friends. I do need to talk with you about the best type of artificial foot to use, since making artificial feet is your speciality.”

“Well I’ve given you ten minutes already. I really do feel that it’s twenty or thirty sessions of an hour or so with a psychiatrist that you need. It’s a lady psychiatrist I have in mind. Alternatively you might prefer to have your leg amputated. That would stop this obsession about a missing foot.”

“Look: I have a list here of other people who have missing feet, hands, etc. after being operated on by that surgeon. None of us is resentful. Many are outraged – including me. But the addition of the pseudo-psychological claptrap to the severe physical problems makes some people too ill to summon the energy to do anything but suffer. And one artificial limb maker rang me anonymously to say that many of the victims have died following particularly bad falls caused by missing feet.

“We only want you to ensure that all of us get the most suitable prosthesis possible and that the matter of the accidentally severed limbs be properly investigated so that others are saved from this distress in the future. We thought that in so physical a matter there could be no mistake but we were wrong. There seems no limit to the credulity of artificial limb makers – or rather, to the lengths to which they will go in covering up negligence.”

“I really cannot listen to talk like this. It is very upsetting for me. I must recommend immediate referral to a psychiatric ward. Totally away from the misguided friends who encourage your delusions, and out of touch of the similarly deluded wretches you mention, you may very easily recover your senses after a few years – by which time it will be too late for you to sue and that surgeon will have retired anyway!”

Margaret Wilde © 2007