Female Doctor Quotes

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: "It's a girl.

...You know, lots of female cyborgs are left infertile because of the invasive procedures, but from the looks of it, I don’t suspect you will have any problems.” Cinder sat on one of the exam tables, chin settled atop both palms. “Lucky me.” The doctor wagged a finger at her. “You should be grateful your surgeons took such care.” “I’m sure I’ll feel much more grateful when I find a guy who thinks complex wiring in a girl is a turn-on.

I think like Joss Whedon [Stephen Moffat] often mistakes ‘empowered’ for ‘strong in exactly the way I personally want to sleep with

Nowadays I’m really cranky about comics. Because most of them are just really, really poorly written soft-core. And I miss good old storytelling. And you know what else I miss? Super powers. Why is it now that everybody’s like “I can reverse the polarity of your ions!” Like in one big flash everybody’s Doctor Strange. I like the guys that can stick to walls and change into sand and stuff. I don’t understand anything anymore. And all the girls are wearing nothing, and they all look like they have implants. Well, I sound like a very old man, and a cranky one, but it’s true.

My name...my name is Mary. I'm here with a friend.' Rhage stopped breathing. His heart skipped a beat and then slowed. "Say that again,' he whispered. 'Ah, my name is Mary Luce. I'm a friend of Bella's...We came here with a boy, with John Matthew. We were invited.' Rhage shivered, a balmy rush blooming out all over his skin. The musical lilt of her voice, the rhythm of her speech, the sound of her words, it all spread through him, calming him, comforting him. Chaining him sweetly. He closed his eyes. 'Say something else.' 'What?' she asked, baffled. 'Talk. Talk to me. I want to hear your voice.' She was silent, and he was about to demand that she speak when she said, 'You don't look well. Do you need a doctor?' He found himself swaying. The words didn't matter. It was her sound: low, soft, a quiet brushing in his ears. He felt as if here being stroked on the inside of his skin. 'More,' he said, twisting his palm around to the front of her neck so he could feel the vibrations in her throat better. 'Could you... could you please let go of me?' 'No.' He brought his other arm up. She was wearing some kind of fleece, and he moved the collar aside, putting his hand on her shoulder so she couldn't get away from him. 'Talk.' She started to struggle. 'You're crowding me.' 'I know. Talk.' 'Oh for God's sake, what do you want me to say?' Even exasperated, her voice was beautiful. 'Anything.' 'Fine. Get your hand off my throat and let me go or I'm going to knee you where it counts.' He laughed. Then sank his lower body into her, trapping her with his thighs and hips. She stiffened against him, but he got an ample feel of her. She was built lean, though there was no doubt she was female. Her breasts hit his chest, her hips cushioned his, her stomach was soft. 'Keep talking,' he said in her ear. God, she smelled good. Clean. Fresh. Like lemon. When she pushed against him, he leaned his full weight into her. Her breath came out in a rush. 'Please,' he murmured. Her chest moved against his as if she were inhaling. 'I... er, I have nothing to say. Except get off of me.' He smiled, careful to keep his mouth closed. There was no sense showing off his fangs, especially if she didn't know what he was. 'So say that.' 'What?' 'Nothing. Say nothing. Over and over and over again. Do it.' She bristled, the scent of fear replaced by a sharp spice, like fresh, pungent mint from a garden. She was annoyed now. 'Say it.' "Fine. Nothing. Nothing.' Abruptly she laughed, and the sound shot right through to his spine, burning him. 'Nothing, nothing. No-thing. No-thing. Noooooothing. There, is that good enought for you? Will you let me go now?

doctors were policing women who stepped outside society’s strictly defined gender spheres—work and intellect for men, home and children for women—in what could be described as a “medicalization of female behavior.

I remember being thirteen years old, sitting in my room all night, listening to the same song over and over. I thought that if I could write something beautiful, something honest, I could make someone love me.

Sometimes, I realised, the most important thing I could do as a doctor was to be kind.

Give me priests. Give me men with feathers in their hair, or tall domed hats, female oracles in caves, servants of the python, smoking weed and reading palms. A gypsy fortuneteller with a foot-peddle ouija board and a gold fish bowl for a crystal ball knows more about the world than many of the great thinkers of the West. Mumbling priests swinging stink cans on their chains and even witch doctors conjuring up curses with a well-buried elephant tooth have a better sense of their places in the world. They know this universe is brimming with magic, with life and riddles and ironies. They know that the world might eat them, and no encyclopedia could stop it

Okay, you shouldn’t be able to sit up,” Manny muttered. Was he? Oh, hey, check it… And as for the doctor’s second dose of surprise? Nice guy, but he was being a dumb-ass human when it came to the feeding thing. With this kind of hunger for that particular female? Tohr was frickin’ Superman, capable of bench-pressing a Hummer while he juggled Smart Cars with his free hand.

Using this novel method, doctors could treat female patients without violating the honor of her family.

We never understood the tendency to underestimate us, we who had been baptized and delivered through pain, who grinned and bore agonies while managing to draw on wing-tipped eyeliner with a surgically steady hand. We plucked our eyebrows, waxed our upper lips, got razor burn on our crotches, held blades to the cups of our armpits. Shoes tore holes in the skin of our heels and crippled the balls of our feet. We endured labor and childbirth and C-sections, during which doctors literally set our intestines on a table next to our bodies while we were awake. We got acid facials. We punctured our foreheads with Botox and filled our lips and our breasts. We pierced our ears and wore pants that were too tight. We got too much sun. We punished our bodies in spin class. All these tiny sacrifices to make us appear more lithe and ladylike—the female of the species. The weaker sex. Secretly, they toughened our hides, sharpened our edges. We were tougher than we looked. The only difference was that now we were finally letting on.

Incessant talking.” “Unusual zealousness.” “Strong will.” These were, in fact, textbook examples of female insanity in the nineteenth century. Doctors frequently saw pathology in female personality.

A young woman attending the best medical school in the world," Ransom mused aloud, "far from home, taking classes in a foreign language. You're a determined woman, doctor." "No medical school here would admit a female," Garret said pragmatically. "I had no choice." "You could have given up." "That is never an option," she assured him, and he smiled.

Women misjudged his pathology because of his prolific brain-games. He used gaslighting techniques to convince her she had a break with reality. Some survivors called it 'The Ultimate Mind Screw'--sending prominent female executives, attorneys, and doctors into mental institutions to recover from him. Coercion, psychological warfare techniques and Stockholm Syndrome symptoms have left survivors sawed off at the emotional knees by a smooth-talking and ear-to-ear grinning psychological terrorist.

Before you let your doctor give you testosterone shots or pills, try to boost it naturally by dramatically decreasing or even eliminating sugar, wheat, and processed foods from your diet. A sugar burst has been found to lower testosterone levels by up to 25 percent. If you and your sweetheart share the cheesecake at the restaurant, no one is likely to get “dessert” when you get home! Another way to naturally boost your testosterone level is to start a weight-training program. Building muscle helps your body increase its testosterone levels. The supplements DHEA and zinc can also help. Zinc is necessary to maintain

Although a male physician could quite easily, and convincingly, assert that ovarian cancer was “silent,” if you were to really listen to women who have had ovarian cancer speak, you’d find that it wasn’t so much that the disease process was silent—but that they were. Conditions that seem to lurk unnoticed in a woman’s body go unnoticed by others because, for one thing, they are an assumed part of womanhood, and, for another, women are taught to keep those pains private. I’ve often found it curious that when a woman is suffering, her competence is questioned, but when a man is suffering, he’s humanized. It’s a gender stereotype that hurts both men and women, though it lends itself to the question of why there is a proclivity in health care, and in society, to deny female pain.

In all developed countries, without exception, women spend fewer hours working. In the United States, female doctors work fewer hours than their male counterparts; the same is true for female lawyers.[403]

These subtle preconceptions are reflected when we say things like female doctor or woman scientist, implying that such positions are inherently male, while models, nurses, and prostitutes are all default female.

Women, as we know, used to be judged incapable of medicine. That changed in 1876, when, after a tenacious fight led by Britain’s first female doctor, Elizabeth Garret Anderson, the law was changed to prohibit women’s exclusion from medical schools. Now, more than 140 years later, female medical students outnumber men. Yet, according to Lawson, our predisposition to avoid antisocial hours and put family before career means we are more

The network employs thousands of humans. Surely one of them must be a ...woman...female...I don't know what you call them...vagina doctor." Melanie laughed. "Vagina doctor?" He smiled, relieved to have lightened her mood a bit. "I've had very little contact with doctors in my lifetime. You know what I mean." "They're called OB/GYNs." "Thank you.

After a time he thought he knew. It was knowledge they craved; yet they could not admit to craving it, because it was forbidden knowledge — knowledge with a lurid glare to it; knowledge gained through a descent into the pit. He has been where they could never go, seen what they could never see; he has opened up women’s bodies, and peered inside. In his hand, which has just raised their own hands towards his lips, he may once have held a beating female heart. Thus he is one of the dark trio — the doctor, the judge, the executioner — and shares with them the powers of life and death. To be rendered unconscious; to lie exposed, without shame, at the mercy of others; to be touched, incised, plundered, remade — this is what they are thinking of when they look at him, with their widening eyes and slightly parted lips.

The witch-burnings did not take place during the “Dark Ages,” as we commonly suppose. They occurred between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries– precisely during and following the Renaissance, that glorious period when, as we are taught, “men’s” minds were being freed from bleakness and superstition. While Michelangelo was sculpting and Shakespeare writing, the witches were burning. The whole secular “Enlightenment,” in fact, the male professions of doctor, lawyer, judge, artist, all rose from the ashes of the destroyed women’s culture. Renaissance men were celebrating naked female beauty in their art, while women’s bodies were being tortured and burned by the hundreds of thousands all around them.

Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom—we all want something. Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you’re a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied. You can’t go anywhere if you can’t step out onto a road… …(T)here is no female counterpart in our culture to Ishmael or Huck Finn. There is no Dean Moriarty, Sal, or even a Fuckhead. It sounds like a doctoral crisis, but it’s not. As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people’s ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable.

According to the legend an evil old doctor, who called himself God and us dogs, created the first boy in his adolescent image. The boy peopled the garden with male phantoms that rose from his ejaculations. This angered God, who was getting on in years. He decided it endangered his position as CREATOR. So he crept upon the boy and anaesthetized him and made Eve from his rib. Henceforth all creation of beings would process through female channels. But some of Adam's phantoms refused to let God near them under any pretext.

My very core clenches and spasms, my hips with a mind of their own, lurch. It is as if I no longer have control of any part of my body. ‘Ugh,’ I continue to groan in relief. And then, slowly, the rush is over and I am able to part my eyelids again. David is still looking at my face, a light sheen of sweat on his brow indicates that his task was not without effort. Finding his gaze too forthright in the current circumstances, my eyes move to the arm that still dwells beneath my skirts and the hand that clings viciously to his sleeve. My hand.

Generations of women are ignorant, ignorant of the Quran and its teachings. If we don't inform ourselves as women, we don't know about the rights we can exercise, which are empowering to women actually, because Islam is such an egalitarian religion, Qanta! Islam gave women inheritance rights and property rights and the rights to divorce and to choose a marriage partner. Servitude never enters the equation. Beatings are Haram.” Maha

A curse. Been in our family for generations. The Lees have always been perverts. I shall never forget the unspeakable horror that froze the lymph in my glands—the lymph glands that is, of course—when the baneful word seared my reeling brain: I was a homosexual. I thought of the painted, simpering female impersonators I'd seen in a Baltimore nightclub. Could it be possible I was one of those subhuman things? I walked the streets in a daze like a man with a light concussion—just a minute, Doctor Kildare, this isn't your script. I might well destroyed myself, ending an existence which seemed to offer nothing but grotesque misery and humiliation. Nobler, I thought, to die a man than live on, a sex monster. It was a wise old queen—Bobo, we called her—who taught me that I had a duty to live and bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love.

It seems to me that women would make much better sailors,” Miss Ophelia interjected, setting aside her cup of rosehip tea. “You men are susceptible to all sorts of magical mischief, from mermaids to sirens to rusalki to whatever else has a female form and a nice voice. I have never heard of a woman wrecking a ship over some singing seahorse!

Education continued to come under particularly strong fire...: If women learned how to manage in the world as well as men, if they learned about history and politics and studied for a profession, of course they would soon be demanding a voice and a role outside the home. The medical doctors soon discovered that education was dangerous to a female's health.

Discrimination in fact is how many of the Saudis define themselves. Saudi Arabia is about separation of gender, race, tribe, fiefdoms.

Exactly. Though I consider myself adequately knowledgeable, I'm no doctor. Humans aren't my specialty.

The forbidden becomes much more enticing than what is always revealed.

The role of women was proscribed in medicine as in society, bolstered by the stereotype of the female nurturer: Doctors cured. Nurses cared.

Why isn't every woman a feminist? Feminism tells a tale of female injury, but the average woman in heterosexual intimacy knows that men are injured too, as indeed they are. She may be willing to grant, this average woman, that men in general have more power than women in general. This undoubted fact is merely a fact; it is abstract, while the man of flesh and blood who stands before her is concrete: His hurts are real, his fears palpable. And like those heroic doctors on the late show who work tirelessly through the epidemic even though they may be fainting from fatigue, the woman in intimacy may set her own needs to one side in order better to attend to his. She does this not because she is "chauvinized" or has "false consciousness," but because this is what the work requires. Indeed, she may even excuse the man's abuse of her, having glimpsed the great reservoir of pain and rage from which it issues. Here is a further gloss on the ethical disempowerment attendant upon women's caregiving: in such a situation, a woman may be tempted to collude in her own ill-treatment.

For decades the doctors in Barceloneta sterilized Puerto Rican women without their knowledge or consent. Even if told about la operación (the operation), the women were not informed that it was irreversible and permanent. Over 20,000 women were sterilized in this one town.4 This scenario was repeated throughout Puerto Rico until—at its high point—one-third of the women on the island had been sterilized and Puerto Rico had the highest incidence of female sterilization in the world.5 This campaign of sterilization stemmed from a growing concern in the United States about “inferior races” and the declining “purity” of Anglo-Saxon bloodlines.

When you are surrounded by death and disease, aggressive and drunk patients, and nurses (male and female) trying constantly to flirt with you, it can make working in A&E an interesting and often stressful environment

Sober for seven years, Spencer had replaced his heroin and methamphetamine addiction with martial arts even before he’d left for federal prison. The jujitsu practice had sustained him throughout his incarceration—even when his girlfriend dumped him and when his former martial-arts teacher and onetime father figure was arrested and jailed for taking indecent liberties with a teenage female student. Spencer stuck to his recovery and to his prison workouts, ignoring the copious drugs that had been smuggled inside, and he read voraciously about mixed martial arts. Using the Bureau of Prisons’ limited email system, he had Ginger copy articles about various MMA fighters—laboriously pasting in one block of text at a time—so he could memorize pro tips and workout strategies and, eventually, through her, reach out directly to fighters and studio owners for advice.

I don't think this is a good idea. We all live on one planet so we cannot segregate the genders. If the Holy Mosque in Makkah, which is the holiest place on earth, does not segregate women, then why would the Ministry of Health want to segregate them?” She also went on to object to the selection of a physician based only on gender and not competence, expressing her disdain as follows: “I prefer doctors who are professional in studying my situation and solving my problem, regardless of whether they are male or female. I cannot imagine a men's hospital without female nurses and doctors, and I also cannot imagine women's hospitals without men playing a role in them.

It has also been suggested that Kober’s doctors never told her precisely how ill she was. Given the low esteem in which the medical establishment of the period held patients—especially female patients—this, too, is possible.

It’s a moment every clinician has inhabited and, all too often, pulled back from—a threshold we fear crossing. We imagine ourselves, [...], and recognize a double bind, a new doctor’s dilemma: if we ask about [a patient's interest/personal information], we fall hopelessly behind in administrative tasks and feel more burned out. If we don’t ask about [it], we avoid the kind of intimacy that not only helps the patient, but also nourishes us and keeps us from feeling burned out.

In a visit to San Salvador in February 1989, Vice President Dan Quayle told army leaders that death squad killings and other human rights violations attributed to the military had to be ended. Ten days later, the US-trained Atlacatl Battalion—which was believed to have a US trainer assigned to it at all times—attacked a guerrilla field hospital, killing at least ten people, including five patients, a doctor and a nurse, and raping at least two of the female victims before shooting them.

One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. The pattern would go something like this: • The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon—I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. They will not drink much. Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. • The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving. They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. They will tend to be professionals—lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors—and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will enjoy cocktails. If they are female, they will often marry a white person. Whether male or female, they will not be as strict with their children as their parents were with them. • The next generation (Sophia and Lulu’s) is the one I spend nights lying awake worrying about. Because of the hard work of their parents and grandparents, this generation will be born into the great comforts of the upper middle class. Even as children they will own many hardcover books (an almost criminal luxury from the point of view of immigrant parents). They will have wealthy friends who get paid for B-pluses.They may or may not attend private schools, but in either case they will expect expensive, brand-name clothes. Finally and most problematically, they will feel that they have individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and therefore be much more likely to disobey their parents and ignore career advice. In short, all factors point to this generation

She quoted Simone de Beauvoir once, during a staff meeting. She’d sworn when she dropped her pen, and Dr. Brenner said, ‘People are always asking me what it’s like working with a lady doctor, and if I ever meet one, I’ll be able to tell them.’ Dorothy laughed—she hardly ever laughed—and Margot snapped right back at him—I know the quotation off by heart now, in French, too—‘Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female—whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.

In case you weren't aware, my good fellow, you are in the company of one of the most skilled and accomplished women in England. In fact, I would say Dr. Gibson has a male brain in a woman's body." Garrett grinned wryly at his last comment, which she knew had been intended as a compliment. "Thank you, Doctor." "Despite my short acquaintance with Dr. Gibson," Ethan said, "her brain seems entirely female to me." The remark caused Garrett to stiffen slightly, as she expected a mocking comment to follow. Something about how a woman's mind was changeable, or shallow, the usual clichés. But as Ethan continued, there was no hint of teasing in his tone. "Keen, subtle, and quick, with an intellect strengthened by compassion- yes, she has a woman's mind." Thrown off guard, Garrett stared at him with a touch of wonder. In that brief, private moment, Ethan looked as if he really did prefer her to everything else in the world. As if he saw all of her, the good and the bad, and wouldn't change a thing about her.

The better I understood my education, the angrier I became that most working-class and poor people are denied one. Why are the children of doctors, lawyers, and engineers taught the mysteries of existence while the children of janitors and waitresses are taught fear? I developed a preoccupation with my own inadequacies, aided by a few professors of elitism. To combat my growing anxiety, I began to envision myself a class spy. I would soak up all of the information they could give me and run reconnaissance for my team.

fact that a woman cannot drive or travel without authorization, for example, gives a special sense of strength to the man. And this strength is directly connected to the violence. It creates a sense of immunity; that he can do whatever he wants, without sanction.

Transactivists try to liken single sex spaces and services to racial segregation or discrimination based on sexual orientation, but that is a false equivalent. Men being violent towards women is a well documented problem in our society. We have no evidence that people of certain races or sexual orientations are more dangerous than others. Therefore, a woman requesting a female doctor is both reasonable and justified in light of male pattern violence, while discrimination against a lesbian or a black doctor would clearly be wrong.

Ignominiously reined in by their ruler, the Ikhwan became deeply offended especially as they considered themselves the religious Army of God. The rude rebuff drove them to question their unwavering loyalty for their King. Thus the first crisis of clergy and King was conceived.

By removing the ability to drive themselves anywhere, women were at the mercy of male authority, compelled always to inform men of their destinations and returns, and in a country where women could not travel without prior authorization by men, they were effectively hostage to their male relatives. Rania

I wonder whether, just as we take recertification exams every few years, we might be required, at intervals, to rewrite our medical school admissions essays, to articulate at each stage of our careers just what sort of doctors we aspire to be. Origin myths are meant to be retold and reinterpreted again and again.

Dear Medical Schools: Please teach your male doctors to listen to their female patients. We know a thing or two about what goes on inside us, even if we may not know why, how, or what to call it. We also definitely know which medications have worked and not worked on our bodies in the past, so please treat that information as valuable.

And she continued to steal scones for him. Definitely courting behavior. Only Percy didn't know how to really do it. (Peahen, he eventually decided, was not a good name for one's beloved. He'd have to do better. What did the ancients use? Time to research.) Percy understood the mechanics of courting, of course. One ought to write a lady sonnets, send her flowers, and purchase the dd trinket or two. But the only flowers aboard the Custard were the potted sunflowers to help cleanse the aether of malignant humours. They ought not to be cut and presented to doctors. Besides, Percy had never understood the notion of gifting the dead sexual organs of a plant to females. It seemed oddly threatening.

Fitz must not know in advance, for he would try to stop her. He might simply lock her in her room. He could even get her committed to a lunatic asylum. A wealthy upper-class man could have a female relative put away without much difficulty. All Fitz would have to do was to find two doctors willing to agree with him that she must be mad to want to marry a German.

I thought Lady Helen was going to introduce you to the lady doctor who treated Pandora's shoulder." "Dr. Gibson? Yes, she's a marvelous woman. As a matter of fact, she came to visit Eversby Priory this summer." All Phoebe's pleasant feelings abruptly turned disagreeable. "Surely not without a chaperone." "Garrett Gibson doesn't bother with chaperones," West replied, his lips twitching as if at some private memory. "The usual rules don't apply to her. She brought a patient, Mr. Ethan Ransom, who was injured and needed to recuperate in peace and quiet." Poisonous jealousy flooded Phoebe. The female doctor was an accomplished and unconventional woman- exactly the kind who would attract his interest. "You must have found her fascinating." "Anyone would.

The base doctor had no charts; Cordelia’s medical records were of course all behind enemy lines in Vorbarr Sultana at present. He shook his head and keyed up a new form on his report panel. “I’m sorry, Lady Vorkosigan. We’ll simply have to begin at the beginning. Please bear with me. Do I understand correctly you’ve had some sort of female trouble?” No, most of my troubles have been with males. Cordelia bit her tongue.

Obstetricians also doubted the female intellectual capacity to grasp the anatomy and physiology of childbirth, and suggested that they could not therefore be trained. But the root fear was – guess what? – you’ve got it, but no prizes for quickness: money. Most doctors charged a routine one guinea for a delivery. The word got around that trained midwives would undercut them by delivering babies for half a guinea! The knives were out.

This has just came in from high command.  There will be no loitering on the beachhead.  Anyone found skinny dipping or fishing with grenades will be put on a charge.  Two marines have already been disciplined for this offence.’  A few men laughed and he smiled.  ‘Also there will be no fraternisation with the local female populace.  This will not be tolerated.  High command believe they may well carry some exotic disease our doctors may not be able to treat.’  That brought a little more laughter.  ‘Again two marines have already been disciplined,’ the rest of his sentence was drowned out by the laughter.  He waited until it died down again.  ‘In their defence the marines stated that the females plied them with a local beverage made from coconuts.  As there doesn’t seem to be any coconut trees in space the high command disbelieved their story.  So don’t try it, you won’t get away with it.

This embittered thought brought to her mind the several occasions upon which she might, had she been the kind of female his lordship no doubt admired, have kindled his ardour by a display of sensibility, or even of heroism ... To have thrown herself between the foils, when she had surprised the Earl fencing with Martin, would certainly have been spectacular, but that it would have evoked anything but exasperation in the male breast she was quite unable to believe. She thought she need not blame herself for having refrained upon this occasion; but when she recalled her behaviour in the avenue, when the Earl had been thrown from his horse, she knew that nothing could excuse her. Here had been an opportunity for spasms, swoonings, and a display of sensibility, utterly neglected! How could his lordship have been expected to guess that her heart had been beating so hard and so fast that had felt quite sick, when all she had done was to talk to him in a voice drained of all expression? Not even when his lifeless body had been carried into the Castle had she conducted herself like a heroine of romance! Had she fainted at the sight of his blood-soaked raiment? Had she screamed? No! All she had done had been to direct Ulverston to do one thing, Turvey another, Chard to ride for the doctor, while she herself had done what lay within her power to staunch the bleeding.

For a long time being female was treated by science and medicine as being akin to having a serious psychological disorder. Women were routinely prescribed hysterectomies or anxiolytics like valium to treat the symptoms of hysteria which is a syndrome with symptoms that are suspiciously similar to the symptoms of being of human female who has to deal with stupid sexist bullshit. Although scions and medicine has come a long way since these sorts of practices were common place every woman i know has had an experience of being treated as less rational version of a man. Sometimes even by our own doctors simply by virtue of our gender. There belief that women are irrational and therefore underserving of the same rights as men is something that has lingered in the public consciousness in a huge way. And women are very aware of this. We have to listen to a lot of people say a lot of dumb shit about our hormones and about whether we deserve the right to control our own fertility. These types of claims particularly when combined with sciences and medicine mishandling of women for so long have made it very difficult for anyone, even female scientists, to have thoughtful conversations about things like women's hormones and fertility regulation. These topics unaddressed by science are often met with suspicion by anyone who has ever owned a pair of ovaries or is an ovarian sympatist.

For as long as I can remember, I have been on a quest for self-understanding and self-improvement. I am driven to figure myself and other people out. I have analysed myself as far back as I can remember, reanalysed myself, been to many psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and psychics. I love self-help books, courses, anything to improve myself. My special interest is self-improvement, quantum physics, medicine, anything to do with bettering oneself and self-help.

For many years, discussing female sexuality in the doctor’s office was taboo, but that oppression is not a failing unique to medicine. In 1938, a Los Angeles teacher, Helen Hulick, was held in contempt of court for daring to show up in pants to testify as a witness and for refusing to change into a dress when the male judge insisted. She was given a five-day jail sentence. Much of women’s health, especially sexual health, was deemed unimportant or irrelevant because that is how women were viewed.

Here at Hajj, I was experiencing a taste of the same poison. While the women in my tent weren't nearly as wealthy or polished as the bewitching woman at al-Multaqa, they subscribed to the same view, deciding (based on skin color and ethnicity) that I surely must be a handmaid or at best nanny to a poor Saudi family who couldn't afford the much better Filipina maids, having instead to resort to Pakistani or worse, Bengali help. In fact I did remember one Saudi woman in the tent asking me if I was Bengali.

When I'm dressed like this, people will say I don't look like a doctor." Garrett paused before continuing wryly. "On the other hand, they already say that, even when I'm wearing a surgeon's cap and gown." Carys, who was playing with the left-over glass beads on the vanity table, volunteered innocently, "You've always looked like a doctor to me." Helen smiled at her little sister. "Did you know, Carys, that Dr. Gibson is the only lady doctor in England?" Carys shook her head, regarding Garrett with round-eyed interest. "Why aren't there others?" Garrett smiled. "Many people believe women aren't suited to work in the medical profession." "But women can be nurses," Carys said with a child's clear-eyed logic. "Why can't they be doctors?" "There are many female doctors, as a matter of fact, in countries such as America and France. Unfortunately, women aren't allowed to earn a medical degree here. Yet." "But that's not fair." Garrett smiled down into the girl's upturned face. "There will always be people who say your dreams are impossible. But they can't stop you unless you agree with them.

How very small she seemed, tucked in the corner of the library with her knees drawn up. For the past hour and a half, she had been a commanding figure, strung tight with energy, her gaze stern and steely. She had worked in millimeters, doing tiny, crucial things to veins and cellular tissue with astonishing precision. Although West knew nothing about surgery, he'd understood that he was witnessing someone perform with rare skill. Now, in her exhaustion, the brilliant surgeon resembled an anxious schoolgirl who had taken a wrong turn on the way home. West liked her a great deal. In fact, he was rather sorry now that he'd kept shrugging off Helen's efforts to introduce them. He'd envisioned the female doctor as a severe matron, probably hostile toward men, and Helen's assurances that Dr. Gibson was quite pretty hadn't been at all convincing. Helen, with her completely unjustified affection for humanity, loved to overestimate people. But Garrett Gibson was more than pretty. She was riveting. An intelligent, accomplished woman with an elusive quality... a suggestion of hidden tenderness... that intrigued him.

It’s unnecessary and undesirable to limit our readings to medically related texts (she notes that when reading Ivan Ilyich doctors get bogged down arguing about whether the title character of Tolstoy’s novella had gastric cancer or pancreatic cancer, missing the point entirely); that literature helps dismantle the “hidden curriculum,” the teaching that our patients are somehow fundamentally different from us and we from them; that immersing ourselves in imaginary worlds populated by imaginary people and investing emotionally in their problems is excellent training for empathy.

You have to imagine what it was like to be on the receiving end of vicious antagonism: sneering, contempt, ridicule, slights about one’s intelligence, integrity and motives. In those days, women even ran the risk of dismissal for their opinions. And this treatment came from other women, as well as men. In fact, “in-fighting” between various schools of nurses who had some sort of training in midwifery was particularly nasty. One eminent lady – the matron of St Bartholomew’s Hospital – branded the aspiring midwives as “anachronisms, who would in the future be regarded as historical curiosities”. The medical opposition seems to have arisen mainly from the fact that “women are striving to interfere too much in every department of life”.* Obstetricians also doubted the female intellectual capacity to grasp the anatomy and physiology of childbirth, and suggested that they could not therefore be trained. But the root fear was – guess what? – you’ve got it, but no prizes for quickness: money. Most doctors charged a routine one guinea for a delivery. The word got around that trained midwives would undercut them by delivering babies for half a guinea! The knives were out.

It seems obvious that throughout history, as one of the few professions open to women, midwifery must have attracted women of unusual intelligence, competence, and self-respect§. While acknowledging that many remedies used by the witches were “purely magical” and worked, if at all, by suggestion, Ehrenreich and English point out an important distinction between the witch-healer and the medical man of the late Middle Ages: . . . the witch was an empiricist; She relied on her senses rather than on faith or doctrine, she believed in trial and error, cause and effect. Her attitude was not religiously passive, but actively inquiring. She trusted her ability to find ways to deal with disease, pregnancy and childbirth—whether through medication or charms. In short, her magic was the science of her time. By contrast: There was nothing in late mediaeval medical training that conflicted with church doctrine, and little that we would recognize as “science”. Medical students . . . spent years studying Plato, Aristotle and Christian theology. . . . While a student, a doctor rarely saw any patients at all, and no experimentation of any kind was taught. . . . Confronted with a sick person, the university-trained physician had little to go on but superstition. . . . Such was the state of medical “science” at the time when witch-healers were persecuted for being practitioners of “magic”.15 Since asepsis and the transmission of disease through bacteria and unwashed hands was utterly unknown until the latter part of the nineteenth century, dirt was a presence in any medical situation—real dirt, not the misogynistic dirt associated by males with the female body. The midwife, who attended only women in labor, carried fewer disease bacteria with her than the physician.

And as I watched her lengthening out for the test, I saw, but hoped that she did not see, the bishops and the deans, the doctors and the professors, the patriarchs and the pedagogues all at her shouting warning and advice. You can’t do this and you shan’t do that! Fellows and scholars only allowed on the grass! Ladies not admitted without a letter of introduction! Aspiring and graceful female novelists this way! So they kept at her like the crowd at a fence on the race-course, and it was her trial to take her fence without looking to right or left. If you stop to curse you are lost, I said

In the early 1970s, racial and gender discrimination was still prevalent. The easy camaraderie prevailing in the operating room evaporated at the completion of surgical procedures. There was an unspoken pecking order of seating arrangements at lunch among my fellow physicians. At the top were the white male 'primary producers' in prestigious surgical specialties. They were followed by the internists. Next came the general practitioners. Last on the list were the hospital-based physicians: the radiologists, pathologists and anaesthesiologists - especially non-white, female ones like me. Apart from colour, we were shunned because we did not bring in patients ourselves but, like vultures, lived off the patients generated by other doctors. We were also resented because being hospital-based and not having to rent office space or hire nursing staff, we had low overheads. Since a physician's number of admissions to the hospital and referral pattern determined the degree of attention and regard accorded by colleagues, it was safe for our peers to ignore us and target those in position to send over income-producing referrals. This attitude was mirrored from the board of directors all the way down to the orderlies.

Official USSR Government figures state that 30 men and one female security guard died as a direct consequence of the accident. That list only covers the people at the site within the first few hours of the explosion who died from acute radiation syndrome or burns. It ignores all military personnel who died due to exposure from the clean-up operation, civilians living in the surrounding area, and many others who entered the Zone shortly after the accident (journalists, doctors etc). Those whose bodies were recovered are buried in welded zinc coffins, to prevent their radioactive remains from contaminating the soil.

Women continued to be criticized for wondering about the wrong sorts of things, and were still considered unfit for the new method of inquiry. And the curious women whose smarts men couldn't deny faced the disturbing likelihood that they would become scientific curiousities themselves. Medical doctors at the time were persuaded by Galen's theory that women were colder than men and had slower thoughts. Women who had quick thoughts must not be female but rather hybrids they termed freaks of nature. When Astell wrote that learned women were "star'd upon as Monsters, Censur'd, Envy'd, and every way Discourag'd," she was being literal.

But I can cite ten other reasons for not being a father." "First of all, I don't like motherhood," said Jakub, and he broke off pensively. "Our century has already unmasked all myths. Childhood has long ceased to be an age of innocence. Freud discovered infant sexuality and told us all about Oedipus. Only Jocasta remains untouchable; no one dares tear off her veil. Motherhood is the last and greatest taboo, the one that harbors the most grievous curse. There is no stronger bond than the one that shackles mother to child. This bond cripples the child's soul forever and prepares for the mother, when her son has grown up, the most cruel of all the griefs of love. I say that motherhood is a curse, and I refuse to contribute to it." "Another reason I don't want to add to the number of mothers," said Jakub with some embarrassment, "is that I love the female body, and I am disgusted by the thought of my beloved's breast becoming a milk-bag." "The doctor here will certainly confirm that physicians and nurses treat women hospitalized after an aborted pregnancy more harshly than those who have given birth, and show some contempt toward them even though they themselves will, at least once in their lives, need a similar operation. But for them it's a reflex stronger than any kind of thought, because the cult of procreation is an imperative of nature. That's why it's useless to look for the slightest rational argument in natalist propaganda. Do you perhaps think it's the voice of Jesus you're hearing in the natalist morality of the church? Do you think it's the voice of Marx you're hearing in the natalist propaganda of the Communist state? Impelled merely by the desire to perpetuate the species, mankind will end up smothering itself on its small planet. But the natalist propaganda mill grinds on, and the public is moved to tears by pictures of nursing mothers and infants making faces. It disgusts me. It chills me to think that, along with millions of other enthusiasts, I could be bending over a cradle with a silly smile." "And of course I also have to ask myself what sort of world I'd be sending my child into. School soon takes him away to stuff his head with the falsehoods I've fought in vain against all my life. Should I see my son become a conformist fool? Or should I instill my own ideas into him and see him suffer because he'll be dragged into the same conflicts I was?" "And of course I also have to think of myself. In this country children pay for their parents' disobedience, and parents for their children's disobedience. How many young people have been denied education because their parents fell into disgrace? And how many parents have chosen permanent cowardice for the sole purpose of preventing harm to their children? Anyone who wants to preserve at least some freedom here shouldn't have children," Jakub said, and fell into silence. "The last reason carries so much weight that it counts for five," said Jakub. "Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that it merits being duplicated." "And you have not found life to be good?" asked Bertlef. Jakub tried to be precise, and said cautiously: "All I know is that I could never say with complete conviction: Man is a wonderful being and I want to reproduce him.

Yet I couldn't connect this racial purity with the warmth of the toothless, lined Bedouin women who showed me such affection in the hospital. I thought about the Bedouin patients I had attended in Riyadh and what they had taught me of acceptance. Surely these Bedouin were the purest Saudis of all, Daughters of Arabia, borne of tribal forebears who had roamed Arabia before the slick of oil wealth suffocated their culture, washing them up like half-dead seagulls into the new urban metropolis of modern Saudi Arabia. I decided it had to be wealth which made the stark difference. All I had to do was think back to the “real” Saudis I had met in Riyadh, so different than the women sharing this tent with me.

Boys and girls are only little men and women. And WE are much harder and hardier than they are--" (Peter liked the "we." Perhaps the Doctor had known he would.)--"and much stronger, and things that hurt THEM don't hurt US. You know you mustn't hit a girl--" "I should think not, indeed," muttered Peter, indignantly. "Not even if she's your own sister. That's because girls are so much softer and weaker than we are; they have to be, you know," he added, "because if they weren't, it wouldn't be nice for the babies. And that's why all the animals are so good to the mother animals. They never fight them, you know." "I know," said Peter, interested; "two buck rabbits will fight all day if you let them, but they won't hurt a doe." "No; and quite wild beasts--lions and elephants--they're immensely gentle with the female beasts. And we've got to be, too." "I see," said Peter. "And their hearts are soft, too," the Doctor went on, "and things that we shouldn't think anything of hurt them dreadfully. So that a man has to be very careful, not only of his fists, but of his words. They're awfully brave, you know," he went on. "Think of Bobbie waiting alone in the tunnel with that poor chap. It's an odd thing- -the softer and more easily hurt a woman is the better she can screw herself up to do what HAS to be done. I've seen some brave women-- your Mother's one," he ended abruptly. "Yes," said Peter. "Well, that's all. Excuse my mentioning it. But nobody knows everything without being told. And you see what I mean, don't you?

Meanwhile in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions—only about 1 percent of all procedures but crucial when, for instance, a fetus develops without a brain—is shot in both arms by a female picketer. He recovers and continues serving women who come to him from many states. I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: “Of course, I’m there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty.” In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being “pro-life.

Dear Young Black Males, If you’re going to be sexual active, please strap up. Wear a condom. STD rates amongst African-American males and females are ridiculously higher than any other ethnic group. Did you know that African-Americans are the most affected by HIV? Yes, it’s true! You’ve got to educate yourself. There’s no reason for you to be uneducated about safe sex. You can Google information from reliable sources, go on YouTube, or visit your doctor to get helpful information. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, be afraid of what STD(s) you can get. And for the record: If you contract HIV, you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Many people think that they’re immune when it comes to catching something, but nobody’s exempt. Believe that! Protect yourself or risk being infected. Just because somebody looks good, doesn’t mean that they’re safe or cool to fool around with. Don’t be fooled!

The technological efficiency of daughter-proofing a pregnancy may make it seem as if the girl shortage is a problem of modernity, but female infanticide has been documented in China and India for more than two thousand years.119 In China, midwives kept a bucket of water at the bedside to drown the baby if it was a girl. In India there were many methods: “giving a pill of tobacco and bhang to swallow, drowning in milk, smearing the mother’s breast with opium or the juice of the poisonous Datura, or covering the child’s mouth with a plaster of cow-dung before it drew breath.” Then and now, even when daughters are suffered to live, they may not last long. Parents allocate most of the available food to their sons, and as a Chinese doctor explains, “if a boy gets sick, the parents may send him to the hospital at once, but if a girl gets sick, the parents may say to themselves, ‘Well, we’ll see how she is tomorrow.

These girls aren't wounded so much as post-wounded, and I see their sisters everywhere. They're over it. *I am not a melodramatic person.* God help the woman who is. What I'll call "post-wounded" isn't a shift in deep feeling (we understand these women still hurt) but a shift away from wounded affect---these women are aware that "woundedness" is overdone and overrated. They are wary of melodrama so they stay numb or clever instead. Post-wounded women make jokes about being wounded or get impatient with women who hurt too much. The post-wounded woman conducts herself as if preempting certain accusations: don't cry too loud, don't play victim, don't act the old role all over again. Don't ask for pain meds you don't need, don't give those doctors another reason to doubt the other women on their examination tables. Post-wounded women fuck men who don't love them and then they feel mildly sad about it, or just blase about it, more than anything they refuse to care about it, refuse to hurt about it---or else they are endlessly self-aware about the posture they have adopted if they allow themselves this hurting. The post-wounded posture is claustrophobic. It's full of jadedness, aching gone implicit, sarcasm quick-on-the-heels of anything that might look like self-pity. I see it in female writers and their female narrators, troves of stories about vaguely dissatisfied women who no longer fully own their feelings. Pain is everywhere and nowhere. Post-wounded women know that postures of pain play into limited and outmoded conceptions of womanhood. Their hurt has a new native language spoken in several dialects; sarcastic, apathetic, opaque; cool and clever. They guard against those moments when melodrama or self-pity might split their careful seams of intellect. *I should rather call is a seam.* We have sewn ourselves up. We bring everything to the grindstone.

Who will I be when I have fewer patients? When I have no patients at all? It's often noted that "practice" as it relates to medicine has two meanings: the act of caring for patients and the doctor's never-ending process of perfecting his or her craft. But there's a third meaning, too, one I'm only now appreciating as I contemplate the end of my career. Medicine is a practice in the way that yoga or meditation is for many people, an activity repeated so often that it becomes a kind of incantation. I have, for so long, stood to my patients' right sides as physicians have done for centuries, palpated the lymph nodes in their necks, armpits, and groins; auscultated their hearts and lungs; asked the same questions I first learned to ask nearly forty years ago—What makes the pain better? What makes it worse? These rituals are for me an anchor without which I fear I might simply drift away. Of course I suspected all along that what I feared wasn't abandoning my patients, but myself.

The most widely cited figure for the number of women suffering from Female Sexual Dysfunction comes from 1999: according to this, some 43 per cent of all women have a medical problem around their sex drive.27 This survey was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), one of the most influential journals in the world. It looked at questionnaire data asking about things like lack of desire for sex, poor lubrication, anxiety over sexual performance, and so on. If you answered ‘yes’ to any one of these questions, you were labelled as having Female Sexual Dysfunction. For the avoidance of any doubt about the influence of this paper, it has – as of a sunny evening in March 2012 – been cited 1,691 times. That is a spectacular number of citations. At the time, no financial interest was declared by the study’s authors. Six months later, after criticism in the New York Times, two of the three authors declared consulting and advisory work for Pfizer.28 The company was gearing up to launch Viagra for the female market at this time, and had lots to gain from more women being labelled as having a medical sexual problem.

One particularly distressing example of the high cost to feminist progress exacted by the war is what happened in Pakistan after the capture of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011. In the run-up to his capture, the CIA and the U.S. military allegedly worked with the charity Save the Children in hiring Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician, to run a fake Hepatitis B vaccination program as a front for their surveillance operations.15 Per CIA instructions, Dr. Afridi and a female healthcare worker visited the bin Laden compound under the guise of administering vaccinations and managed to gain access, although they did not see bin Laden. In 2012, all foreign Save the Children staff were expelled from Pakistan, and in 2015, the entire organization there was required to shut its doors, despite having denied (and continuing to deny) that it was involved in this effort. The CIA managed to get their guy, but when the Pakistanis, irate at not having been told about the raid, expelled U.S. military trainers from Islamabad, they were immediately threatened with a cut of the $800 million aid package that the U.S. had promised, thus exposing yet again the coercive power that aid wields. The loss of aid money was not, however, the worst impact of the tragedy. As the British medical journal The Lancet reported, the unintended victims of the tragedy were the millions of Pakistani children whose parents now refused to have them vaccinated amidst rising rates of polio, a disease that vaccination had essentially extinguished in Western countries by the mid-twentieth century.16 In their view, if the CIA could hire a doctor to run a fake vaccine program, then the whole premise of vaccinations became untrustworthy. Within a few years of the raid, Pakistan had 60 percent of all the world’s confirmed polio cases.17

Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste, given the Banns on Animals Mobility." "Doctor Dillamond, alas," said Madame Morrible, "is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a God, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor Dillamond doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please?" "I don't believe I can, Madame." "Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without." "So that phrase that he objected to - Animals should be seen and not heard - that was ironic?" continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room would have enjoyed seeing the other crumble in a sudden attack of the spleen. "One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose," said Madame Morrible. "How do you choose?" said Elphaba. "How impertinent!" said Madame Morrible. "Well, but I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn. If you - if anyone - thought that statement was true, then it isn't in conflict with the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It's just argument and conclusion, and I don't see the irony." "You don't see much, Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible. "You must learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by the walls of one's own modest acumen, well, it is very sad in one so young and bright." She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda, somehow, a low comment on Elphaba's skin color, which today was indeed lustrous with the effort of public speaking. "But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond," said Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up. "In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may indeed be true. Animal should not be heard," snapped Madame Morrible. "Do you mean that ironically?" said Elphaba, but she sat down with her hands over her face and did not look up again for the rest of the session.

Which statements are true according to the passage? A) Science, governments, and your doctor should be trusted. B) 'Comforting her deep into the night' is a euphemism for sneaking candy. C) The ugliest phrase used in this passage is 'female.' D) Bad things really do come in threes.

God damn you!” Alfred said. “You belong in jail!” The turd wheezed with laughter as it slid very slowly down the wall, its viscous pseudopods threatening to drip on the sheets below. “Seems to me,” it said, “you anal retentive type personalities want everything in jail. Like, little kids, bad news, man, they pull your tchotchkes off your shelves, they drop food on the carpet, they cry in theaters, they miss the pot. Put ’em in the slammer! And Polynesians, man, they track sand in the house, get fish juice on the furniture, and all those pubescent chickies with their honkers exposed? Jail ’em! And how about ten to twenty, while we’re at it, for every horny little teenager, I mean talk about insolence, talk about no restraint. And Negroes (sore topic, Fred?), I’m hearing rambunctious shouting and interesting grammar, I’m smelling liquor of the malt variety and sweat that’s very rich and scalpy, and all that dancing and whoopee-making and singers that coo like body parts wetted with saliva and special jellies: what’s a jail for if not to toss a Negro in it? And your Caribbeans with their spliffs and their potbelly toddlers and their like daily barbecues and ratborne hanta viruses and sugary drinks with pig blood at the bottom? Slam the cell door, eat the key. And the Chinese, man, those creepy-ass weird-name vegetables like homegrown dildos somebody forgot to wash after using, one-dollah, one-dollah, and those slimy carps and skinned-alive songbirds, and come on, like, puppy-dog soup and pooty-tat dumplings and female infants are national delicacies, and pork bung, by which we’re referring here to the anus of a swine, presumably a sort of chewy and bristly type item, pork bung’s a thing Chinks pay money for to eat? What say we just nuke all billion point two of ’em, hey? Clean that part of the world up already. And let’s not forget about women generally, nothing but a trail of Kleenexes and Tampaxes everywhere they go. And your fairies with their doctor’s-office lubricants, and your Mediterraneans with their whiskers and their garlic, and your French with their garter belts and raunchy cheeses, and your blue-collar ball-scratchers with their hot rods and beer belches, and your Jews with their circumcised putzes and gefilte fish like pickled turds, and your Wasps with their Cigarette boats and runny-assed polo horses and go-to-hell cigars? Hey, funny thing, Fred, the only people that don’t belong in your jail are upper-middle-class northern European men. And you’re on my case for wanting

By April 23, 2014, thirty-four cases and six deaths from Ebola in Liberia were recorded. By mid-June, 16 more people died. At the time it was thought to be malaria but when seven more people died the following month tests showed that was the Ebola virus. The primary reason for the spreading of the Ebola virus was the direct contact from one person to the next and the ingesting of bush meat. Soon doctors and nurses also became infected. On July 2, 2014, the head surgeon of Redemption Hospital was treated at the JFK Medical Center in Monrovia, where he died from the disease. His death was followed by four nurses at Phebe Hospital in Bong County. At about the same time two U.S. health care workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and a nurse were also infected with the disease. However, they were medically evacuated from Liberia to the United States for treatment where they made a full recovery. Another doctor from Uganda was not so lucky and died from the disease. Arik Air suspended all flights between Nigeria and Liberia and checkpoints were set up at all the ports and border crossings. In August of 2014, the impoverished slum area of West Point was cordoned off. Riots ensued as protesters turned violent. The looting of a clinic of its supplies, including blood-stained bed sheets and mattresses caused the military to shoot into the crowds. Still more patients became infected, causing a shortage of staff and logistics. By September there had been a total of 3,458 cases of which there were 1,830 deaths according to the World Health Organization. Hospitals and clinics could no longer handle this crisis and patients who were treated outside died before they could get help. There were cases where the bodies were just dumped into the Mesurado River. The Ivory Coast out of compassion, opened carefully restricted humanitarian routes and resumed the previously suspended flights to Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the president of Libera sent a letter to President Barack Obama concerning the outbreak of Ebola that was on the verge of overrunning her country. The message was desperate, “I am being honest with you when I say that at this rate, we will never break the transmission chain and the virus will overwhelm us.” Having been a former finance minister and World Bank official, Johnson Sirleaf was not one for histrionics however she recognized the pandemic as extremely dangerous. The United States responded to her request and American troops came in and opened a new 60-bed clinic in the Sierra Leone town of Kenema, but by then the outbreak was described as being out of control. Still not understanding the dangerous contagious aspects of this epidemic at least eight Liberian soldiers died after contracting the disease from a single female camp follower. In spite of being a relatively poor country, Cuba is one of the most committed in deploying doctors to crisis zones. It sent more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa. In October Germany sent medical supplies and later that month a hundred additional U.S. troops arrived in Liberia, bringing the total to 565 to assist in the fight against the deadly disease. To understand the severity of the disease, a supply order was placed on October 15th for a 6 month supply of 80,000 body bags and 1 million protective suits. At that time it was reported that 223 health care workers had been infected with Ebola, and 103 of them had died in Liberia. Fear of the disease also slowed down the functioning of the Liberian government. President Sirleaf, had in an emergency announcement informed absent government ministers and civil service leaders to return to their duties. She fired 10 government officials, including deputy ministers in the central government who failed to return to work.

Even when critically, I learned, hiding her face was of paramount importance. I watched, entranced at the clash of technology and religion, some version of my religion.

Even when critically ill, I learned, hiding her face was of paramount importance. I watched, entranced at the clash of technology and religion, some version of my religion.

Did an unconscious sickly Muslim have the same responsibilities as a conscious, able-bodied one?

In Riyadh, I would be licensed to operate procedures on critically ill patients, yet never to drive a motor vehicle. Only men could enjoy that privilege.

I knew my hips were showing, noisily announcing my sex. I wished I had something to engulf my debilitating gender. I almost wished I was a man.

Such forced incarceration of womanhood is a form of female infanticide.

While these veils conceal women, at the same time they expose the rampant, male oppression which is their jailor. Polyester imprisonment by compulsion is ungodly and (like the fiber) distinctly man-made.

Inexplicably, the Kingdom's clerics compel non-Muslim women to veil also, a rule which is not to be found codified in the Quran.

The driving in Riyadh was deadly. Turbocharged testosterone without creative or sexual outlet translated into deadly acceleration.

I was slowly becoming aware that chauvinism and sexism was just as marked among many of the Western attendings as it was amongst many of the Saudi and other Arab physicians, as though the climate of the workplace promoted an infectious transmission of male supremacy.

Worse, they suggested this was a considerate move for the protection of women, conveniently disguising their discrimination with a thin veneer of patronizing gallantry.

I looked at the pilgrims kissing the Black Stone. I was disturbed by the paganistic and ritualistic qualities of the scene. But I knew this was an ancient rite utterly distinct from the stone worshippers of centuries earlier. Muslims are very clear that only God is worthy of worship. The stone is only honored because Muhammad (PBUH) demonstrated his reverence for it by kissing it, but never worshipped it, worshipping only his Maker,,, so I found, as I would time and again in the days ahead, that in this of holiest of Islamic rites, deeply pagan rituals had survived the passage of time, persisting even after the dawn of Islam.

In the night light, the golden Thuluth Arabic calligraphy glittered on the Kisweh, its brilliance enhanced by the velvet blackness of the surrounding silk. I was bewitched by its beauty. With the distortions of Wahabi extremism, beautification of any object was considered an offense, resulting in a Kingdom without ornate decorations, other than repetitive geometry which peppered public walls and even highway underpasses. Anything else was considered futile vanity by Wahabis, but at least the Wahabis had not eroded what seemed the final remaining evidence of Islamic craftmanship: unparalleled calligraphy. For the first time in the Kingdom, I appreciated beautiful Saudi craftmanship.

The efforts of the Ikhwan would replace this primitive culture with the clarity of their furious Islam. A convenient military strategy was therefore cloaked in a righteous enforcement.