Medical Rape

I just came across a post about the Witches of Lyons and Marceilles which I had spent quite a bit of time looking for yesterday on a new blog called the Corvid Diaries. It's by Debi Crow and she earlier had it up on another blog which I loved. She, however, password protected the blog after a nasty spat with a man who either is or at least claims to be a doctor.

The knowledge that doctors like him exist truly frightens me. What happened, as I understand it, is that Debs wrote about an invasive gyn procedure she was forced to undergo when the doctor performing it -- or trying to perform it at any rate -- continued what he was doing even after she clearly and repeatedly withdrew consent to having the procedure performed. To her, his actions felt like having been raped.

The doctor -- not the one who performed the procedure -- who seems to believe that offence is the best line of defence then strolled in, tore the post and Debs herself to shreds not so much by saying anything particularly substantial himself but by insulting her, refusing to acknowledge her experience and denigrating her for how she felt about what had been done to her.

One of the consequences is that Debs' old blog is no longer visible.

I read the doctor's posts and some of the comments which followed them and was absolutely horrified that by how nasty some persons in the medical arena can be. I've dealt with my fair share of doctors who are prime time idiots, doctors who ask to be treated like Gods, doctors who refuse to explain anything and doctors who are incredibly dismissive. That being said, I have never had to deal with a doctor who's attempted to perform a procedure I hadn't consented to although one got it into his head to inject water into a spinal nerve instead of anaesthesia. For that matter, I've not had a doctor who's refused to do something I wanted (such as using a new needle while performing an EMG NCV) either.

That may have something to do with the fact that I have, on occasion, kicked up a royal fuss. But I think it's primarily because I've been lucky enough to be able to go to good hospitals and to choose the doctors I consult very carefully, because I've been able to walk out when I've encountered doctors who got on my nerves and ask for second, third, and, yes, even twentieth opinions without thinking twice. That, I imagine, is not something which is easy to do when you go through the NHS.

The result is that I now know a few doctors whom I trust and that is something which is tremendously important to me. I cannot imagine having to go to a doctor whom I did not trust and who might behave in the way Debs described. The one time I did have to deal with an absurdly idiotic doctor whom I didn't really know, I had one of my doctors drive down immediately from another hospital and help calm me down (even though the chap hadn't performed any form of procedure on me) while another one give me a reference to a much nicer person.

Coming back to Debs, however, when it comes to terminology, it simply doesn't matter whether or not a particular experience meets someone else's definition of rape for the experience to be rape. And it certainly doesn't matter if it meets the legal definition of rape.

Consider Indian rape laws, for example. Rape, according to them occurs when and only when penile penetration of a vagina occurs. Using fingers or other objects simply doesn't constitute rape under the Indian Penal Code although the definitions of rape in many other jurisdictions do say that that constitutes rape.

India doesn't have a law against indecent assault either. The Law Commission has recommended an amendment to the Indian Penal Code which makes indecent assault an offence but so far Parliament hasn't enacted it. The result is that what would be indecent assault / rape in many other jurisdictions is, in India, the 'outraging of the modesty of a woman' -- I am not making the phrase up. And outraging a woman's modesty can comprise anything from brushing against a woman inappropriately to raping her with an object.

No one would say that just because the law doesn't consider being forced to have oral sex to be rape, it doesn't mean that it isn't rape.

Along similar lines, surely, just because the law doesn't consider being raped with an object to be rape, it doesn't mean that it isn't rape. Just because that object happens to be a medical instrument, it doesn't mean that being penetrated with it cannot constitute rape. And just because that object happens to be wielded, yes, wielded, by a person who has a degree in medicine, it doesn't mean that it automatically isn't rape.

The law is entirely capable of existing independently of women's experiences. If not anything else, the marital exception to rape which prevailed for centuries proved that.

Apparently, the opinions of some doctors are also capable of existing with no reference to the opinions of their patients.

Some other blogs which speak of the issue: Uncool, The F Word, Not a Whisper, Fetch My Axe
I see no reason to link to the doctor.