NotAlwaysRight is Not Always Right
NotAlwaysRight.com is a site that posts “Funny & Stupid Customer Quotes.” Most of the time, the quotes are funny and show how amazingly entitled, racist, rude, and sexist, among other horrible things, customers can be. I like reading it because I did some patron-facing work at a library for a while, and got some experience in dealing with stupid, rude, and entitled patrons. I also like to read it to remind myself to not be stupid, rude, and entitled as a customer. One of today’s posts was irritating, however, because I’m certain that it was posted for “ha ha, that woman was so stupid, thinking she had a prostate!” laughs.
Sometimes Being Too Thorough Can Backfire
Military | Maryland, USA(This took place at our health clinic. The patient was an older female.)
Me: “What type of appointment do you need?”
Patient: “I need a prostate exam.”
Me: “I’m sorry, those appointments are for men only.”
Patient: “That’s discrimination – I want to talk to your supervisor!”
Sergeant: “The specialist is correct, ma’am, these appointments are for men only. You do not have a prostate.”
Patient: “How would YOU know? I’ve never had surgery in my life!”
Me: “Have you ever had a penis and testicles at any point in your life?”
Patient: “What?! How insulting! You’re sick! I’m going to sue you!”
Me: “If you were not born with boy parts, then you were not born with a prostate. Good luck suing the Army.”
It seems clear from the dialogue (“How insulting! You’re sick!”) that the patient was a cis woman, and likely a transphobic woman, at that. However, the assumption that, because she was a woman, she didn’t need a medical exam that she specifically requested is rooted in cis privilege and in not even considering the existence of trans people. It could have been the case that the patient was a trans woman in need of a prostate exam. There have been and are trans people in the U.S. Armed Forces, after all.
Just as outright transphobia leads to death, as in the cases of Robert Eads, a trans man who was denied treatment for his ovarian cancer, and Tyra Hunter, a trans woman who was denied medical care after a car crash, so, too, can ignorance of trans peoples’ medical and health needs. S is a med student, and a while ago, she attended a panel that included a Mexican trans woman.
S: hmm this is very interesting. She related an anecdote about her trans friend who died of prostate cancer. The doctor didn’t realize that prostate exam was still necessary and didn’t detect it in time.
PD: sad and interesting
S: ignorance – the root of all evil
PD: basically
S: she’s talking about a nurse practitioner who wanted to refer her out, because he “wouldn’t even know what he was looking at” (vaginal exam), which is a ridiculously insensitive way of putting it
PD: yeah
S: but i wonder if anywhere in our education we’ll be trained how to examine transgender patients
It was casual transphobia and cis privilege on the part of the clinician and the sergeant to assume that the woman was cis. It was casual transphobia for NotAlwaysRight to post the incident as a “haha, that woman’s so stupid she didn’t realize that only men have prostates!” because that thinking erases the existence of trans people.
jemimaaslana said,
2009 April 28 at 7:12 AM
That is an awful situation. And it reeks of cis privilege, indeed.
The most scary thing is this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate
“The Skene’s gland, also known as the paraurethral gland, found in females, is homologous to the prostate gland in males. In 2002, the Skene’s gland, was officially renamed the prostate by the Federative International Committee on Anatomical Terminology.
The female prostate, like the male prostate, secretes PSA and levels of this antigen rise in the presence of carcinoma of the gland. The gland also expels fluid, like the male prostate, during orgasm.[6] Researchers argue that the organ should therefore be called a female prostate and not “Skene’s gland”.”
According to this females actually do have a prostate. Originally it was not called thusly, but since 2002 it has been. Perhaps we ought to think again about who’s really being the stupid ones.
pizzadiavola said,
2009 May 1 at 2:35 PM
Whoa, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the info and the link, jeminaaslana!
jemimaaslana said,
2009 May 2 at 1:02 AM
Anytime. That knowledge really adds a new dimension to that story.
N.I. said,
2009 June 12 at 5:25 AM
“However, the assumption that, because she was a woman, she didn’t need a medical exam that she specifically requested is rooted in cis privilege and in not even considering the existence of trans people.”
Hmmm, that’s not quite right though is it, she specifically stated
“I’ve never had surgery in my life!”
so it’s not an assumption after that point, it’s backed by an assertion from the person demanding the service.
I would also challenge your assumption that it was posted under
“ha ha, that woman was so stupid, thinking she had a prostate!”
Is it not equally valid that this was posted as
“ha ha, that person was so stupid, thinking they was being discriminated against after being told they did not need the service being asked for and, not adding any information to disuade the people she was talking to, then continued to insist on the unnecessary service.”?
The situation does not become any less funny if the woman becomes a man and the ’service offered’ becomes a gynaecological exam.
This does not mean that cis privilege should be ignored, only that people see what they want to see without considering the alternatives (both you with this article and the person in the original quote).
pizzadiavola said,
2009 June 12 at 10:11 AM
it’s not an assumption after that point, it’s backed by an assertion from the person demanding the service.
You are correct in that it’s not a baseless assumption after the point where the patient says she has never had surgery; however, the doctor’s assumption of cis-ness was in place from the beginning:
Me: “I’m sorry, those appointments are for men only.”
The situation does not become any less funny if the woman becomes a man and the ’service offered’ becomes a gynaecological exam.
You’re making my point for me, which is precisely that the incident is not funny in that it relies on the assumption that all people are cis. In your scenario, you’re assuming from the get go that the man is a cis man and ignoring the possibility that he is a trans man. If you want to explicitly build in that assumption and say that the cis woman becomes a cis man, sure, the man’s ignorance of human biology might be funny. However, what I’m arguing against is specifically the assumption that everyone is cis, particularly in medical situations. As in the example of the trans woman above, people die from these assumptions and from ignorance.
jemimaaslana said,
2009 June 14 at 9:14 PM
N.I, A woman walks into the clinic, fine. How can you tell whether she is a woman underneath her clothes? A woman can present as woman without having had surgery. So yeah, she looked like a woman and never had surgery, that could very well mean she had a prostate she needed a doc to take a look at.
I’m a woman, I can dress up in male-ish clothes, and with my fairly deep voice people have often thought I was a bloke. How about I walk into that doctor’s office and ask for a gyn-exam. They might refuse me because I present as a man and men don’t have vaginas hardy-har-har. Except I do. I’m still physically female no matter the clothes I choose to wear.
Whether or not that woman was cis or trans, the doctor’s assumption was that she was cis and therefore could not have a prostate. Surgery is not what makes people trans, what they feel like and what they present as, is.