I've visited an ATL pediatric allergist (seriously disliked him) and another allergist run by twin male doctors who were all right, but dang, I think not seeing male doctors is a good policy to adopt. My male OB who was advertised as very pro-natural birth still didn't know how to support physiological birth (granted, few OBs even know about physiological birth, let alone have ever seen one).
I think another layer of the problem you've described is the stark/rigid professionalism in medicine. Both the doctors and lay people have been trained to believe that the doctors know what they are doing. "Just leave this to the professionals and move along." Questioning and pushing back are seen as problems. People are seen as patients. The power dynamic is intense. When one of our children was born medically complex, we were thrown into the deep end with not just educating ourselves on all kinds of medical terminology, perspectives, and alternatives, but also educating ourselves on advocating. One time, we were at the hospital with our daughter preparing her for surgery, when a small complication came up. I felt the sense of urgency to decide what to do quickly so that the team could continue their work. My husband reminded me that they are legally required to give us the time we need to think things over. I had no room in my mental model of Hospital for that.
Pair that with the isolation of being a new patient for a new problem, plus the long-lasting bias against hypochondriac women and the Savior complex doctors are encouraged toward and... well, here we are.
I think you would appreciate the short feminist pamphlet called Complaints and Disorders: the Sexual Politics of Sickness. It's free as an ebook on hoopla with an Atlanta Library card! Let me know what you think if you check it out!
I've visited an ATL pediatric allergist (seriously disliked him) and another allergist run by twin male doctors who were all right, but dang, I think not seeing male doctors is a good policy to adopt. My male OB who was advertised as very pro-natural birth still didn't know how to support physiological birth (granted, few OBs even know about physiological birth, let alone have ever seen one).
I think another layer of the problem you've described is the stark/rigid professionalism in medicine. Both the doctors and lay people have been trained to believe that the doctors know what they are doing. "Just leave this to the professionals and move along." Questioning and pushing back are seen as problems. People are seen as patients. The power dynamic is intense. When one of our children was born medically complex, we were thrown into the deep end with not just educating ourselves on all kinds of medical terminology, perspectives, and alternatives, but also educating ourselves on advocating. One time, we were at the hospital with our daughter preparing her for surgery, when a small complication came up. I felt the sense of urgency to decide what to do quickly so that the team could continue their work. My husband reminded me that they are legally required to give us the time we need to think things over. I had no room in my mental model of Hospital for that.
Pair that with the isolation of being a new patient for a new problem, plus the long-lasting bias against hypochondriac women and the Savior complex doctors are encouraged toward and... well, here we are.
I think you would appreciate the short feminist pamphlet called Complaints and Disorders: the Sexual Politics of Sickness. It's free as an ebook on hoopla with an Atlanta Library card! Let me know what you think if you check it out!