Since I’m stuck at home with conjunctivitis, a major occupational hazard apparently, I thought I’d focus on an important issue at hand.
#MeToo

It’s appalling how so many women have that as their status today, but when you think about it, it isn’t that surprising.
We’ve all been victims of sexual harrasment at some point or the other and some of us are so used to it, that we tend to ignore it because that’s what we’ve been told to do, ‘in our best interest’.

I know I’m talking for many doctors when I say this, but being a female we’ve always been made to feel a tad bit inferior to our male counterparts, either by being called ‘Sister’ or looked at scornfully when a male junior asks you about your opinion on a clinical condition.
It’s annoying and we ignore it because we know we’re better than that, we know we’ve done just as well or even better than our male collegues and shouldn’t bother about what lesser educated people think.

But the question today is, “Why should we keep quiet?”
Why should I look away when a patient’s relative is leering at me? Or when a patient ungratefully makes a pass at me as I suture his lacerated eyelid?
Why is it that we feel so unsafe to raise our voices?
To walk in dark corridors past midnight?

 

I’m very grateful to a vast majority of males I know and am friends with for the empathy they share and the change they want to make, to make this a better place for us.
It’s sad that for every good man, there are another two men who’d think of us in a less than respectful way, and cause another woman to use the hashtag, Me Too.

Some men probably don’t even realise they’re doing it, yes, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.
But not every woman who is talking to you, wants you to flirt with her.
Not every woman who likes your comment on social media wants to be your friend.
And no, most of us don’t want to be friends with people we don’t know and haven’t ever met simply because we have a few mutual friends on facebook.

Once in a few months, I open my spam folder on facebook, the mails from unknown people which are thankfully filtered out by facebook, and I laugh at the audacity of some of the men and their messages.
I laugh because I see no point doing anything, which is sad, that we’ve given up.
It’s wrong that we ignore the ‘Do you want to make fraaandship with me?’ and don’t lash back.

And so yes, I do carry a can of pepper spray with me at all times, and yes I will use it on you and no, despite being an Ophthalmologist, I will not irrigate your eyes with normal saline, because in your suffering, atleast I’ll have a reply to #MeToo.