Uproar over FB friend request from doctor
A debate has brewed in Pakistan after a doctor sent a Facebook friend request to a former patient, prompting questions about sexual harassment.
THE case of the Karachi-based doctor who was reportedly fired/suspended after sending filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy’s sister a Facebook friend request has ignited our very own mini Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Ever since Chinoy tweeted about the incident on Oct 23, people have been debating whether the doctor should have faced such action, whether Chinoy abused her star power in order to protect her sister, and whether what he did genuinely constitutes sexual harassment.
(Chinoy was last year’s Oscar winner for Documentary (Short Subject) for her work titled A Girl in
the River: The Price of Forgiveness.)
People may claim that a Facebook friend request is an innocent attempt at social connection, but an emergency room doctor has no business sending a Facebook friend request to a woman he’s treated in the ER.
Not only does this violate medical ethics and codes of conduct, but it violates the patient’s personal information and goes against the recommendations of many medical boards on social media and doctors. The British Medical Association, for example, states very clearly that doctors should not be Facebook friends with their patients.
Strangely, while discussing this on Twitter and Facebook with friends and colleagues, I encountered dozens of men and women defending the doctor, insisting that what he did was not harassment, and that Chinoy was defaming the country by having spoken out about the doctor’s misconduct.
Even after it emerged that he was under warning from the administration for previous episodes of misconduct, and that the hospital had come to its own decision about firing/suspending him, these men and women continued to defend the doctor and slur Chinoy and her family.
This kind of defensive behaviour is no surprise to anyone who studies gender interactions and is familiar with the issue of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment isn’t just vulgar comments to a woman walking by on the street, or the sleazy man at work forcing himself onto his colleagues or subordinates. It is also unwanted personal attention in everyday situations.
According to the University of Michigan Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Centre, harassment can be “letters, telephone calls, visits, pressure for sexual favours, pressure for unnecessary personal interaction and pressure for dates where a sexual/romantic intent appears evident but remains unwanted.”
People may claim to be very confused about what sexual harassment is, but the issue goes beyond simple ignorance.
It’s simply a part of the entire system to doubt the woman who says she feels harassed, pick apart her accusation and label it not really harassment, and defend the predator as a nice guy or a victim of a witch hunt.
Sexual harassment can be blatant or subtle, but the result is that it creates a hostile environment for women, in which they become psychologically affected and unable to do their job. In the case of a patient, the doctor’s office or emergency room transforms from a safe space in which she entrusts her life to the doctor’s care into yet another minefield where she has to defend herself against unwanted attention – the doctor holds power over the patient, no matter what their classes outside the emergency room.
Not only is initiating an unwanted Facebook friend request highly inappropriate for a doctor, it can provoke feelings of stress, trauma, and anxiety in a patient who has just been through a medical emergency.
A Faceboo ok friend request may seem trivial , and this is one of the main argum ments men and women defending th he doctor have been putting abou ut: it was just a friend request, it wasw harmless, just block it, ignore it, move on.
But as wo omen we get hundreds of these a da ay and have to waste our time and d energy rejecting them, chang ging our privacy settings, and pr rotecting ourselves online in a w way men never have to even think about.a Instead of minimising the constantc harassment of these messa ages, why not listen to women for a change tell you how annoying, in ntrusive, and stress-inducing this unwantedu attention really feels, without suggesting that she should just get off social me edia if she can’t deal with it? ?
Finally, yo ou should examine you ur motives whe en defending th he actions and intentions of an a alleged repeat offen nder.
The tech websitew Tech Crunch h spoke to a woman CEO O, Joelle Emerson, ab bout this phenomenon. She sai id: “People who defend harassing be ehaviour do so because they have en ngaged in such behaviour themse elves. Or they defend individuals accused of this behaviour because e they believe them to be generally y good people. Or, as a rule, they ju ust don’t believe women.” — Dawn/Asia News Network