Let’s not tear down women who take care of women in order to prove a point. As gynecologists we are exhausted of not being taken seriously because we care for the female reproductive tract—which is EXTREMELY SERIOUS. COVID is also extremely serious. Healthcare is a team sport! https://twitter.com/dremilyportermd/status/1276336319715835905

Jokes like this make it easy to perpetuate the idea that Ob/Gyn is a bunch of girls giggling and catching babies in a secret vagina wing of the hospital and not a group of dedicated trauma surgeons that can extract a human being from another one in 30 seconds while they’re awake

This tweet has painted the perfect trope of a silly airhead who isn’t capable of saving lives in order to give this tweet relatable mass appeal. 1) ALL interns are inexperienced and 2) Ob/Gyns are incredible

And the pervasive image of the “incompetent woman” is a big reason why @HillaryClinton isn’t the president right now and we are in this mess. These biases are all connected. Women tearing down other women is cancelled.

In order to make this tweet popular, it had to knowingly and intrinsically take advantage of ingrained sexism—and it worked. Look no farther than the popularity of the tweet to see how much the image of a young, clueless woman with a speculum in her hand resonated with people

Turning women and their body parts into a joke is a cheap and easy way to invalidate and trivialize what we do in the minds of our colleagues and the general public. It is wholly unacceptable.

The fact that the “scariest” person she could think of to make the joke hit is at the expense of the image of a young professional woman taking care of other women tells me that it touches way more in our society than you think!