No, you don't get it

[Renate]

Julie Holland is a psychiatrist who worked at Bellevue Hospital for nine years as attending psychiatrist.
She relates her experiences in a new book, Weekends at Bellevue.
One incident involves admitting a transsexual woman to the hospital.

"Ma'am," I begin softly. "Miss? Can you tell me what happened?"
It is always most polite to address transgender patients in their preferred gender.
Clearly this man has gone through a lot of trouble to be appreciated as a woman.
It is an easy way for me to convey to him that I get it, I respect his mission.

No, you don't get it.

* emphasis added

[Nicky]

No, they don't get it at all.  .

There is a lot of arrogance just in those two sentences.

[Aidan_]

It's actually good they can't get it. To be able to understand it means they'd be capable of it themselves.

[spacial]

If you follow the Amazon link kindly provided by Renate, scroll down, there are some interesting comments on the book and author.

Given these, her flippant attitude toward transgender isn't particularly surprising.

Did readers really need to know she felt herself lubricate because there was a man in scrubs, and she was fixated on scrubs as a sexual object?

[Crimbuki]

1) Her use of the male pronoun could simply be a way of driving the point home that he is a sexually transitioning person whom has not yet completed his transition. Some people prefer to be addressed in such a way, who are we to make this decision for someone else.

2) Her sexual fetish is irrelevant.

[Janet_Girl]

Maybe she should check herself in, because she is truly a nut case.

[V M]

I felt that what she said was somewhat rude and patronizing

Like... It's important to be polite to the patient's face but use what ever terms you feel like behind their back 

[BunnyBee]

Hard to judge somebody's intentions on paper.  One thing I do know for sure though is that calling a trans woman a "man" is the ultimate insult.  Therefore this woman was either being patronizing and insulting, or if her insolence was completely unintentional, she is clueless and shouldn't be portraying herself as an authority on what trans peeps consider polite.

[Asfsd4214]

The field of psychiatry has a lot of enemies (granted one of its greatest enemies is basically a UFO cult), and a far less than perfect history.

To be honest I don't blame anyone for being mistrustful of it. I certainly am not trustful of psychiatrists, and it's largely because of attitudes like this.

Fact is many, perhaps even most of them, think we are mentally ill and delusional.



The funny thing is, I once had no opinion about psychiatrists, good or bad. It's purely from my own first person experiences with them that my feelings towards them are decidedly more negative than positive.

[Arch]

...and yet the author goes on to call this person "she" after that. So, why "this man" and "him" and "his" in the opening passage? Is it there for the non-trans-savvy reader?

[V M]

Then again, it reminds me of allot of guys in Calif. who call everyone Dude including their girlfriends 

[alia]

I call everyone dude, and I'm a trans woman.

[spacial]

From the reviews, this woman appears to be trying to write an interesting story to justify her time.

[cynthialee]

I also call everyone dude.

[NightWing]

Haha, fail The only thing she showed out of that is what a bone-head she is.

I call everyone dude too.  I really don't think dude is male-exclusive anymore XD (besides, dudette just sounds silly)

[jmaxley]

The funny thing is, I once had no opinion about psychiatrists, good or bad. It's purely from my own first person experiences with them that my feelings towards them are decidedly more negative than positive.

Same here.  I've had some real nutcases for shrinks.  Though it really does make me appreciate the good ones.

[thinkin]

something really interesting about it for sure