J. Marion Sims

I noticed that our class was rather divided on opinions of Sims, and I think the division is due to sex. The female students were horrified for the most part at what Sims did to the women of his experiments, whereas the male students of the class seemed to be more accepting of what happened, explaining that it was for the good of medical advances. This post is not to attack the male students of the class, but to try to make sense of the difference of opinion between the women and men, and especially to try to make sense of it for myself.

I think women will always be sympathetic and empathetic towards the harms that are done to fellow women, whether it was a couple centuries ago or happening today. Women know that they have always been viewed as the inferior sex, and for that, society and our gender brings us together, especially when being attacked or ridiculed by our male counterparts. I believe, from what I saw in class yesterday, all of the women could feel the pain and suffering of the women Sims operated on. I think with this particular part of history, it was not only a matter of race, but also sex. I think that for women more so, coming together and defending our sex will almost always outweigh any other discrimination that we will face in our lifetimes- because it affects literally half of the world's population. This is more true for today than in Sims time, however.

I think another part of this story that bothered a lot of the female students, myself included, was that Sims was a white male, operating on the very intimate parts of women. While we all understand that there were no female doctors of the time, it still doesn't seem right that men should have been operating on the reproductive organs and parts of women, first and foremost because they will never understand what women will go through. Men cannot estimate the amount the amount of pain that women go through in childbirth, and yet the do anyway. It is the same concept, men should not study what they will never understand and be able to empathize with, especially when women were believed to be so drastically inferior to men of the time. Today, we know that male practitioners working in the areas of strictly women's health is better. And today, Sims would never be able to operate over 40 times on the same body part, despite sex or race. I think that because these "patients" were African American and female, he had little regard for their well being and relieving their suffering, but it is more likely he put fame and fortune before this.

I think that this topic is more directed toward gender, and that is why the women of the class thought less of Sims than the men did. I know in my opinion, what Sims did was an attack on race and gender. If he had truly wanted to help women, he could have done a few things drastically different. And I do not mean any offense when I say that the men in the class probably did not empathize with these slaves as the women in the class did. The women looked at it as an attack on our sex, while the men looked at it as a necessary evil for the good of science. Both of their points, but I think in the end, at least for me, I judged with not only my mind, but also my heart because I believed it to be morally wrong.

Erin Pattridge