hoof & feather

A creative dumping ground

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

I go through phases. Some days I feel like the person I’m supposed to be, and then some days I turn into no one at all. There is both me and my silhouette. I hope that on the days you find me and all I am are darkened lines, you still are willing to be near me.

Mary Kate Teske (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[mylifeasamedstudent]

sexual harassment and medical school: it's not okay.

InAustralia, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) is in damage control. A leading vascular surgeon has come out and stated that female surgeons should endure sexual harassment in order to protect their careers. A junior doctor in Melbourne has spoken up and described the harassment she’s faced by being a talented but female registrar. One of my idols has written a piece about the lack of female specialists in Australia.

Unfortunately, this issue isn’t confined to the workplace.

About halfway through medical school, we started doing short cases. This is one of the key assessments medical students face, and involves performing an eight-minute examination of a patient, followed by a summary of the key signs and list of differential diagnoses.

Naturally, my colleagues and I, new to the wards, were petrified.

We went to every tutorial on performing examinations, formed study groups, did trial run after trial run. After ward rounds, between clinics, we were practicing listening to heart sounds and percussing lung bases on one another.

One day, we were examining the respiratory system. I was the patient, and a fellow med student was examining me, and another was acting as the assessor.

He had forgotten to examine my chest. The medical student, providing feedback, mentioned this.

“How could I have forgotten those beautiful breasts?” He said, staring at my chest, pretending to squeeze them with his hands.

We just sat in silence. We didn’t tell him off. We didn’t say that such language was inappropriate.

I wish I could say that I’d spoken up and given him a piece of my mind. But I didn’t.

It took more of the same and the prompting of a friend to tell someone. I was scared. I felt dirty. I felt that I was blowing things out of proportion, making mountains out of molehills. I didn’t want to ruin his medical career… or mine.

I did speak up. I was supported by the hospital and made to feel safe within hospital grounds.

But outside of the wards, I was made to feel like the perpetrator. I was forced to see the person that had made me feel like an object. I was made to attend mediations with this person, despite my desire not to, wanting to move on with my life. A black mark was recorded against my name, as if to say that ‘this woman is a troublemaker’. I was forced to rehash this incident to other clinical deans, encouraging that voice in my head that reprimanded me for speaking up.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated incident, and I know that I’m not the only female medical student out there who has gone through this. I know of women who have gone through much worse, and it’s not acceptable. Every medical student, regardless of their gender, should be allowed to feel safe in the presence of their peers. This culture of misogyny begins young. We need to educate students on what acceptable behaviour is, and that the gender of a medical student has no bearing on their ability. We need to cultivate an environment where women are supported to speak up. We need to change.

I was sexually harassed in medical school, and that’s not okay.

[blaumau5]

This is one of the many reasons why the world needs more women as physicians.

[blaumau5]

View this post on Instagram

Mmm, armpit rubs. I luvs them. #chihuahua #dogue #dogs #tinydog

[blaumau5]

HELLO. Let's get uncomfortably close. #chihuahua #eyeball #dogue #dogs #tinydog

[blaumau5]

Roadrunner outside my house today! Meep meep. #roadrunner #texaswildlife #birdwatching #birds

[blaumau5]

The weasels are concerned about the noises the drain is making. #kitties #cats #bengal

[blaumau5]

Free audiobooks are pretty much the best thing ever to me right now. #graysanatomy #medicine

[valdanderthal]

New York’s Chief Medical Examiner Seeks to Lead in DNA Research

Dr. Sampson, who had been acting chief since 2013, officially took the helm in December with the goal of pushing state-of-the-art research in DNA evidence collection and genetic investigations of mysterious deaths. But she does so at a time when the office is seeking to right itself after high-profile mistakes — a technician’s mishandling of rape evidence; a body that went missing — sparked city investigations and risked tarnishing its reputation.

More recently, the medical examiner’s office also found itself thrust into the debate over the police killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island after the agency officially linked his death to an officer’s chokehold.

In an interview in her office, shortly after her appointment, Dr. Sampson said she hoped that a focus on quality assurance, along with a new lab supervisor and a 24-hour operations center for tracking bodies as they move from street to morgue, would curb human errors. She said that those isolated mistakes had not undermined the advanced science that was performed at the lab and was often presented at trial.

“The science was never in question,” she said.

…

Despite the sheen of forensic testing in television crime dramas, it remains a profession troubled by an image problem. “It’s not a glamorous field,” Dr. Sampson conceded.

At the same time, it is one that increasingly attracts women. A majority of the medical examiners in New York City are women, Dr. Sampson said.

While most of her own mentors were men, including Dr. Hirsch, she said she did have one important female role model: her mother, who graduated from medical school in 1960 when there were few women doing so.

“She always told me if you want to do it, you can do it,” Dr. Sampson said. “That’s how I was raised; that’s how I hope I’m raising my daughter.”

The New York Times 

[thisfuturemd]

She is amazing. I can only imagine the number of cases she has been involved in. She has probably seen the world and beyond in forensics. 

[aprilrichardson]

I Can't Believe What You Say to Me, You Got Some Attitude

In recent years, there have been many important debates about sexism in comedy and The Great Rape Joke Divide and the like, but I want to point out one (quite trivial in the shadow of rape jokes, perhaps) thing that absolutely infuriates me as a comedian who is still often introduced to the stage with “Are you guys ready for a lady?”:

Male comic telling jokes about dating/sex/relationships/loneliness = LOL!

Female comic telling jokes about dating/sex/relationships/loneliness = “awww”s and palpable looks of pity

WHY IS THIS?! Obviously jokes about the above subjects are well-trod ground because they are such universal experiences, but when I’ve been on shows where guys will tell relatively similarly constructed jokes to mine, they get laughs and an overall friendly “Get a load of this nutty guy!” attitude, whereas I get audible sighs of sadness and people waiting to give me hugs and pep talks afterward. “Maybe you’re just not funny, April,” you’re thinking — and maybe to you, I’m not, which is fair enough (but setting aside the fact that I must be humorous on some small level because I am making a living doing comedy right now), I also know other women who are much, much funnier than me who often get the same reactions. Even tonight, I tweeted some dumb dating joke and got a response from a dude saying something about how I’m “just looking for sympathy and attention” — DOY, yes, I am looking for attention for THE JOKE I JUST WROTE, because I’m a comedian who will post jokes on Twitter in the hopes that someone will see them and like them and pay to come see me live, which is very, very different from seeking male attention (and “sympathy”). No guy comic in history has ever been accused of “looking for sympathy” after talking about his inactive dating life. If a dude posts a joke about not getting laid enough, he’s only in danger of being high-fived to death, while if a lady posts a similar joke, it’s because they’re “looking for attention” or “boo hoo, you’re a girl, you can get laid any time you want,” because why should we have standards and wait until we meet someone with whom we share chemistry and a spark? Just walk out the door and bang the first dude you see and stop complaining, woman! God, this just bums me out so much, because as someone who recently ended a serious relationship and who really is like, sitting at home being sad a lot, pondering all this dating bullshit, what else am I supposed to talk about right now? Along with Scandal and House of Cards, that stuff is currently a sizable part of my life, and as the saying goes, “write what you know,” and sometimes I find myself holding back online and onstage, because I don’t want to deal with the inevitable tidal wave of pity, when I’m really just joking and trying to figure out how to make light of this shit that we ALL go through, dudes and ladies alike, you know? Obviously, if you don’t find my jokes funny, I expect silence — I’m aiming for laughs, of course, but I’d almost prefer silence to “awww”s that sound like they’d accompany a condescending pat on the head. Ugh, this is so poorly written, but I’m just so fuckin’ annoyed. Allow me and the ladies of the world joke about being lonely from time to time without hearing “awww” or “I’m sorry” or “I’LL go on a date with you,” because they are JOKES, not cries for help or subliminal messages to the dudes in the audience. (Trust me, guys — if I want to date you, I will walk up to you and say, “Do you want to go on a date?” and then you will likely be scared off by this and get weird and then I’ll go home feeling bummed and will try to write new jokes about it and THE CIIIIIRCLE OF LIIIIIIFEEEE continues.)

[allwereallyneedisweed]

Never apologize for burning too brightly or collapsing into yourself every night. That is how galaxies are made.

(via dayzea)

[anxiousyogini]

[blaumau5]

A moment of desperation for snuggles on a cold day. He almost immediately found curling up on my legs to be unsatisfactory. #bengal #kitty #kitteh #snuggles

[blaumau5]

Every day when I get out of the shower... There they are. #cats #crazycatlady #kitties #showercats

[blaumau5]

Every day when I get out of the shower... There they are. #cats #crazycatlady #kitties #showercats

[blaumau5]

Mmm yeshhh, faucet water is superior to freshly poured bowl water. #kitty #cats #kitteh #sofluffy

[tastefullyoffensive]

[archiemcphee]

[archiemcphee]

We will miss you Leonard Nimoy, you were amazing. 

This ecstatically awesome portrait of Mister Spock riding a winged unicorn over a star-spangled rainbow was created by Brooklyn-based artist and illustrator Tim O’Brien for an issue of Men’s Health. As soon as we saw it we felt better about pretty much everything. We also love the fact that, despite the fantastic circumstances, the expression on Spock’s face is as stoic as ever.

[via Neatorama]