I must have learned early that people in large groups do things en masse that make no sense at all. I must have learned it early because I can’t remember being any other way. In this way, I’ve remained slightly detached from every society I’ve lived in. It’s easier for me to do this because I never had children that I was never forced to teach the ways of conforming in order for them to survive and succeed. I’ve managed to stay out of debt also, which gives me the freedom of telling the world to fuck off when it makes no sense to me.
Ha. I’ve always been a big, confident guy. People have a thing about big, confident guys. They don’t give us a lot of shit. I’ve been extremely lucky that way.
When I came back to the States after ten years of being away, I wanted to get into medicine. I was kicking forty, so med school was out of the question. So, my options were to be a tech, or a nurse. Techs don;t get paid as well as nurses. Nursing has a lot more upward mobility available and oportunities for advancement with futher education. So, instead of becoming a paramedic like most guys like me do, I became a nurse.
I can’t tell you the shit that I took for making that decision. It surprised even me. I sincerely thought that we’d got past a lot of the gender shit after all the turmoil of the 1970’s. But, it seems, society often can’t walk the talk anymore than the most ignorant redneck.
Some of it was blatant, much of it was mindlessly insinuated, without any bad intention. But it was constantly there. I quickly learned to ignore it. It was assumed by a lot of people that I was gay. LOL. What a surprise it was to some of my female colleagues when they realized I wasn’t. A pleasant surprise I hope. Most of my gay male colleagues new right away. LOL. People are strange.
Being a male on a hospital floor would get me into trouble with my superiors sometimes. I would walk into a patient’s room with a female doctor and the patient would invariably defer to me. Even after the doctor introduced herself as such, the patient would ask me the questions and sometimes ignore the doctor completely. Doctors have to work very hard to get and maintain their positions, much harder than nurses, and they ultimately have much more responsibility. I would always defer the patient to the doctor, but sometimes this changed nothing. I found being put in this position in a room with a doctor and a patient embarrassing for all three of us. Sometimes I would excuse myself and leave the room. It’s the way things were.
There are things done in gynocology that I think a lot of women are uncomfortable havint a male nurse do. Most women don’t mind a male doctor doing these things, but not a nurse. Most of the time they don’t object, but anybody with half a brain can feel when their patient is uncomfortable. I knew the first time I massaged a post-delivery patient’s fundus that gyno wasn’t for me. I didn’t get into nursing to make patients uncomfortable. Just the opposite. For this and other reasons, I never did gyno.
And I have to say…. way, way back in my mind, I don’t like the idea of clinically examining women. It’s an irrational thing, but I would like to keep those two worlds apart—medicine and women. Clinical examination might get to be a habit, and I don’t think they would like that very much. LOL. Totally irrational, but it has always been there.
But this was all back in the stone age. Things have changed quite a bit since I began as a nurse. I see more male nurses on the floors these days. I see opinions by females on the net that tell me the collective mindset is changing. That’s a good thing.
Little things, like how a woman sits, which occupation she chooses, how she speaks, how aggressive or passive she is—I don’t see these things through a gender filter. I take them as they come like I do men. I’m interested in what kind of people they are and the primal, chemical reactions I have to certain women. But I’ve never had to deal with the same societal pressures as many of the rest of you. I’ve been really lucky. I have always been able to tell the world to go fuck themselves without endangering anyone but myself and my own career.
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