myceliorum:

rosa-buachaille:

the-transfeminine-mystique:

the-transfeminine-mystique:

I’ve seen these posts saying, in the words of one of them, “If your job requires you to go against your religious beliefs then perhaps it is time to change careers?” in reference to healthcare workers and government employees who want to deny services to lgbt ppl or others whom they condemn, and i just feel like those posts don’t attempt to understand internal logics at all

like, fundamentalist christian doctors don’t deny trans people medical care because they believe that somebody should provide the care but they just don’t want to be the one to do it. they deny the care because they don’t believe the person should receive care. Their refusal to provide care isn’t just “oops you’re in the wrong field,” as if they were a person with a peanut allergy working in a peanut factory. It is an intentional and calculated part of why they are in the field in the first place — to extend religious control and condemnation to the medical realm.

the pediatrician who spent an entire consultation telling one of my friends at 16 or 17 that he would go to hell if he kept choosing to be gay wasn’t just “not cut out for the job,” he was specifically in that job in order to do that particular thing. Kim Davis didn’t deny the gay couple a marriage license because she couldn’t personally do it, she denied them a marriage license because she thought that people like them should not get marriage licenses and that a clerk should deny them and by god she was going to be that clerk

Saying “if you can’t provide services then why are you in that job!!!” to fundamentalist christians almost always misses the point — that they are in that job specifically so they can selectively deny service

So many people have reblogged this with comments about how this isn’t a thing and how nobody goes into a field specifically to exclude people, and that people pick jobs based on what they like doing, just like most people select a career. And I see where they are coming from in some ways. My wording can be read as meaning that Kim Davis’s primary motivation for becoming a county clerk was specifically to deny gay couples marriage licenses, which isn’t exactly what I mean.

What I mean is that, for a specific subset of fundamentalist Christians, they will say “we need more Christian doctors” or “we need more Christians in government,” and what they mean (and what everybody in the community hears, particularly kids and young adults thinking towards careers) is “we need people in those positions who will discharge their duties according to a fundamentalist Christian ethic, and refuse to allow _______ to happen on their watch.” That “_______” can be filled with anything from abortion to trans acceptance to issuance of marriage licenses to gay people. Their epistemic framework is specifically fundamentalist Christian and not “professional,” and they should be recognized as such, not just people whose professional ethics are superseded in one or two places by their personal religious practice.

I’m guessing this also applies to doctors who are straight-up disablist. 

I know there’s a problem with people going into medicine because it’s prestigious and they want the admiration, rather than having any concern for patients.  That’s fairly well-acknowledged, culturally, though it could still be better. 

But I wonder how many are in medicine because they hate not just sickness – which would be on shaky ground – but sick/disabled people. 

Like they’re subliminating their urge to “clean up the town” into a very socially-accepted course of action. 

And if they can’t fix you immediately – ie. make the problem not be a problem now – they’ll take the Other Route, of removing care so that you die as soon as possible.

All subconsciously, for most of them, but it would explain their actions very well.

Yeah I suspect it’s complicated.  Meaning, sometimes absolutely, sometimes no, sometimes a combination, and sometimes even they probably don’t understand what the hell they’re doing or why.  But there are definitely people who go into fields with positions of power because they want to do harm.  Hell, we already know that there’s serial killers who prey on sick and disabled people by becoming doctors or nurses or LNAs on purpose to gain easier access to us.  (Ever wonder why you never hear of them even though they’re some of the most successful and prolific, and there’s little to no outcry or fame even when they’re caught after doing shit that makes the most infamous serial killers look tame?  …yeah.)  That’s an extreme example, but if that exists (and is as widespread as it is), then every other gradation along the way in terms of malicious intent, both conscious and otherwise, has to exist as well.