If a medical professional is about to save your life, what’s in their trousers should be the last thing on your mind. Kemi Badenoch is spreading unnecessary fear about an important health issue, and I think that’s beyond wicked.
The Society of Radiographers is sounding the alarm over a “critical” shortage of the highly trained staff needed to perform mammograms, an essential breast cancer service. There is a vacancy rate of 17.5 per cent for screening mammographers, rising to 20 per cent for symptomatic mammographers, who specialise in assessments for women with lumps in their breasts or family history of breast cancer.
Hello, that’s me, and this sounds worrying. What is not in the least concerning, however, is that one of the proposed solutions is allowing men to administer these X-rays. Currently, only women are trained to perform mammograms. It takes four years to train for, and if men want to become mammographers then I say have at it, boys. These boobs aren’t going to X-ray themselves.
Badenoch, however, is sticking her oar in describing mammograms as an “intrusive process” (the mammographer positions your breast tissue just so) and opining that “I would not want a man doing that”. Sorry, are we all 12 and blushing about the idea of a boy touching a boob? Grow up, Kemi.
This is a politician trying to sexualise and project shame onto a medical process where radiation is beamed into your body to image your insides. Science is cool, sexualising our secondary sex characteristics is not.
I’ll be starting mammograms at 40 (in just seven years time) because there is a family history. In fact, I’ll ideally need an MRI to get a proper shufti at what’s happening in there. My mother recently survived breast cancer. Her tumours were not picked up by a standard mammogram because she, and likely I, have what is medically defined as “dense breasts”.
Yes, my frankly magnificent GG rack is the equivalent of a ticking timebomb strapped to my chest. Accessing screenings will be imperative, and I really don’t mind which highly trained professional delivers it. I just want it done, and if there are critical shortfalls in staff I could be stuck on a waiting list while cancer sneaks its way in.
Many top breast surgeons are male, by the way. Would you seriously demand a woman-only mammogram only to baulk that the surgeon about to give you the mastectomy needed to save your life, or perform the reconstructive surgery if that’s your decision, had XY chromosomes? Please, let’s be realistic here.
If I have children, I’m not going to be demanding that only women attend to my body during the birthing process like some Tudor queen entering confinement
Male medical professionals have been instrumental in keeping me healthy thus far. When I started getting my cervical screenings — aka a smear test — at 25, I had abnormal cell changes that required a colposcopy. This is the fancy way of saying a doctor needed to visually examine my cervix, using a special microscope.
Off I went to my appointment, where a charming and reassuring male doctor settled me in the chair and took me on a guided tour of my vagina. I got to watch on a big screen and meet my cervix up close, which was very cool. While he said that it was an exemplary cervix (a “perfect pink donut”, a compliment I considered putting on my dating app profile at the time) he wanted to do a biopsy to be sure. It’s not a physically comfortable experience, but I felt exceptionally safe and cared for. When I got the all-clear there was nothing but a sense of relief.
Bodies are funny things and sometimes anatomical challenges require as many experts in the room as possible. I had a hormonal IUD — intrauterine device — implanted at 26 (shout out to the Margaret Pyke Centre). While my original doctor was a woman, who calmly and firmly assuaged my Dr Google fears about perforated uteruses with her decades of experience, my anatomy was once again not playing ball. With my permission, she called in the cavalry and a parade of professionals — including some men — came by to see if they could play hunt the cervix. It was not remotely embarrassing, I was once again reassured that the experts were on the ball, not fussing about who had balls.
Similarly, if I am lucky enough to have children, I’m not going to be demanding that only women attend to my body during the birthing process like some Tudor queen entering confinement. I would just want people who have dedicated their lives to medicine to provide assistance. And while I’m grateful I’ve not had need of emergency surgery, I don’t think the gender of the paramedic who had to cut the clothes from my body would be the first thing on my mind. I would be sad that my bra would be destroyed, but only because they’re so expensive (massive rack, see above).
Scaremongering about the gender of the person trained to carefully handle our bodies is dangerous. This is not the time for Badenoch to play pundit. It’s hugely dangerous to sexualise a medical exam that saves women’s lives. I assure you, nobody is ogling your boobs in a medical setting, especially one that involves the use of X-rays. By suggesting there is something embarrassing and ladies-only-please about mammograms, people could be frightened off going for their screenings.
We must resist this regressive, anti-feminist ideology that paints men as irredeemable aggressors subject to their base urges and women as pious angels whose bodies must be shrouded from male eyes to protect their virtue. Even the prude-masters, those Victorians, wouldn’t suggest something this ridiculous, if only because they wouldn’t want women becoming doctors to begin with.
Of course, we can all hear the transphobic dog whistle in Badenoch’s clumsy punditry. She’s playing to gallery of people emboldened by the UK Supreme Court ruling, who want to start policing our bathrooms and hospital wards, demanding genital proof of womanhood to try and force trans women out of public life. This cannot be allowed to stand.
Barring men from mammograms opens the door to all kinds of discrimination. If the implication is men cannot be trusted to handle breasts in an X-ray, then what about queer woman? Are we going to ban lesbian and bisexual mammographers? Start asking our smear test nurse to rank themselves on the Kinsey Scale?
Medical care sometimes requires nudity and physical contact. This is not a shameful or sexual process, and it regularly saves people’s lives. Every woman should be getting her mammograms at the recommended age. If we have to draft the men into get it done, so be it.
India Block is a London Standard columnist
