Docs Cracking Sexist Twitter Jokes: Does Education Guarantee Good Sense?

A couple of doctors cracking sexist jokes on Twitter are at the receiving end of rightful criticism. Social media users are questioning the cycle of gender stereotypical humour that just doesn't seem to end, seeping instead out of WhatsApp family groups and onto online public spaces.

Accounts of one Dr Saurav and another Dr Naresh Lodhi are under fire for using the Haseen Dillruba meme template – of Taapsee Pannu dropping and draping her red saree – to seemingly indicate how ‘interns’ and ‘final year girls’ behave on campuses.

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If this is how male doctors see their female colleagues or juniors, what hope do we have left from anyone else?

Maybe it was funny in the movie, but it certainly isn't a funny/tasteful meme. pic.twitter.com/UatPf4e0kj

— Coffee_n_Cannulas (@scalpel_junkie) July 9, 2021

Social media platforms are a hotspot for targeted harassment and bullying arising out of deep-seated misogynistic biases, as the recent outrageous 'Sulli Deals' row has shown. Just as casual sexism and gender microaggressions are popular methods of holding women down offline. Online, they turn more sinister, passed around under the garb of innocent humour.

Doctors Cracking Sexist Jokes Is One Thing We Don't Need In A Pandemic (Or Ever)

If there's one force that has single-handedly held up the fort (within its capacity) through India's two COVID-19 waves, it is the medical fraternity. Their education, expertise, experience and round-the-clock sacrifice saved lives - averting a bigger calamity than happened - even as healthcare staff functioned on last reserves of energy.

And while the value of their contribution is untranslateable to words, should it grant select fraternity members immunity from being called out when they fault? 

It clearly doesn't, proved by their own doctor colleagues calling this sexism out.

That's so distasteful & utterly shameful. In a society where there are already many ill elements whose such thinking at places lead to dreadful consequences, being doctors & posting such things is a very wrong and disgusting.

— Dr. Mukul Kumar | #MaskUp #GetVaccinated (@WhiteCoat_no_48) July 9, 2021

The level of education is seriously going down. What kind of doctors are we breeding.



If its really your post - Shame on you - @DrSaurav5 @sparta_22

— Major (Dr.) Gautam Vijay 🇮🇳 (@Maj_GautamVijay) July 9, 2021

Both accounts facing heat for their 'jokes' belong to surgeons and have sizeable Twitter reach.

The memes these two doctors in question have shared reinforce the same age-old ">stereotypes of women extracting professional favours through promiscuity. That women in streams of science and medicine rely not on personal caliber but that of their 'seductive' strengths. Owing to their lesser count in these fields understood to be largely masculine, female students routinely become easy targets of sexist humour.

Doctors and nurses are figures people look up to and put their faith in. What happens when they bring the curtains down to reveal distasteful and biased beliefs?

Views expressed are the author's own.

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