The stupidity of intelligent people.
Do they really lack contextual thinking abilities, or is it feigned?
Currently in New Zealand, we are having a submission process on the ‘Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi’ Bill. To those outside NZ, I won’t try and explain this to you in depth with all its complexities. However, simply speaking, the Bill asserts that the Principles should confer equality on all New Zealanders irrespective of ethnicity, with the exception of legitimate grievance claims from Māori. Suffice to say, it is a contentious issue, and people and groups are now making their case either for or against the Principles to a Parliamentary Select Committee.
Amongst those who’ve made a submission is Dr Jo Lambert, Chair of the New Zealand College of Sexual and Reproductive Health.
Dr Lambert has taken exception to the concept of equality in the Principles, claiming that equality "assumes that we all have the same experience, that we all have the same resources, the same privileges, that we come from the same background."¹
Then, goes on to say that “if she applied the principles of equality in a health setting to a patient who came in vomiting - "whether they're a six-month-old pēpi [baby], whether they're a 12-year-old male, a 30-year-old person with a uterus, or an 80 year old" - that would mean she would ask the same questions, order the same investigations, offer the same advice and medicine.”¹
So, first of all, Dr Lambert refers to a boy or a man as a male, but a woman is referred to as a person with a uterus. Then, bizarrely, implies that ‘equality’ in a clinical setting would mean all patients receive the same medical treatment all the time. How many doctors, apart from Dr Lambert, have ever thought that when committing to treating all patients equally it means that?
Then, she goes on to say “By using the principle of equality I would be wasting resources because three out of those four people don't need a pregnancy test”.¹ Does ‘stupid’ even begin to describe this statement? It’s a tad scary how she, a clinical doctor, appears to be completely devoid of contextual thinking.
Is she serious, or just using sophistry?
I think it’s fair to deduce that Dr Lambert is not a fan of equality. Certainly, she doesn’t seem to bestow respect equally upon women and men in how she refers to them. My guess is that she prefers the word ‘equity’ over ‘equality’, because ‘equity’ means she can play that card any way she wants.
She’s in great company, too, by the look of it. This is the board of the New Zealand College of Sexual and Reproductive Health, where six out of eight have pronouns in their bio.
It’s not unreasonable to expect they, like Dr Lambert, reduce women in their narrative to body parts, whilst keeping men wholistically visible, and that this might very well reflected in the training they provide.
Statements of such supreme stupidity or sophistry, as quoted above, are a worry. They have gender ideology’s fingerprints all over them, not to mention critical race theory’s, and other woke mind-messes manufactured at university. It’s a deep, deep rabbit hole, and I have my doubts those in it could ever find their way out. How did so many of our intelligentsia end up like this? I know not all have, but commonsense seems to have ‘left the building’ in many.
Header image by Debi Brady from Pixabay
'Uterus havers' excludes some women in a dismissive and callous kind of way, while younger girls with said apparatus are not capable of pregnancy yet, yet they are 'uterus havers'. I guess it's not important for doctors to use accurate terminology if it might potentially offend a man, while it is important to rush to embrace such terminology when it can be sure to offend some women. 🤔
Absolutely astonishing! Total nonsensical rubbish that you would not expect from any mature person, let alone one with the title “Dr”. One almost despairs of our country if people like this are in responsible positions in society.