I only know what you mean by what you write. I don’t mind-read, extrapolate, or read between the lines.
Okay. this is the first time you have mentioned faces. Now you’re communicatin’.
I was thinking of those maskspeople wear because of allergies or pollution.
It would be in my muslim culture considered very unacceptable and very strange, the idea of the doctor covering her face, but then for us the burqa or the niqab is a weird saudi thing anyway.
in your usa situation it would be a good guess the doctor is - if the description of the event is accurate - some kind of salafiste convert who is making some social statement about the kuffar and being an ostentatious annoying person.
I have gotten rid of many doctors for much less serious things (mostly white males and a few foreign ones) and it was a wise choice in retrospect. Choosing a doctor is a very personal thing and they are not all equal just because they managed to graduate from some sort of medical school and land a residency somewhere at some point (I know it isn’t easy at all, it is just very formulaic). That is the expected outcome for the educational model even if they are last in class and have no bedside manner. Some of them are terrible and don’t even care about their patients that much just like any other service profession.
If the signs aren’t working out for you, it is just like dating. Find another one that does work for you. It is your life in their hands after all and you don’t want a bad one. Cultural relativism be damned, I would ditch her in a second if only because that horrible garb could be one of the last images me and my family see before I died even if she was is medically competent.
She’s a cancer patient. I feel a lot of sympathy for her. But, try as I might, I cannot convince myself that replacing her doctor is the right thing to do. I can understand the action, and be sympathetic and not judge her for it, but, ultimately, I have to conclude that it’s wrong.
It ultimately is just discrimination based on cultural dress. If she were surrounded by people who dressed like that all the time, she would not be uncomfortable. The need to see her face is not absolute. I know–I’ve had doctors wear masks because they are ill, and it felt weird for a bit, but I got over it.
Nor can I argue, like some of you do, that it’s okay since it’s you’re doctor and that she’s entitled to do anything if she’s uncomfortable. If everyone does that, then you have the same issue as not hiring black people at a restaurant. You’d have de facto discrimination where doctors of some cultures can’t get patients.
Again, I can feel sorry for her, and overlook it if she chose to do what I believe is the wrong thing. But I can’t figure out any way for it to be the right thing to do. Every moral principle I hold leads me to that action being wrong.
I also think that I also think it’s wrong to participate in an affair with a married man. And one of my best friends did that when she was in a vulnerable place. She confessed this to me, worried I’d hater her, and I told her I would be a lousy friend if I held that against her.
I very much can hold things to be wrong, but not hold it against someone if they do it. That, to me, is what sympathy allows.
And that is my position here. It would be wrong, but I wouldn’t hold it against her.
Interesting discussion! Many POVs expressed. Thank you. 
I wonder…what about a doctor’s office that had a confederate flag displayed somewhere…cultural heritage? Dukes of Hazard fan? Sign of bass akwards bigotry?
If you are uncomfortable with a doctor, then you have every right to change him/her no questions asked or reasons given.
As it is, I find the story in the OP to be unbelievable. As in, I literally don’t believe it. It has waaaay too many holes in it.
Someone who believes in wearing a full Afghan style Burqa is very unlikely to believe in women going out for education in the first place; and yet here we have an oncologist, which requires years of study. :rolleyes:
Even if you grant the above; Burqa is supposed to be worn outside; she is wearing it indoors
Before a woman…
*Now, I do know women professionally, who wear a face veil; one of my former immediate supervisors did in fact. Never know anyone who wore it indoors, and before people, they knew well or were dealing with in a professional capacity. A person who would insist on wearing it at all times before all “non reletives” would not be someone who would be able to enter a difficult profession and one which would require dealing with the public.
Maybe one thing would be true. All of them, not so much.
This story sounds less like what a Muslim woman did, rather a feverish made-up tale of what the OP’s friend thinks a Muslim woman would do and the OP lapped it up.
How about a late-life convert?
Mehh…plenty of people with actual Phd’s in the physical sciences who become creationists or conspiracy theorists…so, yeah, IMO a burka wearing oncologists doesn’t seem like Bigfoot rare …heck, she might be making a good living about being denied jobs and or fired from them when it doesn’t work out…
Nah, I mentioned the hooded healer monks.
I don’t mind those doctors’ face-masks East Asians wear in public to avoid germs. Just those that look like faces.
I remember in The King of Schnorrers the beggar chief explaining why clowns were verboten to good Jews, and that was in the 18th century.
However, two points: whilst obviously she has the right to change doctors, especially if they are not sympatico, I find it uncomfortable in that if one is frequently rejected for clothes or culture, their employers may take it as licence to impose sumptuary laws or behavioral conditions to the point of conformist rigidity, not just for them, but for future employees.
Secondly, whilst Cronin’s Dr. Finley was famously renowned for a warm bedside manner, many a Scottish doctor was a gruff old curmudgeon, yet very skilled. What matters is not individual’s foibles, but their curative ability, which even now is not reducible, to automatic science.
Monk’s hoods aren’t KKK-style hoods, they’re similar to the ones in hoodies only wider and easier to take down. Never met an actual monk who’d wear his over the head indoors and I don’t see why the writers of those fantasy books (whose monks’ garbs are based on those of actual monks) would expect their monks to wear theirs up all the time.
Do you also picture Little Red Riding Hood with her face fully covered?
I’d be uncomfortable, but I’d be uncomfortable if my doctor wore a surgical mask during a procedure which doesn’t require one or during an interview.
Actually, the Capirote, a [ remarkably ] peaked hood of Catholic organizations in Spain *, mostly brotherhoods, fully covers the face with little slits for eyes and was the main inspiration for the KKK hoods ** of the Second Klan.
And the crazier Hermanos Penitentes of New Mexico sometimes. As a child, I pondered over Edward D. Koch’s The Judges of Hades, fiction about a man as old as the Christ solving crimes in America, and considered a part about these people crucifying themselves to praise God unlikely. Still, some of these google images show them doing that thing.
** The First Klan did not actually dress up much — then was the period of ordinary folk lynching away — then the Second Klan, a mainly money-making affair, in the 1920s copied a 1905 fiction The Clansman and the Griffith film based on that. The film decided the Klan to adopt this fashion. The Women’s Auxiliaries wore hoods and robes of more dainty materials.
A New Republic article How The Klan Got Its Hood explains some of this ***. However, if they did not actually direct the lynchings, they still looked extraordinarily foolish…
**** …the first woman U.S. senator, Rebecca Latimer Felton, who said in 1897, “If it takes lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from drunken, ravening human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand a week if it becomes necessary.”*
K… ?
Really now, most mediaeval folk wore hoods part of the time — not religious hoods though as above. Practical and rain-resistant they were familiar to all.
this is a concept that only exists in the neanderthal far right fantasy worlds.
Yes it does not sound very believable for a person from a majority muslim culture, but maybe it can have some small credit for confusion of niqab and burqa or delibera exageration of that for the hidjab. More possible credit for the convert to some salafiste tendency.
Still yes, it is a doubtful story, in all my life I have never encountered a full niqab wearing medical or other professional in any public profession. Even wearing the hidjab is the minority among the professionals.
If there is any truth in the description, it would be from this. The late in life convert to a Salafiste tendency would be an explanation that could be a bit believable - the ostenation of being the annoying hyper-believer and distancer from the kuffar can fit that kind of profile.
More likely it is the exaggeration of something around the hidjab to make the response feel and sound more defensible.
This. I don’t care if my plumber is a Morman. I don’t care if my mechanic is born again. But I wouldn’t go to a doctor who was out about his/her beliefs in the supernatural.
I covered that:
I also said it was the friend of a friend, i.e., third hand. Pay attention.
“Lapped it up”? That was completely uncalled for. You----> off to the naughty chair and no biscuits with your tea.
Most people are awful at telling who is, and who is not, a ‘good’ doctor. There are plenty of excellent doctors out there with bad people skills, and plenty of really bad doctors with perfect bedside manners. The most brilliant doctor I ever worked with was an infectious disease specialist. His patients got absolutely perfect care, he pulled people through who by all rights shouldn’t have made it, he responded promptly to phone calls from patients and nurses, and you could actually READ his handwriting. But in person? He was rude, condescending, temperamental, and looked - and smelled - like a homeless person.
The last lost him more than one hospital staff position. But this was during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and he had a proven success rate treating people, so he always got another one somewhere, and the patients who were smart enough to look at his results and ignore his appearance benefited greatly.
Last I checked, he was still practicing.
I’ve also known too many doctors with really good bedside manners who were actually awful doctors. Nurses talk to each other. Stories get around. Personally, I don’t trust surgeons who are too nice at the bedside - good surgeons as a whole are not ‘people persons’. So personality isn’t everything.
You seem to be claiming that any form of dress should be tolerated, provided it is within some cultural tradition. At the opposite extreme, would you tolerate a naturist oncologist who practised nude? Would you expect a conservative female Muslim to tolerate a male naturist oncologist?
It seems inevitable that cultural traditions sometimes come into direct conflict. For many people, it is a cultural tradition that an uncovered face is an important element of communication, and nuanced communication with a doctor is critical.
If I’m running a bakery, I think it would be discrimination to refuse to sell someone a cake just because their face is covered, because it’s irrelevant to selling a cake. But I think as a patient, I have a right to assert elements of my cultural tradition that are important and relevant and that make me feel comfortable with my doctor.
If I was in her situation and it made me feel uncomfortable, I’d get a new doctor.
But I don’t know that it would make me feel uncomfortable. It seems like it would be a hindrance to communication. Eye contact and facial expressions are an important part of communication. But it might be possible that a burka wearing doctor can compensate for this, possibly by having a clear and expressive voice or physical movements. Or not.
But I wouldn’t feel bad if I decided to dump the doctor. It’s a very personal choice.
If such a thing happened, would it even be a “cultural tradition”? As I understand it, covering the face indoors in the presence of another woman isn’t an expression of a cultural tradition, it’d be an individual affectation. This isn’t “can you change doctors because she’s Muslim?” and more like “Can I change doctors because mine insists we have to be on a first-name basis and that makes me uncomfortable.”
I don’t know where the line is between “cultural tradition” and “personal affectation”, but if this happened at all, I think it’s clearly the latter.
