Crude pamphlets reveal shocking side of medical school rags | India News

Medical students and doctors take part in a candlelight protest against the murder of a doctor in Kolkata (PTI file photo)

Even as doctors protest nationwide for safety in hospitals, new entrants to some medical schools are being forced by seniors to memorize and read aloud booklets full of crude abuse glorifying sexual violence against women in general and their female classmates and nurses. especially – in the name of rag. These ‘rag’ sessions and booklets have been described by gender violence experts as the grooming of rape culture.
New students are told to learn the contents of the booklets titled ‘medical sahitya’ or ‘personality development programme’ and keep copies with them at all times. These encourage new graduates to look at women of all ages as sex objects.
For example, the list of abbreviations includes BHMB (badi hokar maal banegi) and that is the only expansion in the list that is printable!

Activist: rough booklets promoting rape culture
For newcomers, they are forced to read the booklet out loud and if they stumble or laugh they have to start over. Starting from the 0-15 age group, the stages of breast development compared to fruits and vegetables are explained. There are disrespectful references to cadavers.
Every reference to women, including classmates, relates to violent, coercive sexual acts and descriptions of genitals in the crudest terms possible, and nurses are constantly portrayed as ‘available’ and willing, even willing, to be sexually assaulted by doctors.
Jasmeen Patheja, founder of Blank Noise, who is working on a project called ‘Belonging Campus’ in universities, describes it as a project that promotes rape culture.
A senior female doctor said, “Making jokes about patients’ bodies while they lie unconscious on the operating table is one of the cheapest things I’ve ever seen male anesthetists and surgeons do. This kind of care trains doctors to do this kind of thing.”
Another doctor shared his experience at university and said, “As students, we were standing next to male doctors and asking young women to take off their clothes while showing them how to do a ‘breast examination’. Women were being touched without their consent and unnecessarily.”
Sunita Sheel Bandewar of the Society for Medical Ethics Forum said: “Seniors who engage in such heinous practices may pose a threat to their female colleagues in all fields.”