Rage against the patriarchy, Dr. Nikita Levy, and the devaluation of black women

[ismnotwasm]

I was compelled to complain because I feel that the vast majority of black folks who are subjected daily to forms of racial harassment have accepted this as one of the social conditions of our life in white supremacist patriarchy that we cannot change. This acceptance is a form of complicity…. Racial hatred is real. And it is humanizing to be able to resist it with militant rage. –bell hooks

From the founding of the nation, the meaning of American citizenship has rested on the denial of citizenship to blacks living within its borders. –Dorothy Roberts


I write this essay so that I do not have to swallow the rage—or to borrow from bell hooks, “killing rage”…“militant rage”…“rage at injustice”…“constructive healing rage”—that currently consumes me regarding the state of black women in society. I write this essay after learning that none of my friends, family members, colleagues, or undoubtedly most of America have come across any news coverage or informal conversations discussing the events that transpired two months ago involving a doctor accused of illegally and nonconsensually videotaping and photographing possibly over one thousand patients—mostly women of color—during their medical procedures. I am not only angry at the black doctor who used his power, position, and race to gain illicit access to the bodies of these women, but also at the media and our white supremacist society for its insistent racism, sexism, and classism that allow such exploits to take place and then get downplayed or overlooked. While this is only one story tied to a multi-century-long narrative of devaluation, this racialized, gendered, and classed incident, as well as its lack of publicity, speaks to both the historical and contemporary devaluation of women of color, the ways in which we are denied normative expectations of privacy, and our lack of full citizenship in the United States. As Linda Gordon explains in Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, “Without some minimum level of security, well-being, and dignity, people cannot function as citizens.”

On February 4, 2013, the late Dr. Nikita Levy, a Jamaican-born obstetrician/ gynecologist who worked at Johns Hopkins’ East Baltimore Medical Center—a center that primarily serves low-income African-American women—was accused of secretly recording patients during exams. An employee reported the doctor to hospital officials after becoming suspicious of a pen that Levy would consistently wear around his neck while examining patients. Hospital security later interviewed Levy in his office, where they found additional devices, and according to an official statement released by Johns Hopkins Medicine, “determined that Dr. Levy had been illegally and without our knowledge, photographing his patients and possibly others with his personal photographic and video equipment and storing those images electronically.”

http://thefeministwire.com/2013/04/rage-against-the-patriarchy-dr-nikita-levy-and-the-devaluation-of-black-women/

[redqueen]

1. Ugh, sick. Terminated and offered counseling... that was his punishment.

That piece of shit should have been locked up for the rest of his miserable life. Not allowed to escape humiliation and shame by ending his own shitty life. Fucking coward.

[seabeyond]

2. i read this about a month ago. and out of all the misogynist/sexist bullshit i have run across,

this one, to me, was the most important. and got so little recognition.

tell me, what man has to be concerned about a doctor video him and putting his body on the net? none. ever. not a hotel, bathroom, dressing room. but a fuckin doctor. we are talking life and fuckin death. this one action of this doctor tells me the nation we are. this one doctor is not the "lone" one doing it. history tells us, where there is one, there is more.

a womans health. life and death.

and men jack off to this invasion. instead of reporting the site, instead of a cry going across the nation. crickets. fuckers.

and then the cry goes out... why are you women so bothered.

really?