“Just what I said.” Bellows did not look up from the fire. The dancing flames had captured his attention. “I just think it must be particularly difficult being a female medical student. I never really thought too much about it until you forced me to come up with an alternative explanation for Harris’s behavior. Now, the more I think about it, the more I think I am right because … well, to be truthful, I can’t say I reacted to you as a medical student first. As soon as I saw you, I reacted to you as a woman, and maybe in kind of an immature way. I mean I found you immediately attractive—not seductive.” Bellows added the last comment quickly and turned to make sure Susan appreciated his reference to their previous conversation in the coffee shop.
Susan smiled. The defensive attitude, which Bellows’s initial statement had rekindled, had melted.
“That was why I reacted so foolishly when you walked into the dressing room yesterday and caught me in my shorts. If I had thought of you asexually, I wouldn’t have budged. But it was pretty apparent that was not the case. Anyway, I think most of your professors and instructors are going to react to you first as female and only second as a student of medicine.”
Bellows looked back into the fire; he almost had the attitude of a contrite sinner who has confessed. Susan felt a resurgence of the warmth she had begun to feel toward him. She felt again the urge to give him one of her people hugs, as she thought of them. In truth Susan was a physical person, although she did not show it often, especially since entering medicine. Even before applying to medical school, Susan had decided that the physical aspects of her personality had to be suppressed if she was going to make it in medicine. Now instead of reaching for Mark, she sipped her Grand Marnier.
“Susan, you are very apparent in any group and if you don’t show up at my lecture, I’m going to have to account for you.”
“The luxury of anonymity,” said Susan, “has not been something I could enjoy ever since I started medical school. I understand what you are saying, Mark. At the same time I feel I need just one more day. One more.” Susan held up one finger and tilted her head in a coquettish fashion. Then she laughed.
“You know, Mark, it is reassuring to hear you say that you think being a female medical student is difficult, because it is. Some of the girls in my class deny it, but they’re fooling themselves. They’re using one of the oldest and easiest defense mechanisms;, get around a problem by saying it’s not there. But it is. I remember reading a quote by Sir William Osier. He said there were three classes of human beings: men, women, and women physicians. I laughed when I read that the first time. Now I don’t laugh anymore.
“Despite the feminist movement there still lingers the conventional image of wide-eyed feminine naiveté and all that bullshit. As soon as you enter a field which demands a bit of competitive and aggressive action, the men all label you as a castrating bitch. If you sit back and try to use passive, compliant behavior, you find yourself being told that you can’t respond to the competitive atmosphere. So you’re forced to try to find your own compromise somewhere in the middle, which is difficult because all the while you feel like you’re on trial, not as an individual but as a representative of women in general.”
There was silence for a few moments, each digesting what had been said.
“The thing that bothers me the most,” added Susan, “is that the problem gets worse, not better, the farther, into medicine one goes. I cannot imagine how these women with families do it. They have to apologize for leaving work early and then they have to apologize for getting home late, no matter what time it is. I mean, the man can work late, no problem, in fact it makes him seem that much more dedicated. But a woman physician: her role is so diffuse. Society and its conventional female mores make it very difficult.