A female Reddit user posed the serious question: “Male Gynecologists of Reddit- What made you want to be a ladyparts doctor? And how has it affected your view of women?”

Seriously, this has always mystified me. As a lady who has gone to various gynecologists over the years, both male and female, I have encountered some jaw-dropping ignorance and misogyny from various male gynos. I’m sure there are plenty of incredible men who are committed to helping the owners of ovaries and uteruses, but what drives you to devote your life to fixing and examining something you will never have true firsthand experience with?

Good question. As a 100% certified member of the female gender, I’ve wondered this before myself. I wouldn’t think that there would be a ton of medical professionals hanging around on Reddit, but surprisingly a good amount of male gynos, med students, and relatives of male gynos came forward to give their perspective. Now can we ask female prostate doctors what drives them to perform their jobs?

Patients that don’t die are a big plus:

I never thought I’d end up doing ob/gyn, but I enjoyed my rotation in medical school. The variety of the work is entertaining. We get to do surgery and office visits, and the visits tend to be procedure heavy. L&D is a lot of fun. Also, it’s nice to have “healthier” patients, as lots of pregnancy visits are young women who aren’t dying. Ultimately, I just felt like fit in with that type of doctor (ob/gyns tend to be work hard/play hard type of individuals). It felt kinda weird to make the decision at first, but once I got used to it I couldn’t really see myself doing much else.

I wasn’t expecting an oddly touching answer:

My uncle was a combat surgeon during WWII. When he came back he became an OB/GYN although I’m not sure if that was the term back then. When I was in high school I jokingly asked him why he chose that area to perform in. I always thought it was some weird or pervy reason, but his answer surprised me. He said it was the furthest thing from combat medicine he could do. In the war he had seen so many horrific things that to turn around and bring little lives into the world made up for all those he couldn’t save. When he passed away his obituary listed the number of lives he brought into the world safely. To him that was all that needed mentioning.

Because otherwise this would be boring exercise, I had to include a few counter-points. This makes me wonder why ANYONE would want to do this:

My uncle just finished up his residency and is planning to be a urologist, but initially planned to be an OB/GYN. He said all the learning about pregnancy, menstruation, menopause, etc. was interesting and definitely a field worth going into. Then he had to work on a patient who was a “very large” woman with a reeking vagina and a severe case of herpes and genital warts. He kept it professional and finished the exam, but he’s a hypochondriac and already spent dozens of hours volunteering at gyms doing STD testing. He said he just couldn’t handle dealing with STD’s up close like that…and that particular exam was one of the worst experiences of his life. Obviously you want a doctor that can unconditionally care for you as a patient, but examining pus-filled contagious sores on an obese women’s hairy genitals was not something he could deal with on a regular basis.

Pretty much do the same thing when people ask me what I do. People just can’t wrap their heads around the glamorous lifestyle of a blogger:

Went to a Gynecologist when we were trying to ‘make’ baby number one, had the funniest conversation I have ever had. We got to talking about parties and how we explained what we did for a living, he said he often just told people he was a Plumber, it stopped the 1001 questions that would follow if he told the truth.

Performing a C-section is basically the medical equivalent of the “claw” machine:

I’m on my 3rd year rotation with OB/GYN now and I love it, much more than I could have predicted. Here’s why. There is nothing like labor and delivery. Being a part of that moment for a family is a profound and humbling experience. The patients usually have good lives that get even better with your care. As already mentioned, it’s nice to be working with patients who are generally healthy, but have an issue that is causing them real concern and you can actually do something about it. The surgery is very impressive. C-section as “surgery with a prize” is a great description, that only begins to convey the special nature of that operation. It’s a fast moving procedure that requires definitive and deliberate action and results in a new life. It’s the best operation I’ve seen thus far. The other surgery can be very technical and nerdy, with robots and such, which is awesome as well The technical aspect is engaging. Treatments for infertility combine top shelf aspects of surgery, laboratory work, endocrinology, technology, and patient interaction. It’s impressive. The hours / lifestyle seems pretty solid. The ability to subspecialize is diverse. I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that.

Why I am personally still not sold on the whole “creating human life” thing:

I remember when I was a student… it was my first day in OBGYN, they asked me to help the attending… basically i held the labia apart. I was a virgin of course, I’ve never touched a vagina up until that point. Any ways, it was scary to say the least. Then seeing that baby pushed out, and the attending cutting open the vagina a bit… It was chaos, screaming, blood, poop, and stink was everywhere. Then to top it off… POP! I had goop all over me. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run out and take a shower… but alas I was patient until the very end. After it was over I remember asking a senior med student… “what was it like when you first saw that?” he replied “It was a freak show”. Indeed, that’s what it truly was. I spent the rest of my rotation walking around the wing pretending to be busy. Just couldn’t do it. Until my first c-section of course… that’s another story.

I can’t tell if this is the smartest or most evil thing to do to an 18-year-old kid: