Like most physicians I have performed countless pelvic examinations, many of them using the metal speculum; a duck billed instrument with two arms that come together at a hinge. It’s usually inserted cold. Often it pinches the vaginal walls, occasionally causing tears. As a male physician I had no way to gauge the degree of the actual discomfort of the women I examined.

Dr. Jean Bouquet, a Colorado physician, professor at Rocky Vista Medical school invented a low cost plastic speculum, a 5 petal shaped instrument that dilates radially and gradually enables the speculum to evenly distribute pressure exerted on the vaginal walls for easy and effective examination and cervical cancer screenings.

Dr Bouquet invented the instrument with acknowledgement that the two centuries’ old speculum tortures women. It has taken that long because most physicians are men, their subjects, women.

The fact is female pathology has been managed by male doctors with little sensitivity to women’s pain and suffering while under treatment. Many are the examples of the cruelty that has been unleashed on women by masculine medicine. Perhaps the most egregious case was that of Dr. J. Marion Sims.

The “father of modern gynecology” developed pioneering tools and surgical techniques related to women’s reproductive health for which he was lionized with more than half a dozen statues around the nation. Most of his research was on enslaved Black women, without anesthesia; their suffering was less important than the results of his experiments. It was also a result of the White belief that Black people do not feel pain. The corollary is: in general all women do not feel pain either.

While delivering babies the episiotomy — an incision made to enlarge the vaginal opening to deliver the baby’s head — is done, sometimes without anesthesia. Exception is, when an epidural is under use. The practice of compressing breasts during the annual mammogram could be compared to doing the same to rule out testicular cancer in men. If men underwent such an exam annually, we would have designed a less uncomfortable method of detecting breast disease long ago.

Lately, the male-unacknowledged pain associated with insertion of IUDs has come to the public’s attention. IUD use goes back to 1900s. Basically, a foreign body is inserted into the uterus through the cervical opening, resulting in birth control.

The “Lippes Loop” was developed in 1962 and was succeeded by different models over the years, including the intrauterine copper wire in 1969. Later models release low dose Levonorgestrel — a progestin hormone — that is also a contraceptive.

The latest data show a 13% contraceptive use, reflecting their importance in birth control.

No matter what male doctors, who have been inserting these objects into women for a century, say, IUD insertion is not painless. The sad fact is: much of the gynecological care done on women is done by male specialists. When a small number of women doctors take that role, they tend to think and behave like the men who trained them.

The majority of female medical doctors and specialists see and understand other women’s pains and discomfort. In the current battle over abortion, it is women gynecologists that find themselves at the center of the struggle, fighting male DAs and legislators for the inappropriate and absurd restrictions that have been hoisted upon this nation’s female population. A notable case is that of Dr. Caitlin Bernard of Indianapolis who provided an abortion to a 10 year old rape victim. Dr. Barnard was censured by the male dominated Indiana Medical Board.

Majority male legislators and members of the judicial branch across America pass laws that favor their gender and race. Many of their laws, especially in the reproductive realm, reflect their ignorance of the female point of view. As a man who sees the world with male eyes, I am not sure I can always be perfectly just when it comes to female needs and issues. I doubt I was always sensitive to all my female patients’ needs. But my antennas were always up whenever I dealt with patients’ pain; and more attentive when that pain had a female component.

What I am asking my male medical colleagues is to stop telling patients: “this shouldn’t hurt.” We don’t know what women feel, in good and in bad times. Inflicting pain on other people does no one any good. It only leaves the world a more miserable place. Men who pretend to know women’s concerns only delude themselves.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students’ STEM education. He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, “Never Again.”