Medical doctor who argued men can have babies should probably avoid Twitter for a while
When I first saw just the headline, it was called “Medical doctor who argued men can have babies should probably avoid Twitter for a while” but after I clicked on it, I saw the article was actually titled “Planned Parenthood doctor’s ‘men can have pregnancies’ line roasted on Twitter: ‘Ridiculous evil ideology’” which was interesting. In this post however, I will mostly be focusing on the headline I first saw since it was the “clickbait” here.
This article is about how Dr. Bhavik Kumar, physician and Director for primary and trans care at Planned Parenthood, says “men can have pregnancies” during a hearing called by Democrats to discuss the negative ramifications of restricting abortions on healthcare which causes Rep. Andrew Clyde to condemn him by saying “men cannot get pregnant and cannot give birth regardless of how they identify themselves”. Dr. Kumar is now getting backlash on twitter as a result of this hearing. What struck out to me was the way the first headline was phrased. In the article, we see that Clyde brings up how it’s clear that “there are biological differences between men and women” and that the difference in chromosomes is something everyone learns in high school biology. This condescending tone is also reflected in the first headline itself. By referring to Dr. Bhavik as a “medical doctor”, it almost seems like the author of this article is trying to persuade the audience that despite this so-called “doctor” having a medical degree, he does not understand basic biology, which makes him the subject of ridicule. By using the word “argued”, the author also tries to make Dr. Bhavik seem irrational, so that the readers are further persuaded to dismiss him and what he is standing for. The last part of the headline, that he should “probably avoid Twitter for a while”, serves to silence his public advocacy by almost making him and the ideals he stands for a “joke”, something that the people on twitter are now “roasting” him for. Furthermore, by bringing up this important topic and then immediately following it up with something that is relatively trivial, that he should avoid social media, again serves to dismiss him persuade the readers to also not take him seriously.