Lie back and relax, OK?

It's March, and that means a few things — St. Paddy's Day, spring's a coming, Daylight Savings Time (earlier than ever), March Madness (whatever that is, but please don't explain it to me, OK?) and it's time for me to once again spread my legs and open wide for the only man I don't call Sweetie or Honey-Baby but who still knows my nether regions intimately.

My gyno.

Is it weird to strip naked, get on your back, spread your legs and have a man get up close and person with your privates? Yes ... but I don't have a problem with it. I love my gyno; he's kind, funny, gentle and listens to my concerns. It never feels awkward with him because I trust him.

I know many women feel more comfortable with a female gynecologist. Only a woman would know another woman so well, the thinking goes, because she likely has experienced or still is experiencing the same things — PMS, infections, birth-control choices, hot flashes, etc. Women have a lot of anxiety over sharing intimate things with "strangers" — having a male gyno makes it even worse. (http://womenshealth.about.com/cs/gynexam/a/gynfear.htm). Plus some women don't want a man poking around down there unless it's for, you know ... pleasure ... and I can't say a gyno visit is pleasurable, even under the best circumstances.

Not me, though. I want a man because I'm thinking he's probably spent a whole lot more time trying to figure how a woman works precisely because he doesn't know what it's like and never will. So he's paying extra-special attention and there's no way he can be smug — "I know just how you're feeling, honey."

Even if women prefer a female gyno, choices still are limited — male gynecologists outnumber females about 25,000 to 16,000, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists's most recent data). Yet whenever a gyno is chatting up health issues in magazines like Cosmopolitan, Fitness, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal and Redbook, the female docs get a lot more ink than the males — they get quoted 47 percent to 80 percent of the time, according to a recent study. (http://www.greenjournal.org/cgi/content/full/104/5/1089)

So? Well, the study says that "gender bias against male obstetrician–gynecologists as well as male physicians in general ... may serve to undermine the physician–patient relationship and be detrimental to women's health care."

Sweden evidently has heard that loud and clear. Clinics there won't even allow women to ask for female gynecologists anymore (except for women who have been sexually assaulted or come from a culture that won't allow it) because they fear it discriminates against the males.
(http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/24977.html).

To make things even more interesting (a word that always makes me a little nervous), Dr. Nelson Soucasaux, a Brazilian gynecologist, writes a fascinating article that delves into why people choose to become gynecologists in the first place on a most unusual Web site — the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health. (http://www.mum.org/sopsygyn.htm). (Can you imagine taking the kids to visit THAT on your summer vacation? You can't because it's just a Web museum, but, still .... there's a comedy routine in there somewhere.) Part of what he writes: "it is also possible that some male gynecologists make use of the speciality as a way of feeling themselves exerting some 'power' over the female sex."

Geez, it's getting so hard just to have someone have a look, feel around for "things," take a swab and tell us we'll be fine (well, we hope ...) for another year.

Why must being a woman be so friggin' complicated?