335
Doctor Removed From Ontario Medical Association AGM for Refusing to Take Off Watermelon Pin
(pressprogress.ca)
this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
335 points (99.4% liked)
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I'd be uncomfortable if my physician was wearing a Star of David.
Either both are correct, or both are incorrect.
I want my dr to wear gloves.
Israel is not Judaism, even though its fascist state claims ownership over it (did you think the Star of David is the same thing as the Israeli flag?)
A star of David does not have the same meaning to it as the watermelon pin. One is a religious symbol, the other is a symbol of solidarity with a nation and people who have been fighting against genocide for a century that is abstracted from the Palestinian flag exactly because of how complacent our settler-colonial system is with that genocide.
I reckon you haven't had to deal with medical professionals as a member of a vulnerable group, because there is a very wide range of political opinions that these people will openly express with impunity when it is consistent with hegemonic values. To start actually firing these fucks when one is criticizing genocide is hardly a principled choice.
On top of all that, I'm fine with my doctors wearing fucking religious symbols because, guess what, they can simply not wear one and have their views effect their ability as physicians anyway. Restricting religious identity would be disproportionately enforced on vulnerable groups like Muslims again.
What a nice comment up until that last part. Part of what allowed Europe to go from a shithole into what it is now (with all the bumps along the road of course) was telling Christians to go fuck themselves. Making 50% of the population suffer to please a religious minority is never a good deal.
Oh, it was the "telling Christians to go fuck themselves" was it? Not the centuries of brutal imperialistic extraction, or did you mean the past century where they had a hiccup before continuing their brutal imperialistic extraction?
I don't suffer remotely from seeing peoples' religions, and I definitely do not benefit from letting the fucking genocidal Canadian state dictate what is and is not an appropriate religious symbol. Secularism isn't areligious in a culturally Christian state like Canada, it's just a rearticulation of settler-colonial notions of "objectivity" that conveniently privileges preexisting hegemonic values. Europeans worship capital the same way Canadians do.
This isn't about the patient-physician relationship however. It's about a meeting of their professional association.
I wouldn't be uncomfortable with either, you're here to be an expert on my body and as long as you're good at that idgaf about your opinions or beliefs... That said, I agree that consistency is better than inconsistency on these things
I definitely care if my doctor is some anti-abortion, patriarchal Christian who votes Conservative, but I hardly doubt wearing a cross or not would indicate their inability to fulfill their role as a physician because of those values.
Either way, a political criticism of genocide is not the same thing as a general religious symbol, so there's no consistency between these cases in the first place. Everything your doctor subscribes to is rooted in their politics, and a watermelon pin that shows solidarity with a nation currently victimized by genocide is like, a pretty bad starting point for this enforcement against political expression.
Which doctor though? The one you see every now and then to discuss your health trends and medication needs, or the one that's straddling you on a gurney giving you CPR while you're being rushed from an ambulance to an OR?
That'd be EMS.
If the argument is meant to be, "you wouldn't care if they were saving your life," then you don't seem to really understand why I wouldn't want a bigoted doctor that wants me genocided. This mentality is fundamently incompatible with empathy as it requires the selective dehumanization of particular groups for one's own material benefit; the suspension of empathy. Yes, I want my fucking paramedic to have a sense of empathy and I do believe that quality is crucial in order for them to perform their job effectively. Just like how I'd be endangered by a family physician neglecting my needs due to bigotry, I wouldn't even be a statistical anomaly if my paramedic treated me differently because of bigotry and I fucking died for no good reason.
The radicals would not accept to remove their religious gear, that's part of the point.
"Radicals" who? Hijabis? Orthodox Jewish men? They wouldn't be radical to refuse and it'd be difficult to write a law that applies to wearing a cross that wouldn't just overwhelmingly be enforced against groups whose religious symbols aren't optional.