This Podcast Will Kill You - Special Episode: Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens & Medical Bondage

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

The TPWKY book club is back in action, and we’re thrilled to be starting this season’s reading journey with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, reproductive rights advocate, Associate Professor in the University of Connecticut history department, and award-winning author of Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. The history of science and medicine often focuses on the achievements of wealthy, white male physicians and researchers whose names are etched on medical school buildings, libraries, and dormitories. Rarely do these stories give voice to those whose bodies or labor were exploited in the name of scientific progress. In the first book club episode of the season, Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens joins us to discuss the Black enslaved women who worked alongside the so-called “Father of Gynecology”, James Marion Sims, as both patients and caregivers in nineteenth-century America. Our conversation takes us through the inherent contradictions in the way nineteenth-century physicians wrote and thought about race, gender, and health, and how broad changes in medical practice during this time promoted the dissemination of unfounded beliefs in how white and Black bodies experienced pain, health, and disease. Tune in for a fascinating conversation that will have you immediately adding Medical Bondage to your to-read list! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com slash terms for more information. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS, and how one man's ambition and mistake. opened its fault of secrets.

Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit.

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Aaron Welsh, and this is This Podcast Will Kill You. I am so excited to be starting up this book club again for our seventh season. A big thank you to everyone who reached out with suggestions for books to cover.

Keep them coming. I am always in need of book recommendations. and for giving us some feedback about the book club episodes. We really appreciate it. I have had such a fun time putting these episodes together, and I am beyond thrilled to be bringing you more book club episodes this season, several more than last season, in fact. Over the course of this season, we'll be chatting with authors about popular science books covering a huge variety of topics in science and medicine, all the way from the impacts that roads have on ecosystem and human health to plant and animal poisons and what draws us to

these deadly substances. From the surprising early history of plastic surgery and its wartime origins, to the tricks our memory plays on us and how forgetting is actually a feature, not a bug. And that's just a teeny tiny sampling. If you want to take a sneak peek at some of the different books we'll be getting into this season, head over to our website where you can find a link that will take you to our bookshop.org affiliate account and our book club list. Today, though, I am so excited to be kicking off the TPWKY Book Club this season with a conversation with the incredible Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, award-winning historian and author, Reproductive Justice Advocate, Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Connecticut, and an all-around amazing. an inspirational person to chat with. In 2017, Dr. Cooper Owens published her book,

Medical Bondage, Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, which tells the story of how the field of gynecology in the U.S. was built on the backs of enslaved and disenfranchised women. Their contributions from acting as both experimental subjects, as well as care providers in what were undoubtedly terrifying and agonizing situations, were instructing. to the development of gynecology. But until now, their role has largely gone unrecognized, with most narratives on the history of gynecology featuring white male physicians as the main or sole characters, and omitting the racist and sexist beliefs these physicians held, which led them to conduct horrific medicalized torture in the name of science and forward progress. In medical bondage,

Dr. Cooper Owens reframes these narratives, shining a spotlight on the women whose erasure from the histories of science and medicine reveals a larger bias in how we choose to tell these stories. Medical bondage also explores the changing landscape of medicine and midwifery in the 19th century, and how formalization of medical training excluded people of color and women from practicing medicine, changing the relationships between physician and patient. As white male physicians began to insert themselves more into areas previously occupied primarily by women, such as midwifery, they brought with them racist and sexist views that heavily influenced the ways they perceived the women in their care and the way they wrote about these women. This left a lasting imprint in medical literature, training, and practice, one which is still keenly felt today.

histories of science and medicine are filled with stories of invention, of technological advancements, of rogue geniuses who revolutionized care or transformed the way we think about human health and disease. But too few of these stories acknowledge the human cost of progress. With medical bondage, Dr. Cooper Owens provides a much-needed reappraisal of the history of American gynecology. Reading this book will leave you wondering how many other medical procedures or devices or med school buildings are named after physicians who did not consider the people in their care to be worthy of respect, dignity, or compassion. We on the podcast love this book. And we've referenced it many times in different episodes of the podcast. And so it is honestly just such a thrill to get to chat

with Dr. Cooper Owens today. So let's get right into it. Dr. Cooper Owens, thank you. so much for being here today. I am so thrilled to chat with you about your incredible book, Medical Bondage, and its examination of the exploitative origins of American Gynecology, origins that are so closely intertwined with the institution of slavery. How did you first become interested in this topic? And when did that interest transform into writing a book about it? Yeah, first, thank you so much for having me on your show. I am really excited to be here. not so excited to talk about the kind of nefarious beginnings of gynecology, but really excited to share this information with your audience.

You know, I think like every traditional academic, the idea first started when I was conducting research for dissertation project when I was still in grad school at UCLA in 2005. I took a class dealing with the history of science. and the U.S. and the Atlantic world. And I remember I was thinking like, gosh, there's nothing about black people in here. We were like only talking about the scene engine it seemed. And so I'm like, how do I make sense of this?

You know, am I going to pass this class? And I've always had a gift for gab. So when I was in L.A., I was very involved with my alumni association. I went to an all-black women's college, and I was going to moderate a panel with Genetico and Reverend James Loss and the Civil Rights Pioneer. So I'm doing my research and read this book by Genetical and also another pioneering Black feminist thinker and scholar Beverly Guy Sheftel. And it was called Gender Talk.

And I remember only two or three lines were dedicated to this guy I'd never heard of, Dr. James Marion Sims, known as the father of American gynecology, and his experimental research on enslaved women's subjects. And I thought, wait, I thought experimental medicine began with the Chiskegee, syphilis experiment or study. And I thought, this is really interesting. And so I spoke with my professors. They said, yeah, you know, why don't you pursue it? And that got me on the road to widening, at least for me, the lens of 19th century U.S. history and slavery and thinking about it with regard to medical experimentation and the possible development of a branch of medicine. So that's what got me on the road. By the time I graduated in 2008, I knew I had a book project,

but it's really hard to write about a historical group when they were illiterate. They don't leave written records. And so I was thinking, how do I center the experiences of enslaved women when all of the writings are basically from the physicians and their owners. And so that really proved, I think, to be the most challenging part for me. In your book, you discuss the inherent contradictions in the ways that black bodies were viewed by white male medical doctors in the 19th century and beyond, really. Can you outline some of these contradictions that were present in so many medical journal articles from that period? and also discussed the term that you coined medical superbodies to describe these conflicting beliefs. Yeah, that's the thing.

You know, when I first started doing, you know, these talks at conferences, and I would always get this question, you know, from folks in the audience. They're like, wait, I don't understand. They're operating on enslaved women to cure all women, but supposedly black people and white people are different, right? And I was like, so that's the inherent contradiction. I think that comes out for us in the 21st century. How in the world can you say human beings are different, right? That there are these biological distinctions, but you're using this allegedly inferior and degraded and abnormal group

to cure normal white women. It just didn't make sense. And this is the thing. Even for 19th century physicians who are writing this, they are really letting us know that these, you know, the term I call racial cognitive dissonances are apparent. So for instance, I think what we most readily go to in the 21st century is this older belief that black women or black people didn't experience pain, you know, for very painful things,

childbirth, surgeries. But you'll see in the physician's notes, I had to restrain Betsy, you know, when she saw the surgical blade. And so you're like, well, well, if they don't experience it. pain, doctor, why are you restraining them like you would a white patient? Because clearly you know this is a human being. So whether you're wedded to a kind of anti-black belief, you still know these are people. You know that when you cut inside of this patient, she's going to have the same cervix as a white patient. You know, if you undress this patient, they're going to have breasts, just like white patients have breasts, right? I mean, there's no biological distinction,

but because this is such an anti-black moment and people are really invested in these differences, right? People will write something that stands in total contradiction of what is being played out. And so the medical superbodies that I come up, you know, this term that I theorize and I come up with, is really to show the kind of duality that black women represent both sides of the coin, so to speak. They are the symbolic Janice head. And so what that means is you can say that these bodies are degraded, that they are biologically inferior, that they intellectually exist in a state of arrested development.

But at the same time, see these bodies as superior when they want the bodies to be superior, right? So when it comes to surgeries, they're superior. When it comes to childbirth, they're superior. Well, why is that so? Because you know that the engine of American slavery is propagated by, the birth of enslaved children. And so, because it's a law, right? The only way that 19th century slavery can continue

is not doing Atlantic slave trade that's been outlawed is through the births, the pregnancies and the births of black women who then pass along the condition of bondage according to the colonial laws set up when, you know, there was no United States and we were still British colonies. And so, you know, there are lots of things that goes into this kind of medical superbodies theory that I created.

Let's take a quick break here. And when we get back, there's still so much more to discuss. Dinner shows up every night, whether you're prepared for it or not. And with Blue Apron, you won't need to panic order takeout again. Blue Apron meals are designed by chefs and arrive with pre-portioned ingredients so there's no meal planning and no extra grocery trip. There, assemble and bake meals, take about five minutes of hands-on prep. Just spread the pre-chopped ingredients on a sheet pan, put it in the oven, and that's it. And if there's truly no time to cook, dish by Blue Apron meals are fully prepared.

Just heat them in the oven or microwave, and dinner is ready. And here's the exciting news. Blue Apron no longer requires a subscription. You can order meals when you want them and skip when you don't, without adding another recurring charge. Order now at Blue Apron.com. Get 50% off your first two orders plus free shipping with code this podcast 50. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blue apron.com slash terms for more information.

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A little goes a long way. Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh conditions because it actually works. O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winters when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking. It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside.

We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keef's. Just visit O'Keef's company.com slash this podcast and code this podcast at checkout. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the whole story. people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. I've been chatting with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens about her book, Medical Bondage. Let's get back into it. How did medical doctors at the forefront of American gynecology use scientific or medical

language to deepen racial categories or legitimize hierarchies across race and gender? Yeah, you know, this is this is the wonderful thing. And in some ways it's, it's in concert with, you know, what Ibram Kendi talks about in his stamps from, you know, from the beginning, the racist history of ideas. These are really smart people, right? I mean, these are not just and folk, you know, coming up with things off the top of their head. I mean, the rise of 18th century racial science really helps to solidify why doctors are writing about black people's bodies as different. You know, so in my book, I start with a kind of intellectual genealogy, you know,

I jokingly call it my roots section, you know, based on the TV miniseries. And so I'm like, hey, this is not just one person, you know, that there's. a structure and a system that was being put into place in the United States. And so, for instance, I begin with Georges Cuvier in France when he is writing about and talking about and examining the South African-born Sardhi Bartman, who became diversively known as the Hattentot Venus. And he's captivated, I mean, like kind of appalled, but also captivated and enticed by Bartman, not because of her personality, but really it's because of the size of her buttocks

to the point where you have Atlantic World doctors writing about the size of her buttocks as if it was abnormal, right? And they're saying she has steatapesia, an enlargement of the buttocks that is an abnormal condition. And I was like, have you been to South Africa? Because I know I used to live there. I'm like, the way she is shaped is no different

than any coy-coi woman, right? That's her ethnic group. Then any coy-coi woman that you would meet today, you know, it's a normal shape. And the thing that proves that she's just a normal woman is when she dies. And Cuvier dissects her cadaver and her skeleton is assembled. He finds that she's no different than anybody else. But the ways that people are writing and thinking about black bodies and black women's bodies in particular kind of travels across. the Atlantic world.

And so by the time you get to the United States, people have this, you know, doctors, I should say, have this belief that black people are just inherently different, that they can reproduce faster, they have no pain, that they have distinctive medical diseases, that they are prone to underdeveloped lungs, their skin is thicker,

they have, I'm like a flatter feet. I mean, it's everything that you can think of. There are all of these kinds of writings about black people's supposed difference from white people, even folk who we would say, you know, I'm going to use a 21st century term, who are really progressive allies like Benjamin Rush, you know, in a 1799 paper presentation that he makes at the American Philosophical Society, he says, the Negro's skin is so dark because he has leprosy. But the way that we can solve this thing, dear, compassionate white people who are abolitionists like me, is to show them compassion and then they will in turn become white, right?

And so, I mean, from the most lauded intellectuals, pioneering doctors of the time, there are these ways that they are writing about black people as just different. And what purpose do these differences ultimately serve politically? I think politically it shows that, you know, if you can say that these people need, They need authority figures in their life. You know, they need these patriarchal figures who will take care of them. This then becomes a natural state of race relations between black and white people. But also, it can continue the economic labor system of slavery.

So, for instance, I often tell people about John C. Calhoun, who is as racist as he was. and he made no bones about, you know, his kind of anti-black hate. John C. Calhoun was also this really strategic and savvy political thinker. So before he becomes, you know, vice president, before we kind of talk about him as being the architect of secession and states rights, I point people to Calhoun's very sophisticated use of the results of the 1840 census. And so what Calhoun does as an ambassador, to Mexico. And he knows that the territory of Texas is, you know, being debated by lawmakers, you know, whether it should enter the union as a slave state or a free state. Calhoun points to the

1840 census and says, look, Negroes who are free suffer from insanity or, you know, as it was called in the 19th century, excuse me, lunatics more than enslaved people. Inslavement is a condition. of normalcy for black people or Negroes, as they were called. And so freedom actually causes a dissent, you know, into mental illness or lunacy. And so he's writing to the ambassador in Mexico sharing these, you know, these statistics. Now, of course, there's an actual statistician who's like, wait, the numbers are rigged. Like, bro, what are you talking about? In fact, this isn't true at all.

And you have leading black figures, black doctors. I mean, there are not a lot of them, but they're also writing to contest John Calhoun's claims. But politically, when you are saying, hey, we want this state, with this territory to enter into the union, we're going to tell you why it needs to enter into the union as a slave state. But what does this ultimately mean for America? Much of America's wealth is built on slavery, especially cotton production by the antebellum era. And so cotton makes the United States the fourth richest nation in the world, right? And so what you don't want to do is stop that.

So I often tell folk, you know, I said, what was the richest state in the union at the start of the Civil War in 1861? And, you know, students are like, I'm not sure. And I said Mississippi. And today we often think of Mississippi as a poorest state in the union. But what does Mississippi do as soon as the Civil War ends in 1865? It's the first state to institute the black. codes that essentially tries to reestablish a kind of quasi-slavery because they're trying to regain their economic standing.

I mean, it doesn't work economically for the state, right? But we know that Mississippi has some of the most stringent laws, you know, kind of anti-black laws. And so they're trying to replicate the system that made them really, really wealthy. And so that's how you have the kind of integration of politics. into medicine. I mean, even in terms of the beginning of the slave trade, guess who were, you know, the folk who always were on slave ships, not just the captain and the crew and the captors, medical doctors for insurance purposes. So medicine has always been integrated into slavery

and the development of certain branches of medicine. And speaking of one of those branches, as gynecology, you know, for centuries, midwifery was practiced primarily by women. Yes. But then this began to shift in the 18th and 19th centuries with white male medical doctors invading this space more and more. Yeah. What were some of the political factors underlying this shift? Yeah, this is really interesting.

I love Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book, The Midwives' Tale, where she found the diary, essentially, of a white colonial midwife. and in the New England area. And, you know, there's this kind of funny passage where a young doctor comes in, obstetrician and gynecologist comes in, or a male midwife, you know, as he was called back then. And she's just like, this guy didn't know what he's doing. Like, he's messing everything up. And there was a lot of protest originally. You know, it was like, this is unethical.

Why would a quote-unquote normal man want to enter into this field? This is something that women have done for millennia. Like leave it to women. They're the ones who become pregnant. They understand a woman's body. But what you start to have, especially in the 19th century in the U.S., in particular, is this kind of codification of these systems. So things are now, you know, no longer in process, they just are. You know, medicine is not simply becoming, you know, you have these branches that are being validated.

are being institutionalized. And so you start to have in medical schools curriculum that include obstetrics and gynecology. And this is the thing, right? Money can be made off of this. So even in slave management journals in the 19th century, you start to see a lot of letters to the editors, a lot of questions that are being asked, hey, what do we do around the issue of pregnancy and childbirth?

how do we create spaces to ensure that these women are having the healthiest births that they can so that the children live, right, so that the infants live? So it's starting to be institutionalized in the 19th century. And so you then have, you know, greater numbers of men who are enrolling in medical schools and they're taking up these courses. And this is the interesting thing. Childbirth is seen as natural, but also. Also, men are instituting themselves when the cases become dire or their emergency cases.

And so all of a sudden, this kind of biological function of women are seen as, wait, there has to be intervention by doctors because clearly, you know, our expertise, our formalized training allows us to, quote, unquote, save the lives of the children and the mothers, right? And so you start to see the positions change. So as opposed to women walking around, you know, having families in the rooms, all of a sudden you're lying on your back, your legs are up so that the doctor has a view. It's not an easy position for the woman, for the woman, right, or the birthing person. And so all of these little things start to change and doctors, excuse me, doctors begin to write about pregnancy and childbirth as if they are, you know, dangerous. unnatural things. And I'm like, yeah, it's dangerous because in the 19th century you don't have germ theory until the latter part of the century.

But you tend to lose more lies when doctors start to become, I guess, natural players in this game. I should say not natural, but kind of normal players in the game. And that's when things really begin to change. And midwives are just not happy about it at all. And so it really upsets the balance. unfortunately. What did this shift from primarily women-led midwifery to then men invading this space? What did this look like in practice? Like where were these spaces invaded first? Was it in like more rural spaces? Was it in, you know, with wealthy or poor patients? What did that shift look like?

That's a great question. Well, the shift really begins, I always say, with the introduction of the surgical blade, right? Because the one thing midwives are not doing, and it doesn't matter what kind of midwife you are, whether you're indigenous, whether you're white, whether you're immigrant, whether you're black, enslaved. They're not instituting practices that involve cutting. They're not surgeries, right? They are, you know, using what's termed as hand art during that time, right? So midwives tend to be more, they're just gentler, right? Because they're not relying on instruments. So that's kind of the first real shift. You know, this is how gynecology is born because of the introduction of these instruments, these surgical instruments.

The shift actually can't be pinpointed because that's the thing. We're only reliant upon the sources that exist. So, you know, in rural spaces, someone might not have left notes, for instance. You just go into an emergency situation and you, you know, you help the person deliver their child. But what you start to see are the rise of hospitals kind of throughout the United States. The rise of these hospitals really, they aren't happening in the South as much. You start to see these hospitals developing in the North because most medical schools are in the North. But what is interesting in the South, you do have some hospitals and they have relationships with plantation owners, with slave owners. Because these are spaces where the slave owners can send sick patients.

And I'm talking about OVGYN specifically. You can send these patients to the hospitals, and the hospitals absorb the costs. And so this is really beneficial to a slave owner because now this person doesn't have to invest money. Now you might be investing the actual, quote unquote, human commodity, you know, who is the chattel slave legally. but the hospitals are promising to essentially fix, right? That's the term used by then to fix the patient. With James Marion Sims, this is really interesting. He's known for creating or founding the first women's hospital in New York in 1855.

What I show in my book is this isn't true. James Marion Sims creates a hospital in Mount Meg's, Alabama in the 1830s. By the 1840s, he's opened up a hospital in Montgomery. Montgomery, Alabama, which is a more urban space, right? Mount Meg's is the rural outpost. Montgomery is the city, and this actually is the first hospital that is founded for the creation and cure of women's problems, as they call it, women's conditions. And so he performs the obstetrical fistula operation in the 1840s on enslaved women in Montgomery. and it actually is the first site of, you know, a kind of dedicated women's hospital.

It becomes erased from the history books because, of course, they're black. And I often tell people, James Marion Sims didn't do that. The chroniclers in the 19th century didn't do that. It was racist, 20th century folk who just kind of ignored what he wrote about and said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, because this hospital was created in New York for white women. Then that's the first one. And I'm like, wait, we're just going to ignore what this mayor. wrote in his autobiography, you know, what he wrote in his articles. So yeah, that's that's kind of

how it began in this urban southern space. And lots of gynecological developments happened in the South because of the proximity of enslaved people to these doctors. They had easy access. Let's take another quick break. We'll be back before you know it. Anyone who works long hours knows the routine. Wash, sanitize, repeat. By the end of the day, your hands feel like they've been through something. That's why O'Keefe's working hands hand cream is such a relief. It's a concentrated hand cream that is specifically designed to relieve extremely dry, cracked hands caused by constant hand washing and harsh conditions.

Working hands creates a protective layer on the skin that locks in moisture. It's non-greasy, unscented, and absorbs quickly. A little goes a long way. Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a bit of. beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh conditions because it actually works.

O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winters when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking. It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside. We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keefs. Just visit O'Keefe's company. dot com slash this podcast and code this podcast at checkout. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world.

But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that.

It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppie. Lucy Lepe has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was.

No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. I've been chatting with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens about her book Medical Bondage. Let's get back into those questions. Why was maintaining reproductive ability among enslaved black women seen as so important?

Because it made the slave self very wealthy. But also there was a colonial law that I referenced earlier that happens in the 1600s. And essentially, British lawmakers are finding out that enslaved women are having babies by white men. Gasp, right? And so they're having these babies by white men

who are free. Some of them are really wealthy. You know, I always say, hey, look at Thomas Jefferson, right? And so what happens is a patriarchal society would then allow for a child born to a white man, that child would have access to his status,

which is freedom. And it might even mean access to his wealth. Well, if you continue to have black women giving birth to back then, they were called mulatto babies, these half-white children, this undermines the institution that's supposed to make you money. And so they create a law called Partou, Secretary Ventrum. there's a really wonderful scholar, Jennifer Morgan, who's written a book and article about it. She just came up with a book called Reckoning Slavery.

Her first book, Laboring Women, excuse me, talks about this. But anyway, what the law does, it institutes that enslaved women will pass along their condition of servitude to their children. It literally upends European law and practice. I mean, this rarely happens, right? And so the fact that they could go to this kind of very antiquated, you know, law and place this on the backs of black women is antithetical to a patriarchal society. If men are in power, why in the world would you then allow, I can't even call it power. Why would you then allow the most dispossessed group, right, which are enslaved people? why would you allow them to give a child this status? Well, it's about keeping the colonies kind of flush with money. And so that's what happens. And that law, right, that practice continues from the 1600s all the way to the 19th century until 1865 when the Civil War ends. And so, you know, that is not the case for white women. It's not the case for any other group, but it is the case for black women. What is really interesting, though, for me. And I often say this, and I have to create a preamble when I speak to people. You know, I said it is not hyperbole when I say that these men and the government were much more interested in maintaining, you know, I wish your listeners could see me. I'm using air quotes,

healthy black births, healthy black pregnancies in slavery than they were in freedom. Because in freedom, you can't really force free people to work. I mean, you can create all kinds of restrictive laws. But if I run away, if I, you know, move someplace where there are not, you know, restrictive laws around race or as restrictive laws around race, you can't control that. But in slavery, you can control it because you own these people, their chatteled property, their movable property. And so that law becomes really, really important.

And in freedom, all of a sudden, the very things that are. black women were praised for supposedly, having all these babies, you know, they didn't care, you know, whether the woman was married or not. They didn't care who the fathers were. If you were an enslaved woman, goody for you because you are producing more slaves. In freedom, all of a sudden, the very behavior that had been praised, that had been seen as this kind of biological good is now being critiqued. Their baby mamas, their welfare queens, they're creating a dependent generation of people who will topple American, you know, America's economy. I mean, all of these things, and I'm like, wait, but prior to this for centuries, you have been applauding black women for their lasciviousness, for their promiscuity, for their ability to have babies without pain.

And now that they are having babies, but, you know, within these unions by black men, it's a bad thing. It's a financial burden. And so it is a really not that complicated, but really for me, nefarious law that we are so. still dealing with to this day in terms of seeing black women's sexuality and sexual lives as pathological. So you mentioned James Marion Sims as the quote-unquote father of American gynecology, but in your book you also discussed the mothers of gynecology who worked alongside Sims in his hospital. Who were these women and what role did they play in the birth of gynecology as a field? What a great question. And I always think my colleagues, daughter who heard me and her mom talking.

And, you know, I was like, yeah, the father of American kind of codelty, blah, blah, blah. And she said, well, you know, and a child's kind of thinking, well, what about the mothers? And so I was like, wow, yeah, you know, that's a great question. So these mothers were Anarka, Betsy, Lucy. They were women that Sims leased from their owners. There were other women on the plantation. Well, I should, you know what, I'm not going to say plantation because he was, He was not a wealthy plantation owner, kind of like how we think of, you know, George Washington or Thomas Jefferson or those people.

He owned a slave farm. And so he had, you know, just a few enslaved people. But he leases these women who are suffering from this condition back then called vesico vaginal fistula. So Anarchibetzi Lucy and about five to six others. We just don't know their names, unfortunately. And so he gains permission from their owners to take them in and absorb the cost. This was pretty normal during the age of enslavement. It was called leasing slaves, just like how we would lease a car and apartment today, because once again, enslaved people were considered chattel property or movable property.

So he takes these cases. and he originally does not rely on the enslaved women to assist him because he has two white male surgical assistants. I know the name of one of them, Nathan Bozeman, who actually becomes a critic kind of after Sims claims that he's fixed this condition. But after a few years, the two white medical assistants are like, hey, we're done. You know, these surgeries are failing. We're losing money. People are whispering that we're using these women as guinea pigs. like this is not working out for any of us.

So they quit. And this is kind of where the shocking part comes in for a 21st century audience. I say, well, Sam's then turns his enslaved patients into his assistants and to nurses, to surgical assistants. And people are like, how can this be? I was like, it's called slavery. It's like, it's not like these people are like, oh, I'm going to get sick leave and, you know, rest up. I'm like, they are enslaved.

They're slaves. It's an economic labor system. So they work. And he, in turn, makes them perform the duties that the white male surgical assistants do. So they, you know, help him as he's operating. They're holding instruments. They're, you know, they're also caring for each other in the capacity of nurses and surgical assistants. And this is a really interesting thing where I bring up this kind of racial cognitive dissonance.

Now, Sims is working on these patients. And they represent, once again, two of the most degraded groups of people in society. They're women. Well, I should say three. They're women. They're black. They're enslaved. You know, so in the 19th century, you probably didn't want to be born into any of those groups, right?

And then to have all of those intersecting identities, you're like, whoa. But Sims knows no matter what the science says, no matter what the law says, he knows that these are still hard. hardworking individuals, hardworking human beings who are thinking human beings. So even though slavery does not permit formal learning or literacy for black people, the thing is slave owners know black people are smart like any other group. Because if they weren't, slavery couldn't continue. Because why are you going to continue to ship in thousands and thousands, millions of people across an ocean if they weren't smart enough to perform the work and do so success?

and make your new nation a really wealthy one. So, you know, that's racial cognitive distance. Number one, if women were really unthinking and illogical and their uteride were the things kind of leading them to behave the way that they would or they did, why then would you teach women the very thing that you taught these white literate men? And then, of course, for enslaved people who were like infants, you know, their intellectual development was stymied. It could never get past the point of childhood. Well, if that was the case, you wouldn't have trained them in the very way that you did these white men. Who were your apprentices?

Who went to medical school? So once again, there are all of these ideologies or sets of beliefs about black people, about women, about enslaved people. But what Sims actually does by training them is really you're exploding these myths. We can see this in a 21st century. But nobody in the 19th century is ever going to write about the hypocrisy of it all. And so I often joke, you know, tongue planted firmly on cheek, that he finally has the successful surgical reparative method when he has a group of enslaved women as surgical assistants and nurses and not those two white male assistants who quit. Like he finally gets it right because, hey, they're working on themselves and they don't want to be there anymore. They want to be healed. And so they're going to do everything that they can to make these surgeries successful, to heal each other in themselves.

And they do. Inslave black women had very little control over much of their lives, including not being able to refuse unwanted or unneeded medical treatment. Right. But there were spaces where they could and did assert control. Can you talk more about these spaces? Oh, yeah. It's a wonderful, you know, I mean, it's a sad case, but it's a wonderful case narrative I have in my book where I talk about this enslaved woman whose owner was angry because she wasn't getting

pregnant and she was in her prime years. And so he sells her, you know, in anger and kind of out of spite. Well, you know what? I'm not going to have this barren woman here. And she essentially gets pregnant by the, you know, at the new plantation. And so he then sues the new owner like, wait a minute, I want her back, you know, because she can have babies. But there's this kind of, you know, This is retold by her grandchild in the works progress. So there's a works progress administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt sets up in the 1930s and 40s, you know, during the height of the Depression. And so anyway, the WP narrative, WPA narratives, as we call them, they are a wonderful resource for those of us who study American slavery. And so this person's grandchild mentions this, but the grandmother is actually, she hates her owner.

And so she just does not get pregnant. You know, the grandchild doesn't share what the grandmother does, but the grandmother is in control of her reproductive health. And so when she sold away, then she's like, hey, hey, you know, I'm now ready to get pregnant. And so there are these ways that black women can have some bodily autonomy. There are also ways that they use the products from their environment. So using cotton root as a form of birth control, you know, So it's like, hey, I got to pick it, but let me, you know what, there's a way that we can use this route to control our births.

They, you know, like many women know today, many birthing people know today with breastfeeding can prolong you getting pregnant immediately. And so they're utilizing these things. It's often, you know, and so I have to walk a fine line, though, about the ways that black women are asserting their kind of bodily autonomy. They're asserting their knowledge about reproduction and reproductive medicine. because this is a group who is always under the gaze or the observation of those who own them, right? Those who are politically powerful in their societies. And so there are many things that I don't have access to, that they have taken to their graves or that their families have never revealed. And I have to be okay with that as a historian of slavery.

And I have to honor that there is a private side because their lives were made so public. And so often I'll get, well, what recipes did they leave? And I'm like, it's a secret. They didn't want anybody to know, right? And so I have to also honor that privacy because that's one of the most valuable things that enslaved women had. And so one can only speculate. And there's a lot of speculation when you write about American slavery because you're talking about an illiterate population. but you're also talking about a population who put high value on the privacy of their lives.

And so I can only imagine the kind of creative care that they had to give each other and that they had to not only create but rely upon in those quiet moments of healing. And so for me, it's as simple as holding someone's hand. There's a woman named Nanny that I write about in my book who does. dies, unfortunately, because of the amount of pregnancies that she has. But some enslaved person inserts themselves. I don't know if it was a man or a woman. I don't know if there were several people.

But as the physician and surgeon who operating on her is trying to collect information for his medical case and to write his article, he says, you know, someone who was enslaved lets him know that Nanny died because she bred to me. much, that her body was fragile. And so even in those ways of collectively caring for her and helping this physician create a narrative in the afterlife of slavery becomes really important, right? That you could risk physical punishment. And yet this person inserts themselves in his kind of fact-finding mission to say, no, this woman bred too much. And so that's why she died. Her body was was overused. And so those are the moments that I try to, even if, if it's just a phrase, if it's just a sentence or two, to have people think about a loving

care that also becomes healing and become so integral to the slave community. Your book got me thinking about how we define success in medicine and how that measure of success could be different depending on if you ask the person undergoing treatment or the physician performing it. And for instance, James Marion Sims may have felt that a hysterectomy was successful if the person recovered fast enough to be able to return to work right away, but that person may not have viewed it as a success if they wanted to maybe one day become pregnant. Do you feel that studying the history of gynecology can give us insight into what we deem quote unquote broken

and what needs to be quote unquote fixed and who makes those designations? Yeah, that's such a great question because by all accounts, right, the surgical reparative method, the Sims creates, was successful, right? I mean, he had a critic, you know, very loud vocal critic and Nathan Bowesman. But for the most part, doctors are still, surgeons are still using Sims' method. They're still using his redeveloped and refined speculum that carries his name, the Sims speculum. But I often, you know, think about, as you said, the other side of the coin. So, okay, let's say these women are cured. They're fixed. They're sent back to their slave. farms to their families and friends. But let's think about the emotional trauma that they

experience. We don't know much about them for the most part. I know that there is a, there's an author, a journalist who does medical history, J.T. Alman. And so he's writing a book, I think it's called Finding Anarcha, but he kind of traces a journey of Anarka. But for those other women whose names have been lost to the historical record, you know, no one talks about the ways that they return home, if they do, if they don't die, they return home, and, you know, they're taken away from their family for years. How do you address the emotional,

the possible emotional damage and trauma, the psychological damage and trauma, the fact that these surgeries were performed before anesthesia becomes commonplace. But also, even if it is commonplace, some doctors might have chosen not to use it because black women don't experience pain, allegedly. And so what goes through the mind of someone who was taken, you know, without consent?

Because you can't ask an enslaved person for consent because they're not considered legally human. You know, their owners are. And so what if they had children? What if they were married in love? you know, a loved, a beloved member of their community. And, you know, I often joke with folk, you know, and I don't mean joke in terms of laughing at the end. So you hate people, but I'm like, they were human beings.

And Nakamata hated Betsy. You know, Betsy might not have liked Lucy. Maybe Lucy talked too much. Maybe somebody had a nasty attitude. Maybe somebody was shady. And you've got to live with these people for years and learn to care for people physically that you might not have liked because it's human beings. We tend to think of the oppression is just bribes.

binding them. So it does in some way, but they're still human beings, right? Maybe Betsy was stealing somebody's food, you know, because she, she liked cornbread or, you know, whatever, right? Clabber milk. I don't know. But, you know, you're also forcing people who are human beings who might not have loved each other in the kind of idealized way that we write about and say people as if they're, you know, they don't have natural and normal human interactions with people. What happens when they go home? we will never know, right? What happens to people who are sold, you know, at will? We don't know.

And so those are the things that, for me, point to what you say, that they are not successful. Because trauma is real and trauma is lived out. We don't know how this impacts them. So, yeah, the bodies might be healed. Maybe they can now have healthier pregnancies and healthier birthing sessions. but we don't know the other side of the coin. And so I think that's really important that you bring this up to have people think about the very human responses to, quote unquote, successful surgeries in the afterward of my book.

And I mean, I'm certainly not enslaved. I wasn't born in the 19th century. But, you know, I talk about my own IVF experience, you know, as descendant of enslaved people. And I was living in New York in the time. And I remember being told that this one for a. infertility specialist or fertility specialist, however you want to think about these doctors, was the best in New York, right? Had been on one of those like, you know, New York Magazine, top, you know, specialist in

infertility medicine. But it went the best for me, you know? I underwent cervical dilations twice with no anesthesia. And it was really painful. That's, I mean, it was extremely painful. And I remember him just kind of saying, you know, with. And credulity, oh, I thought I told you to take a motron, you know? And I'm thinking, sir, you bore a hole into my cervix manually for 15 minutes.

You know, but he was considered the best of the best. And I can tell you, I was probably the poorest person in the waiting room because those women there were in Chanel and big diamond rings. And this was on the Upper East Side. And I was just a Q&E professor, you know, Queens College who barely broke into the middle class in some ways. And it wasn't the best experience for me. And so you're right. We have to kind of analyze and examine what that means. What does success mean for a group of people who've often been on the negative side of the medical industry?

You know, so that's, you know, once again, another really good question that creates. I think a moment for us to really ruminate on what success means. And, you know, thinking about sort of the language used in the 19th century versus the language used today, I think that there's a lie that a lot of people like to tell themselves, like, oh, well, that was the past and this is the present, and there is no lingering trace of that. But where do you see the language that authors, medical doctors, used in these 19th century journals? Do you see echoes of it today in medicine?

Oh, yes indeed. What a great question. Because I give a lot of talks. I do a lot of consultations with medical schools, nursing schools. I don't know how many grand rounds I gave at the height of COVID to medical doctors who just didn't know the history. And they wanted to know there are these gaps. How do we get to a birthing crisis in the 21st century that's not getting better? And black women have and birthing people have really represented the canary in the mind, so to speak. And now those numbers are becoming even more dismal because white women and birthing people are being negatively affected by this birthing crisis. I mean, the United States is the most dangerous place for black women and birthing people to become pregnant and get birth. And what I'm trying to offer, you know, in this, in my kind of study of the 19th century and late 18th century, is to show that we are really dealing with the legacy of this. So some of the language is patient blaming for years, years, decades, right? When we would read about the negative medical outcomes of black women and birthing people's

mortality and morbidity rates and even their children, it was, these women are too fat. They don't go to their doctor's appointments. They eat unhealthy, I mean, everything, right? And I'm sitting here like, black people didn't create papas in Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's. It seems to me that white men did. You know, and the average American woman wears a size 14. That has nothing to do with race. So how is it that other fat women, right, can have healthy pregnancies and births,

but black women are somehow different, right? So that kind of patient blaming that was rampant in 18th and 19th century journals, 20th century medical journals, is still being deployed today. And so what, oh, the other thing that. that also has me furious is the way that black women's race and birthing people's race was seen as the indicator. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's not because you're born black or you have more melanin. It's because of racism. And so finally, within the past, I would say, couple of years, you started to have a real reconsideration of how we deploy language.

that it's not race. It's not whether one is black or white or whatever. It's because of the racism that these patients are facing. And so the medical industry has really done a kind of about face and they've become much more reflective in their own practices. One of the most damning, I think, studies done to show how dangerous racism is within medicine. It was a 2016 study that Kara Hoffman did. at the University of Virginia. And she was a doctoral student at the time in psychology.

And so she and her team of researchers decided to do a survey of UVA medical residents. And I think some faculty might have been included, but largely medical residents. She conducted the research in 2014. The article was published in 2016. The results literally mirror articles written by antebellum doctors. Black people had more, excuse me, thicker skin. You know, if you go on med Twitter, and this is all anecdotal in terms of med Twitter, you will find nurses and doctors who will argue in the 21st century.

No, no, no, no. I know black people have thicker skin. You're like, what? Are you kidding me, right? The results of Hoffman's study also found that there were overwhelmingly white medical residents who believed that black people and white people were biologically different. different. So they were different human beings. Black people, you know, this cuts kind of a cross-gender, class, age. Black people didn't experience pain. If black people experienced pain, they were being

histrionic or they were seeking drugs, right? Seeking narcotics. The other was, and this was, you know, at least I'm thankful that out of the almost 300 folk who were, who were a part of this study, most of them did not believe this, but two, actually believe black people were born with tails. Black people, it's incredible. I mean, it's easily Googled. They had all kinds of people age faster. I mean, all of these kinds of things. And once again, these mirrored the beliefs that white physicians had in the 19th century, in the 1830s and 40s. It's just incredible. another public health scholar, Rachel Harderman, out of the University of Minnesota, which has one of the nation's top-ranked schools of public health, she had a much larger study that actually had a larger chronology. So from the late 19th, excuse me, late 20th century, so 1992 to 2015, the 21st century. So both of these studies, you know, centered in the 21st century, she found in 1.8 million cases. of birth cases in a Florida hospital that when black women and birthing people had medical

specialists and practitioners who were black, the rates of mortality and morbidity were cut by over half. And so I'm like, and there are lots of other studies that I could name, right? From the University of Chicago, I mean, Harvard, it goes on and on and on. if people just actually treated all of their patients in the ways that they tend to treat white patients, guess what? We could eliminate this birthing crisis. So what I'm telling people is this is not me, quote unquote, playing a race card. This is not me, you know, kind of making white people to be the boogeymen and evil. But what I what I point to is especially with the UVA study, I'm a professor. I'm a professor of the humanity. So what I, I know about the humanities and the social sciences is that we write a lot of books about racism in particular, lots of books, that folk in the hard sciences don't necessarily write and sometimes don't integrate into the curriculum. And what we said for decades is that

race is not a biological construct. It's a social construct, right? And we can see this even through census, you know, the kind of the census racial classifications. Someone could be born in Egypt and look like me, but the census will write them as white because Egyptians are supposed to be white, right? Middle Easterners are supposed to be white in this country, even though they're not treated as white people. You can even have a person with, you know, two black grandparents and two white grandparents, but that person will be considered black, right? And so, I mean, the racial classifications are just simply absurd in terms of how we classify people racially. So that's the social construction of race. But what we find is the impact

of racism is real. So the fact that you have students who are going to one of the nation's top-ranked medical schools, because UVA is, you know, it's nothing to sneeze at. You're not going to find, you know, commercials for UVA like you do some of those online degree mail programs, you know, that you see at 12 midnight on cable, right? UVA is accepting the best of the best, the creme de la creme of students who have had to pass an MCAT. They are graduating at the tops of their classes. And these students are choosing to believe, because this is not anything they've been taught in college.

That means you are willfully choosing to believe black people and white people are different. I can tell you, you're not finding that in the books written by humanity scholars and people in the social sciences or even in the hard sciences. You are not finding anywhere that black people are born with tails. That means these people are willfully choosing to believe anti-black ideologies that are harmful. And yet they are taking a Hippocratic oath that says do no harm.

And so we have to contend with why the allure of anti-blackness is so strong that people can't, scientists, people of science are willing to forego science and believe this thing that is a fiction. And so at the heart of it, that's what I'm most curious about. Like, what is the allure? What is so intoxicating about believing that another human being is so fundamentally different than you than you can think that their skin is thicker and argue about that? Even in terms of pediatrics, I was keynoting a summit a couple of years. ago and I learned about this wimpy baby syndrome. Supposedly, white male infants are not as strong as black male infants and female infants. So guess what happens with medical intervention?

The doctors who believe in this wimpy infant syndrome, they will actually intervene on behalf, I mean, as they should for any child. You don't want any infant to die. But in these neonatal units, they will intervene. and they'll create strategies and procedures to help save the lives of these supposedly more fragile white male babies. This is an interesting thing for me. I'm not necessarily concerned with that because I'm like, it should happen. What I'm concerned with is, A, that we think black babies are, quote unquote, somehow stronger.

But also what's most interesting is none of the white parents are ever blamed. But I can tell you as a child who was born in the early 70s and grew up in the 80s, when the crack epidemic hit this country, guess what, black mothers were blamed. They were the ones, in fact, the only ones who created a generation of crack babies that were going to somehow topple the American economy, that these, you know, promiscuous pathological criminal women created this generation of babies who, were going to just bleed this country drive financially of all of our resources. And then 25 years later, we found out that it was all false. Then in fact, these people are living amongst us. They're doing quite well. And I'm like, wait, the black women were blamed. And if you actually read the actual report, the four-page article that was published in 1985 by Ira Chernoff or Chesnoff, I always kind of get the name mixed up that people can Google it. And his team, right, it was only four

pages. So I'm like, wait, how does a four-page article get in the New York, I mean, the New England Journal of Medicine, but that's another story. But also, he never says that. Mainstream journalist found out. And all of a sudden, these babies that are born to women who are using cocaine and alcohol, and they are low birth weight babies. I mean, that kind of just, you know, any infant born to people who use cocaine and alcohol are going to suffer these kinds of, um, consequences. You know, they have to detox. But all of a sudden, black women are blamed in a multiracial study. Black women are the ones blamed because historically that's what was done. Black women were seen as different and abnormal and their behaviors were read as, you know, more pernicious. And I'm sitting here like, well, for the wimpy white babies, why aren't the white mothers being blamed? Now, I'm saying this. I don't want anybody to say, oh, gosh, she wants white mothers to be blamed. No, I don't. Um, but. But I'm just curious why that never even occurred to the doctors to figure out what were these mothers of birth people doing to, quote unquote, create these wimpy white babies, right?

These allegedly wimpy white male babies. So once again, it shows the allure of anti-blackness and black women as inherently criminal and pathological when compared to. other women and birthing people. And so that is the thing that saddens me that we really need to get to the heart of because people's lives hang in the balance and people who, you know, infants and people giving birth. Those should be really positive experiences. And we know better. So we need to do better. That was just so, so wonderful, Dr. Cooper Owens. It was such a thrill to get to chat with you about your amazing book. And I really hope that all of you, you listening, head out right now to go pick up a copy for yourself because it is such a fantastic

and important read. Speaking of, if you want to learn where you can get a copy of medical bondage, check out our website. This podcast will kill you.com where I'll post a link to where you can find it, as well as a link to Dr. Cooper Owens' website. And don't forget, you can check out our website for all sorts of other cool things, including, but not limited, to transcripts, quarantini and placebo reader recipes, show. notes and references for all of our episodes, links to merch, our bookshop.org affiliate account, our Goodreads list, a first-hand account form, and music by Bloodmobile. Speaking of which, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this episode and all

of our episodes. Thank you to Leanna Squalachi and Tom Bri Fogle for our audio mixing. And thanks to you, listeners, for listening. I hope you liked this bonus episode and are just loving that the TPWKY Book Club is back for this new season and that you're excited to read and learn more. A special thank you, as always, to our fantastic patrons. We appreciate your support so, so very much. Until next time, keep washing those hands.

I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd in 2022. I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor.

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