- #1
This is actually pretty enjoyable so far. MC is a little overly OP and too good at everything, but she does have some past life experience, so eh, whatever, I'll let it slide. Around a 4.2 at ch 347, continuing onwards. Some personal bias in rating since I do like this sort of topic. Not rating for accuracy because 1. surgery isn't currently the focus of my study and 2. I'm reading the MTL, so it's all kind of lol whatever.I feel like the criticism of "the author keeps saying women can't do x and that's against women" isn't precisely accurate. It sounds more like the author is stating those stereotypes and covering the biases of other characters, and then showing MC surpassing that, rather than the MC or author themselves having that bias. Narrative shouldn't be taken to be the author's perspective, because I doubt this story would've been written if that were the case.As for women lacking the strength for prolonged surgical operations... that statement seems quite personally relatable. I don't think laying out the existence of that bias in this novel and then surpassing it goes against women in any way. My mother studied cardiology for internal medicine in China roughly around this time period/slightly earlier, and my maternal grandfather did surgery. When I was a kid, I also wanted to do surgery, and got told similar sh*t by my mother, which I disagreed with. And while I still disagree (although I am not currently studying surgery), I think fundamentally it isn't always entirely badly intentioned (depending on who says it). Someone less strong might have it tougher adapting to that environment. (this was told despite my maternal grandparents' family not really having any anti-girl bias, as far as I can tell (both were doctors, had 4 girls and no boys, all of whom went into higher ed, and placed a lot of value on studies). In short, it's not always about "women bad lower class".) And yes, there are female Olympic athletes. But Olympic athletes aren't comparable to regular people, because they're spending most of their day training for the Olympics. A female medical student is not at all comparable to a female Olympic athlete.Also, there are literally studies on the comparative strength of men vs women. I don't think the author should be rated down for basic biological facts, no matter how ego-damaging they might be. The average female is shorter and of slighter build than the average male, and height and weight often add to strength. Females also tend to have a higher body fat % naturally, which leaves less lean body tissue. Ergo, the average female is physically less strong than the average male.Again, while female Olympic athletes can certainly be much stronger than men, I sincerely doubt that there are a significant number of professional surgical specialists moonlighting as active Olympic athletes, regardless of their gender."The only enemies in the book are female and that's biased!" is also... not true at all at this point. Seriously, how did people read this story and come up with that shit?The largest actual stumbling block on her path is MC's dad, who thinks it's useless for women to study and takes her award money to spend on male relatives and is constantly pressuring her mom on how worthless MC's efforts are in the background. There's also another male doctor who hates interns (Dr. Zhong or something) that purposefully tries to trip them up, and a number of male, older doctors that stubbornly refuse to believe they aren't right. The boys in her class implicitly disbelieve in her abilities until she proves it to them and surpasses them, garnering their respect -- but if she was just average amongst them, she might still be in an uncomfortable spot, since the jobs are also biased towards males. Even after her excellent theoretical skills are demonstrated, the boys still believe that maybe she'll get shown how much weaker she is than the menfolk during the clinical internships, since her techniques might be lacking. Even the highly skilled surgeon she interns under for a while, who greatly appreciates her abilities, hesitates and has to ponder before deciding to keep her on. Why? Because she's female, so what if she goes home and has a kid or goes on maternal leave? then he actually asks her, and realises, haha, oops, she's too young for that. Thank god she isn't romantically inclined! But the other, flirty male Dr is fine to have around, since it's not like he'll get pregnant.Double standards? Yeah. And that's kind of the point.Sure, a number of the named antagonists are female, and that's fine, because a number of them are also male. The biggest antagonists so far are double standards and biases, not whatever other intern she disagrees with for a day.All of the medical students are competing for jobs and clinical placements, so competition or rivalry is obviously going to exist. Older female medical students in an environment that doesn't care for maternal leave and in a period of time that still values settling down with kids are clearly going to have it rougher and be more pressured mentally, especially when our ultra young and OP xueba MC emerges out of nowhere and pwns the more experienced interns.
