Ben Cochran is a nursing student at East Carolina University. He is also a misogynistic pig. I’ll let him do the talking (emphasis mine):
People go to the doctor when they’re sick.
If you’re a girl, sometimes you go to the doctor to get Pabst beer, or a pap smear, or something like that.
What girl have you ever heard of that goes to a doc in the box for birth control? None of them. They go to their gyno. It’s a matter of efficiency. If you have a lung problem, you see a pulmonologist. If you have a heart problem, you see a cardiologist. If you have a cunt problem, you see a gynecologist.
So I’m sitting in student health the other day, sneezing my friggin eyes out and coughing up green oysters wondering what in the name of great Zeus’s beard is taking so long. I’m just trying to get seen and have this purulent mucus extricated from my hacking body. Half an hour later, I finally see some movement stirring from across the waiting room. A nurse exits with about half a dozen girls, all grinning from ear to ear, bubbly and giggly as if they just scored their first alcohol purchase with a fake id. In their hands they carried what seemed like a solid 36 month’s worth of birth control.
First of all, not even porn stars need that much birth control. Second of all, do you mean to seriously tell me that I’ve been sitting here in misery for the last half an hour just so that this gaggle of preemie sluts could get a free pass on harlotry?
Go read your Redbook in the lobby of a specialist while you get a mani as you wait to get your hatchet wound inspected. Leave student health for those of us that are in actual need of medical attention.
Look, this is a university—an ivory tower of academic prowess. We don’t need to be handing out birth control left and right especially from an on campus location. This is a bastion for the intellectually competent. If you find your talents to lend themselves to a more base and carnal nature, perhaps this just isn’t the place for you.
I don’t take issue with sex mongers. They serve their place. Hell, according to the bible, it’s the oldest known profession on earth. So you sultry sex fiends are clearly established, but this is a place of higher being. Please take your gaping holes elsewhere for medical services, and leave the real health issues to those that actually belong on a college campus.
Heaven forbid you had to suffer through your stupid cold for thirty minutes because women were getting their preventative medicine. Those stupid whores should just accept their God given purpose as baby making machines. Duh. Aren’t you glad this guy is becoming a nurse? Or worse, that this letter could have just as easily been written by many of the people currently running for public office in the US?
A “cleaned up” version was printed in his student newspaper. Though really, it just removed some of the coarse language – the ignorance and hatred is still going strong.
I feel a little bad when I make posts without much commentary or detailed refutation, but sometimes it just doesn’t need it. But if you need a blow by blow take down, another blogger already has it covered.
I don’t know if male nurses are often around visible “hatchet wounds” (not in my experience, though I wouldn’t be against it unless they have a tendency to call it a “hatchet wound”), but surely having one in the room going “EW! EW! EW!” would be off-putting.
I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful nurse, Mr. Cochrane. Actually no, you won’t. For that statement alone, you deserve to be kicked
in the faceout of any medical staff. You’re job (or the one you’re preparing to perform at least) requires a basic level of respect for your patients you clearly do not have.OH FUCKING ZEUS ON A SWAN
Hey moron (not wyou, Jenn, the letter writer): women take the rhe birth control pill every damn day, not just on days they plan on fucking. I mean, damn. If you’re going to demonstrate your superiority to some supposedly weaker class, i think the least you can do is not say things which are categorically and idiotically false. I’m going to br proactive and answer the next part for you: they don’t put the pills in their vagina (that would be what you call the ‘hoo hoo’).
This is a student nurse? *brain implodes*
TRiG.
Godalmighty.
People are contacting the president and the dean of his school as well as his workplace (courtesy of info from his FB profile).
His facebook was originally open where he was making fun of the situation. He then privatized it/made it static, but had a quote up taunting people to “keep the hate mail coming.” Now that’s been removed too. I think he’s SLOWLY realizing how utterly stupid he is. Shit has hit the fan, son.
I’m tempted to turn his pictures into an internet meme. The tagline would read: “I haz runny n0ze… take Ur preemie kunt to GYRO”
Jen: I agree with everything you said, except:
I don’t think we should be insulting pigs by comparing them to misogynists. Personally, I rather like pigs (hence why I refuse to eat any pork products). And they’re highly intelligent animals which have exhibited highly-developed cognitive abilities, sophisticated situational awareness, and strong social and co-operative tendencies; regrettably, the same cannot be said for Mr Cochran.
How about “He is also a misogynistic tapeworm”? A more appropriate comparison, perhaps.
Wow.
That’s a special kind of ignorant. Religious, stupid, or both?
I usually flinch a little when I hear of someone being fired for something they put on a blog or on facebook but when I hear that he can’t get a medical job (that by definition requires basic knowledge of anatomy and some semblance of empathy) I will come down with a major case of schadenfreude.
Misogynistic ass?
Wow what a piece of shit
Apparently this fella never got past the “girls are weird and have cooties” stage, lol.
My first thought was “This guy is way hung up on some sort of sex issues… and clearly isn’t getting any.”
Religious because it justifies his impulses to be stupid and cruel. He didn’t learn that language in church.
Here’s the thing — I’m never going to get back the time I spent reading Ben Cochran’s ludicrous drivel. My first thought is that this is some jackass being a Poe, I guess because I don’t hang up with people that insane and damaged.
Is there a cure? Comedy? Ridicule? Education? I suspect a pathology so twisted that nothing will fix it. Is there anything that will make it not be a waste of time to have been exposed to this claptrap?
I bet this guy is a real winner with the ladies.
Ann, I think you should.
In the meantime, I stole your idea myself:
Or if he is, he’s totally the type that loses all respect for you in the morning (if he had any to start).
I’m sorry, I can’t even get past him characterizing East Carolina as an ivory tower, considering it’s pretty much *only* known for being the biggest party school in North Carolina. And that’s what it is too–speaking from experience here, since I went there as an undergraduate. So if you needed any more proof that he’s delusional, there you go.
I read the first 2 paragraphs and thought “Ok, so he’s blunt, but he’s got a point. Women go see specialists. If I had a penis problem, I’d go see a… dick doctor? Phallogist? Hell, I don’t even know.” (A google search for related terms has only returned results with titles such as “Is my penis a normal size?”)
Then it turned out he’s just a big douchebag. I don’t understand the point about 36 months of birth control being excessive at all. Does he, a nursing student, not know how birth control works? Does he think they bought 36 months worth of Plan B pills? Because that’s pretty funny. This “higher being,” and “intellectually competent” doesn’t know how a really common procedure works when it’s in his own field?
And that’s only if we take him at his ’36 months’ word. It’s pretty rare to see the pill prescribed in three-year chunks, and even rarer that someone could just recognize a stack of items and count ’36’ instantaneously (I think you can recognize up to 6-7 without counting, not sure). He’s just making shit up.
He may have seen three 1-year boxes and just decided to make it sound like a bigger number. I’ll admit I don’t know much about getting the pill prescribed though, so if that is a bit weird, okay then. The actual process of obtaining them is not something I’ve ever really experienced.
And for those curious, I have found that a penis doctor is a Urologist. I like Phallogist better.
Reading the comments from the ECU site, I love how many men are getting on his case. *This* is what ultimately makes the difference in culture.
“Hatchet wound”? From a nursing student?!?
*head explodes*
Someone needs to clue this young man in to the fact that he is definitely in the wrong field. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of what field he is suitable for, but nursing has to be near the bottom of the list.
Well, looks like I have a news contender for my ‘Most Ignorant Thing I’ve Heard All Year’ award. I don’t think he’s winner, not after some of the bile floating around after The-Incident-That-Will-Not-Be-Named, but he’ll certainly get a dishonourable mention.
Don’t know what goes on over there in East Carolina, but as far as I know people in college fuck a lot, intellectuals or not.
I take issue with Rebekah Todd encouraging people to harass this guy. Yes, he really shouldn’t be pursuing a career in nursing if he’s honestly this stupid. Yes, he’s a total douchecopter for submitting this drivel to the school paper.
But isn’t a deluge of hatemail from angry strangers on the internet the kind of thing we should be denouncing, given what a certain blogger has had to put up with after The-Incident-That-Will-Not-Be-Named?
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Hey Jen. I comment on your stuff from time to time.
I am a student at East Carolina, and I am one of the many that was horrified by what he said. It seems to be the general assumption he makes our nursing department look bad, and now most women (and men) will not want anything to do with him here.
Yours,
Andrew Gorman
http://www.appeal-to-reason.info/
An editor’s note added to the newspaper post:
“The recent article has deeply offended many of you and we would like to sincerely apologize. We made a misjudgment; however, we stand by the publishing of the article due to our firm belief in free expression…”
Yea, sure. Actually, I’m all for free expression. The more we make prominent who the misogynistic ignoramuses are in society, the less likely they are to propagate.
“More on” indeed. >.>
You really don’t see the morally relevant differences here?
I have to disagree with those who said this young man won’t be a good nurse. I disagree strongly: Mr. Cochran is clearly well on his way to filling the all-important “hobbling authors and calling them dirty birds” niche.
If the writer’s cold was urgent or life-threatening, he should have gone to urgent care or the ER.
Since it was not, it’s his own dumb fault for going to a place where other people were seen first.
Did the ‘ickle baby get cranky ‘cos he had the snuffles? Mumsy could tuck his precious into beddybyes if he wasn’t supposed to be all growed up and at college.
I actually feel a little nauseous reading that.
Why on earth does he want to be a nurse if he hates half of humanity so much? I hope he gets disciplinary action from the nursing school for that.
I’m 52 and used to be a male nurse. Although it has been some 30 years since nursing school I still remember what I was instructed on day one, “You are your patient’s advocate.”
The essence of nursing. You may be responsible for a baby who cannot speak, an adult who is not conscious, you act as their advocate standing between that human being and the world. You are the last line of defense against a doctor’s mistake, a pharmacy’s mistake, a family member or even another nurse’s mistake. You accept the responsibility of their welfare depending on you, your thoughts, your words and your actions.
There are no jokes. You wouldn’t circulate a racist email of the President, claiming “it was just a joke”, if you were not racist because who else thinks that way. You wouldn’t pen something as hateful as what Mr. Cochran has done here if you were not a misogynist. No one but a truly psychologically and spiritually damaged individual would ever think these thoughts, and childishly publicize them.
So to the powers that be at his school, I implore you to not only discipline this student, but to bar his entrance into the profession. He has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that at a minimum he is incapable of being an advocate for over half of humanity, women.
Free expression therefore, publish something hateful. In any case, I assume the paper, based on their belief that free expression requires that they publish all comers, will publish the 99-page long gloss on Silas Marnier I’ve just written in Klingon.
Lovely comment left at the original East Carolinan op-ed. That’s right, birth control is equivalent to abortion. Furthermore, women who have sex are required to be punished for it with pregnancy. It’s God’s way.
The attitudes regarding women who have sex are bad enough. But the dehumanizing language (“hatchet wound?” seriously?!) is just icing on this shit cake.
I hope this is just one misogynist letter, and not part of a greater trend in society.
Been lurking awhile, but this post is like putting a turbocharger on the blood pressure, and had to comment. Wow. I’m for protecting even hate-speech, but I’m not exactly against vigilantism either, so… Here’s hoping he’s shocked into a finer-tuned sensitivity in the near future.
On the upside, because he was shortsighted enough to have something like this published, whether or not that shock towards sensitivity happens soon will likely be irrelevant. With his name tacked to that article, a lot of doors will close to him that would have remained open otherwise. We may not live in a perfect society, and there is more than plenty of injustice to go around, but just remember that most employers value good PR and are finely tuned to their sources of revenue, whatever they may be. He might have not just typed himself out of a nursing career, but other fields as well. So hold your nose while you read the article, but know there’ll be a wind shift there in the not-too-distant future. :)
No medical practitioner will prescribe 3 years worth of any med. They want any patient to return yearly (or sooner) to review how the med is working, whether there have been any side effects, if any changes need to be made etc… So, yes, you are correct that there is no way they’d be walking out with 3 years worth of pills.
I don’t know what all the kerfuffle is about. Ben has actually done everyone a favor. Too many assholes slip under the radar, and it’s difficult to pick them out. But Ben has displayed his misogynistic stupidity in a forum that allows it to be spread far and wide as a warning.
In an earlier age, his actions would be akin to tattooing “I’m an asshole” across his forehead. These days, since the ‘Net never forgets, he’s put himself out there where every potential employer, date, and social organiztion can clearly see that this is one scumbag to avoid.
Congrats, Ben! You have a long future ahead of you as an underemployed troll whose only sexual gratification is self-inflicted. I hope your mom’s basement is still available.
And even when the patient has been on the same medication for years with no side effects or issues ever, they tend to demand it anyway because they want their “cut” or they have an emotional need to feel “in charge” No matter what other commitments the patient has for the entirety of normal business hours.
Perhaps it’s because I’m Canadian, and our system is different, but I couldn’t get over my confusion at “What girl have you ever heard of that goes to a doc in the box for birth control? None of them. They go to their gyno.”
No, all of them. Every single one of them? The doc *is* a gyno? Every woman goes to a GP for their birth control (unless it’s Mirena, and then only specialist birth control clinics insert that). And then BC is dispensed 3 months at a time, and you need a new prescription every year. If they walked out of the office with something, it was most certainly a trial, otherwise they’d have walked out with prescription slips – so they definitely didn’t get more than 3 months at a time.
You don’t go to the ObGyn until you are pregnant, and need specialist care (but even then, many GPs can still see you all the way through), or if you have a serious medical condition requiring surgery or something. The first visit is always to a GP anyway, who then refers you to the specialist.
And, if he thinks medicine is that specialized, why did he go to the GP? Does he have a cough? Why the hell isn’t he at the pulmonologist? So many questions, so many blatant misunderstandings of the medical system… all made clear by remembering that he might as well have just written “Why didn’t they just go to the vet, who is trained to deal with their animal problems? Doctors are for *people*”.
He didn’t say if it was hormonal or barrier protection. He just assumed it was 36 months of birth control based on how often he gets laid over a 3 year period.
They were each carrying two condoms.
I think, by ‘hatchet wound’ he means vagina. What a Stupid asshole!
I think by ‘hatchet wound’ he is referring to her vagina.
You said it better than I did.
Офигенно интересно, читаю – не перестаю удивляться!
I had figured he meant the vulva, personally.
Which I’ve never heard called a “hatchet wound.” “Axe wound,” once or twice…
A hatchet is a small axe.
Why does Ben Cochran have small vulvas on the brain? O.o
If it makes you feel any better, he is the one who is confused.
I was going to point that out to you, but I am glad you figured it (mostly) out; you might want to re-read the first sentence here though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urology
IOW – A urologist isn’t just for males (except when it comes to reproductive issues, generally).
By his own logic, Mr. Cochran should have been seeing a proctologist, not a GP.
Zing!
From what I understand, women here in the States tend to seek the majority, if not all, of their medical care from their OB/GYN, rather than a GP. Many feel they receive better care that way. Men here, on the other hand – if they see a doctor at all – tend to see a GP (or sometimes a specialist of some sort that they see all the time for anything); any issues in regards to reproductive health get referred out to a urologist.
As a male, I’ll see any doctor who isn’t a “naturopath” or other alternative woo-meister; give me someone with a scientific mind, dammit!
Not justifying what this guy wrote (ugly doesn’t begin to describe his words), regarding the idea of “seeing a vet”: There are some here (mainly rural and poor) who actually prefer to see a veterinarian over a regular doctor, especially for certain issues where being an MD isn’t an absolute requirement for the care needed (stitches, setting simple broken bones, etc). It probably isn’t legal, but some do it again because they feel they get better care, plus it tends to be much, much cheaper (and cash payments are easier).
My guess? Not this guy.
If you mean whether I see the difference between pointing out that hitting on a woman in an elevator at 4am is not a good idea and going on a venomous, callous, ignorance-fueled tirade about women who use birth control, of course I do.
That doesn’t mean I support people harassing him on his personal Facebook account. Call out his repugnant statements in a public forum, and then move on. He’s not worth your time.
I believe they apologized for the unedited version circulating around the internet, but not the published version. In other words, they apologized for the bad grammar and nasty words, but not the fact-free, women-hatin’ theme of the article.
You’re right. I mean what kind of world would it be if horrible misogynistic people actually had to face some kind of CONSEQUENCES?
[*cut to scene of happy children and bunnies frolicking gleefully in sunny green fields while a soft flute plays*]
Asses are useful, both the body part and the animal (which is also rather intelligent). Tapeworms however are neither useful nor exhibit much brain power.
That may be true for a subset of American women but not all of them, not by a long shot. OB/GYNs in my area actively discourage women from using them as a GP to the extent they will refuse to see any woman who does not have a specifically obstetric or gynecologic problem. Birth control and pap tests are also not the doctor’s job (that is usually handled by a nurse or nurse practitioner) unless in cases where the woman has another health problem that makes a doctor’s evaluation for birth control necessary.
I have an IUD and I never saw a OB/GYN for that (in fact I’m 29 and never have seen one for any reason). I saw my family practice doctor first and since she didn’t feel comfortable putting mine in (for lack of practice on women who’ve never had children) referred me to a family planning center where a nurse practitioner installed it.
Not for long.
Maybe not the language…although who knows what they do or say in the breaks.
But the stated attitudes are not a million miles from most fundamentalist congregations I would wager.
The dude seems a little surprised that his rant against women and their sex organs and their personal and private lifestyle has caused so much furore.
Maybe it is the first time such expressed opinion has ever been questioned.
He is used to the attitude and general bullshite opinions that passes for righteous thinking from his Church peers.
The male sheeple like to rant and rave against that which they cannot have.
And it does seem to be a viewpoint firmly brewed in religious surroundings.
Whatever…what are the odds he actually gets qualified as a Nurse…not a great bet I would hazard.
“More on woman hating”?
Oh, I thought you said “Moron woman hater”. Same thing, really.
.
Using a derogatory term for female genitalia makes me wonder if:
(a) he has Pink Floyd-ish emotional detachment issues and can’t see women normally,
(b) he’s gay and is disgusted by the sight of female genitalia,
(c) his head is so full of buybull crap that he can’t think straight, or
(d) he’s a pedophile. A common trait amongst them is an inability to form functional adult relationships, and are disproportionately heterosexual.
Speaking of female genitalia….
http://xkcd.com/671/
.
The ‘apology’ was one of the worst ever. If I’d been their ombudsman, my line would’ve been, “Look, this guy is a shitsmear, and he just publicly outed himself as such. Letting the campus community at large know about just how vile this individual’s brain is was simply a public service, and really, we couldn’t have underlined just how disgusting this person is any better than by using his own words.”
Ah, of course. Using suppression/intimidation tactics that we abhor if used against us is A-OK if we’re the ones doing it!
You’re missing the fundamental point that debating hot-button issues like feminism/misogyny isn’t meant to change the minds of people like Ben Cochran – it’s to convince the undecided audience who don’t know that they’re feminists yet.
Bombarding this idiot with hatemail is only going to harden his conviction that women are walking “hatchet wounds” not worthy of respect. Tearing apart his letter in public, on the other hand, will show the world how wrong people like him are and get more of them on our side.
I’m really astounded that:
1) Someone would publish something like this to a public forum without the anonymity of a web forum alias.
2) This would be published in an edited venue of any sort, like a student newspaper.
3) That somehow, apparently, based on their responses, neither the author nor the editorial staff expected the massive push-back.
I do want to add that I object to the comments that suggest that masturbation is somehow some sort of consolation prize compared to partnered sex and/or that lack of sex is some sort of punishment to be visited on the vile prick (with an implicit negative commentary on other people who don’t have a lot of sex: if amount of sexual activity actually were correlated to awfulness/misogyny, the implication is that all people who don’t have a lot of sex are awful/misogynists, which is totally unfair).
Thank you for your concern.
How long have you been on the internet? Because this kind of misogyny is out there and plentiful.
DO IT. ABSOLUTELY DO IT. It’ll reach masses of people that way, people that don’t read blogs like this and don’t think these kind of people actually exist.
If spamming this idiot’s Facebook helps you feel better about all of the woman-hating going on in the world, then by all means go do it. He brought it on himself by publishing that under his real name. I’ll keep my crazy ideas about taking the moral high road to myself from now on.
Awesome!
I’ve yet to find anyone else who isn’t already a full-on vegetarian who forgoes pork products due to their intelligence beside myself. (I learned of their potential for self-awareness over the summer, which was when I decided to do the same as you, and forgo all pork products.)
It seems vaguely awkward to be both an atheist but to most easily describe my diet as “kosher”, but I’m at least thankful that there’s an easy label for me to be able to easily recognize foods at restaurants that I don’t want to eat, without going entirely meatless.
Well, I am mostly vegetarian (I eat fish very occasionally, and I do eat dairy products and eggs). But I think there’s a hierarchy of animal sentience. Pigs are markedly more intelligent than most domesticated animals, something which has been demonstrated repeatedly through empirical research, and I find it difficult to make any coherent moral argument justifying the slaughtering of pigs for food (especially since, in affluent Western societies, we don’t need to eat pork products and can forgo them very easily).
I’m ashamed to share a gender with this asshat. I think I’ll go donate to Planned Parenthood in his name so he gets a thank-you note.
I’m actually glad when anti-choicers take the filter off and express how they really feel. It’s really tiresome dealing with the professionally glib ones who wax on about how much they luuuuuurve the wimmenz and just want to protect us from the horrors of safe sex and safe legal contraception and abortion.
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