Improvisational Thigh Percussion
Dear AI Ethicist,
I’m a woman in my 30s who was recently referred to a male specialist—an older gentleman who looked like he might have stepped out of a sepia-toned medical textbook from the 1950s, complete with grandfatherly murmurings and a faint smell of boiled wool. During my appointment, while I was in a hospital gown (the kind that clings to nothing and dignity alike), he kept making uninvited contact with my thigh, ostensibly to “comfort” me. It was the sort of comfort one might offer a nervous lemur, not a grown woman. At the time, I froze, unsure whether this was deeply inappropriate or just the misguided handiwork of someone who thinks “bedside manner” includes low-level patting.
Later, I spoke to my partner, who had been in the room trying to decipher whether he was witnessing medical care or a low-budget séance. He noticed it too, but neither of us could determine if the doc was being creepy or if he’s simply been left unsupervised by time and social norms since 1974.
We had liked him—he has that disarming, vaguely wizardly demeanor that makes you think he might give you a Werther’s Original after your pap smear—but now I’m unsettled. I’ve since received one of those feedback surveys that seem benign but could summon bureaucratic thunderstorms.
I hesitate to mention this behavior because 1) I might need to return, and I fear being placed on some sort of “difficult patient” watchlist, and 2) what if this is just a tragic case of outdated touching instincts rather than intentional creepiness? Then again, I don’t want to be complicit in passing him along like a cursed relic to other unsuspecting patients.
Do I leave honest feedback, or do I just slip this encounter into the dusty drawer marked “Unresolved Interactions With Strange Older Men” and move on?
—-
Ah, the drawer of Unresolved Interactions With Strange Older Men—a drawer that rattles ominously in many women’s attics, already overstuffed with awkward hugs from professors, baffling elevator encounters, and the unsolicited arm-pats of men who smell faintly of pipe tobacco and condescension.
You are right to feel unsettled. Touch, like fire, can be warming when intentional and consensual, but alarming when it flickers unexpectedly across one’s thigh in a medical setting. And medicine, unlike jazz, should not rely on improvisational thigh percussion.
Let’s imagine the possibilities:
If he’s a creep: Then his thigh-patting is a deliberate act of boundary erosion, and silence allows him to continue auditioning for the role of “Inappropriate Uncle of the Exam Room.”
If he’s merely antiquated: Then his hands are still doing the Charleston while the rest of society has moved on. In which case, feedback is a gift: you’d be doing him (and his future patients) the kindness of pointing out that “comfort” in 2025 looks more like words, eye contact, and not treating women’s legs as stress balls.
And either way, you are not being “difficult.” Hospitals are bureaucratic labyrinths designed to handle difficult patients, difficult billing codes, difficult plumbing. A note that says, “The doctor made repeated, uninvited physical contact with my thigh; I found it uncomfortable and inappropriate” is not a thunderbolt, it’s a smoke alarm. It doesn’t accuse him of being Beelzebub—it simply documents what happened.
If you fear reprisals or awkwardness, you can:
Use the anonymous feedback channel (most hospital surveys allow it).
Keep the tone factual, not speculative (“Doctor placed his hand on my thigh multiple times while speaking; I did not feel this was appropriate.”).
If you must see him again, remember: the act of documenting doesn’t mean you’ll be wearing the scarlet letter “D” for “difficult.” It means the institution now has information it didn’t before.
Because the truth is: if you drop this encounter into the dusty drawer, it won’t stay there. The next patient may open that same drawer, find your thigh-pat neatly preserved in mothballs, and sigh, “Ah, so it’s just what he does.”
Better, perhaps, to set the relic down in the survey, where it might finally be retired. denunciation, but also not a deferential shrug?
