u/Icy_Soil_2199

​

Hello everyone,

This is going to be a post on medical misogyny and organ donation, looking at both Indian and global perspectives.

I posted a video earlier regarding this topic which did not quote any sources in the description, and I received a lot of comments saying that organ donation is not the correct parameter to judge medical misogyny. So instead of replying to each and every comment, I decided to make a detailed post here.

Just to be clear, I am not someone from the medical profession myself. However, I have a lot of friends and family members who are in the field, and we have regular conversations regarding medical misogyny.

All the data and quotes I am sharing here are compiled from public research and official studies, but since I am only human, there can be discrepancies.

If you are a medical professional and have corrections or more data to add, please be my guest. I am completely open to learning.

Shall we start with the data first?

What the official data says in India

According to cumulative data from NOTTO (National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation):

* 80% of all organ recipients in India are male.

* 75% to 80% of all living donors are female.

* Among parental donors, mothers account for 50% to 73% of donations.

* Wives make up to 90% of spousal donations.

* Husbands donating to their wives account for under 5%. Under 5%.

Let us look at what AIIMS and the Indian Journal of Nephrology say (focusing on kidney transplants):

* The Indian Journal of Nephrology documented that 79% of donors were biologically female, while 81.5% of recipients were male.

* AIIMS data noted that 51.8% of these female donors felt socially compelled to prioritize male lives. They did not donate entirely out of choice; they felt forced by society.

* 33.2% cited that they do not earn and depend on the person who needs the organ, so they had to give it.

* Only 15% said they donated purely out of love and uncoerced altruism.

* AIIMS studies also found that only 30% to 35% of people on registered transplant waitlists are women.

Women are almost always underdiagnosed, face delayed clinical referrals, and families simply do not want to spend money on their treatments.

Coming to ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research):

ICMR highlights that 75% of organ transplants take place in tier 1 cities in India, where the financial prioritization of male lives is even more visible.

What global trends look like

According to GODT (Global Observatory on Donation and Transplantation) in association with WHO:

* Global numbers are not as severe as South Asia, where patriarchal conditioning is at its peak, but the disparity is still everywhere.

* Globally, 65% of living kidney donors are women, and 65% of recipients are men.

* In the US, data shows 60% to 62% of living donors are women, while 60% of recipients are men.

* When it comes to deceased organ donation, donors are both men and women, but the primary recipients in both living and deceased cases remain men. Men are prioritized either way.

Why is this the reality in India?

Why do wives make up 90% of spousal donations while husbands account for under 5%? The reasons are very clear:

* Societal pressure: Women are constantly told that they have to provide, care, and sacrifice for the household.

* Lack of earning power: Women are financially dependent on men and need the breadwinner to stay alive, leaving them with no choice but to give up an organ.

* Gender inequality: Women are raised to believe their inherent purpose is to support the men in their families.

* Perceived value: In both rural and urban areas, women are often not seen as worthy enough for families to spend large sums of money on their life saving surgeries or transplant waitlists.

Addressing the blood donation argument and the food gap

A lot of comments on my previous video argued that men donate more blood, so it balances out.

Let us look at why that happens:

First, Men do not menstruate. .

A woman loses blood every month during her cycle, sometimes for up to seven days.

She has a short window to recover her blood levels just to function normally, all while bearing the biological burden of reproduction.

Asking a person who bleeds every month why they do not donate blood as often as men ignores basic biology.

Second, there is a massive food and nutrition gap in India: patriarchy food edition .

* In almost every household, whether rich, poor, urban, or rural, men are served first with the best, most nutrient rich portions of food. Women eat last and survive on leftovers.

* In rural areas, this is made worse by heavy physical labor, worm infestations, gut infections, and repeated pregnancies without adequate rest or food.

* Because of this structural neglect, India has one of the highest anemic populations in the world. Indian women across rural and urban backgrounds suffer from severe anemia, which medically disqualifies them from donating blood in the first place.

* The blood that men do donate mostly goes back into treating other men who make up the majority of hospital admissions.

The cycle of conditioned sacrifice

From childhood, girls are conditioned to care, follow rules, and keep giving.

In school, well behaved girls are made to sit next to unruly boys to fix them.

As women grow up, society forces them into roles of endless caretaking, and eventually, forces them to surrender their physical organs.

When a woman falls ill, her diagnosis is delayed, her pain is dismissed, and hospital systems and families prioritize male patients over her.

This is the ground reality of medical misogyny in our society, and the numbers prove it..

donate to people out of love not out of force.

we give and give until we have nothing left.

https://indianjnephrol.org/invisible-sacrifices-gendered-dynamics-and-social-pressures-in-living-kidney-donation-in-india/?hl=en-GB

https://www.mcgill.ca/humanrights/article/gender-disparities-organ-donation-and-transplantation-india-call-equality?hl=en-GB

This is an audio dictated post since I have very little time to write things down right now, but I wanted to make a post about this.

First, I should make it clear to everybody that I am not a Muslim, I am not dating one either, and I have not read the Quran. I have heard verses and seen translations, but since I cannot read Arabic, I cannot quote it directly.

All the things I am going to say come from my understanding of the religion through documentaries and other books in English that I have read about it, concerning international relations, economic policies, resources, and how it impacts women.

Recently, every time I post about Afghanistan, the women of Afghanistan, or sudden laws being considered or passed in Islamic countries such as Iraq where amendments to the personal status law could lower marriage age down to nine years old, and other things like how in Indonesia there are a lot of laws going on, and women recently punished in Iran for not wearing a hijab while performing, and we all know about Mahsa Amini, I get horrible comments.

so this is my attempt to clarify a nuanced topic.

We are going to go a bit back in history.

This whole post is not going to be filled with anything mythological.

It is all about making people understand why things are the way they are, influenced by everything that I have studied in anthropology.

I might make a post someday about Hinduism and what anthropology says about it, especially about Hindu female deities, which are always highlighted to claim we are progressive because we have women gods. I am going to make a post someday about that, but we are not going there right now.

I am making this post here about Islam and women.

this is going to be a historical, geographical, and anthropological post. No mythology, no religious inputs, just explaining why things are the way they are.

Over a thousand years ago, parts of current West and Central Asia were influenced by Buddhism, Hinduism, and local polytheism. Iran had Zoroastrianism with its sacred fire traditions, which survives among modern Parsis in India.

When Ashoka ruled in India, he sent emissaries outward, spreading Buddhism through Afghanistan and neighboring regions.

In Afghanistan, Hindu Shahi kings ruled through the tenth and eleventh centuries. We cannot erase that history and say it did not exist, because it did.

Geographically, if we look back at the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding dry belts, there was an extreme scarcity of rain. It was an arid region where pastoralist nomadic tribes relied on hardy livestock suited for harsh temperatures, sparse rain, and dry scrubland.

Because these herds required vast foraging territories, tribes constantly fought over grazing routes and wells.

It is at this point that a leader from a prominent tribe establishes a new religious and political order. Under the emerging tribal coalition, rules were established that consolidated male authority.

Poligyny was formalized, and rules around war captives and concubinage were established.

The rules heavily incentivized the men who were on the front lines fighting.

Over time, legal structures codified male authority.

We need to remember that in pre Islamic Arabia, some women had commercial independence.

The Prophet was himself first employed by and married to Khadija, a wealthy and powerful merchant who supported him early on. Yet as legal codes solidified, property inheritance gave men larger shares than women, and female testimony in financial transactions was valued at half that of a man.

Every time institutional systems expand during periods of consolidation, one of the first things they do is regulate and control women.

Guardship norms and mobility restrictions emerged. Why did these structures take such a hardline form here? Because they arose in a tribal environment characterized by acute resource scarcity, where survival necessitated intense group loyalty, martial discipline, and rigid internal hierarchies.

In geography and human anthropology, living in extreme, resource scarce environments forces populations into survival mode. When outsiders historically traveled to the fertile river plains of the Indian subcontinent, they observed traditions of hospitality like Atithi Devo Bhava.

When a civilization develops in an ecologically abundant geography with fertile soil, reliable monsoons, and perennial rivers, social structures tend toward agrarian stability rather than predatory raiding.

By contrast, pastoral nomadic populations in harsh, resource poor geographies from the Eurasian steppes to the desert belts had to raid and conquer to secure necessities.

When nomadic empires expanded, whether Central Asian tribes or desert coalitions, conquest was driven by the imperative to extract resources from wealthier settled regions.

The social and legal framework that emerged in early Arabia adapted to that martial, tribal reality.

Buddhism could emerge in the fertile Gangetic plains where Siddhartha Gautama, born into royal abundance, had the stability to contemplate existence and preach non violence.

If a thinker were instead born into an unforgiving desert where survival required fighting for every well, the resulting doctrines would inevitably reflect that struggle.

When Christianity consolidated political power in Europe, it similarly suppressed indigenous pagan traditions and female spiritual figures.

Now, moving from ancient history to the modern era, the question arises: if historical societies were violent and patriarchal, why did other regions reform while parts of this region regressed?

The reality is that modernization did begin.

Following the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate and into the mid twentieth century, countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan were modernizing. Urban centers were educating women, building secular universities, adopting modern technology, and questioning old clerical laws.

What went wrong? In the twentieth century, industrialization in the West became dependent on fossil fuels. In the 1930s and subsequent decades, massive oil reserves were discovered across the Middle East.

Western powers prioritized maintaining control over global energy supplies and strategic minerals.

Whenever regional leaders attempted to nationalize their oil reserves or assert economic sovereignty, foreign powers intervened.

Secular, nationalist, and reformist governments were destabilized or overthrown.

To counter secular nationalism and communist influence during the Cold War, external powers directly funded, armed, and empowered conservative clerical factions and militant groups.

Certain Gulf states, enriched by oil and protecting geopolitical interests, also spent billions funding hardline religious institutions worldwide.(ahem Qatar)

When countries are perpetually destabilized, their resources are extracted at lower leverage, and local populations remain trapped in conflict.

When extremist factions take power, the first thing they target is women.

To maintain loyalty among uneducated fighters, hardline groups offer rewards: domestic subjugation of women, child marriage, multiple wives, restrictions on female education, and promises of spiritual rewards in the afterlife.

When generations grow up under constant indoctrination in conflict zones, that becomes their normalized reality. A bird born in a cage does not know how to fly.

Look at countries experiencing what economists call the resource curse across parts of West Asia and Africa.

Whenever public wealth cannot be stabilized and distributed through accountable governance, extremist factions fill the vacuum.

We see geopolitical games across our own borders as well.

The partition of British India was engineered to leave strategic vulnerabilities. Foreign aid, covert operations, and geopolitical financing have long sustained instability in South Asia.

Prolonged security tensions and terrorism impose a severe economic toll on India, draining resources that could otherwise fund development. These proxy dynamics exist because external entities profit from geopolitical leverage.

Looking at domestic issues, whether discussions around foreign funding regulations under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, civil conflicts in border states like Manipur, or resistance to strategic infrastructure like the Great Nicobar development, global geopolitical interests are constantly at play.

The world is not simply black and white. It is not a matter of one religious community being inherently good and another inherently bad. Ordinary people are frequently manipulated by powerful actors operating behind the scenes.

Psychological research on radicalization demonstrates that when entire communities are collectively demonized rather than critically understood, defensive hostility increases, reinforcing radicalization. Constant polarization does not solve the underlying crisis.

We need to look past superficial narratives. Who benefits from perpetual instability?

Who profits when developing nations remain divided, and who gains when women lose their rights? The powerful actors funding these divisions stay protected and wealthy, while ordinary citizens and women pay the price. We need nuance, historical understanding, and critical thinking rather than shallow hatred.

ps:

​I want to point out a few more things in this postscript.

​Some of you might understand that this particular religion prohibits pork and places restrictions on certain foods, and there is a clear ecological and geographical reason for that. Pigs do not thrive in dry, arid regions. If you try to raise pigs in desert climates, they compete directly with humans for scarce water and grain, and they carry parasites like tapeworms if not managed well. Anthropologists have long noted that a pastoral society growing in dry West Asia would naturally find it counterproductive to raise them, leading to religious bans.

​Similarly, the sacred status of the cow in India arose from its immense agricultural utility in the ancient agrarian economy. Cattle provided manure for fertilizer, dairy for nutrition, and bullocks to till the land. Protecting the animal was an economic necessity for long term agrarian survival.

Everything you read historically has an underlying material or ecological reason behind it, and you need to understand that context.

​Even with modern debates, there are often layers people ignore. For instance, when people mock traditional practices, few realize that scientific institutions, including India's CSIR, have historically secured international patents for compounds derived from cattle products due to their bio enhancing properties. (gou mutra)

Everything has a background, whether cultural or ecological.

​I am not defending patriarchal orthodoxies.

The faith has deeply patriarchal and rigid structures that urgently need internal reform in the modern era. But genuine reform must come from within the community itself.

When reformers in India recognized the oppressive aspects of ancient texts like the Manusmriti, leaders publicly burned the text.

When European Christians rejected the rigid authority of the medieval Church, they led the Reformation and established Protestantism, eventually leading to modern progressive denominations.

​Reform happens when the practitioners themselves decide to modernize, critically evaluate their texts, and discard outdated, violent, or discriminatory interpretations.

Outsiders cannot force that transformation from the top down. The people following the faith have to take that initiative.

​We also need to understand that the utopian dream of a single universal religion would never solve human problems.

Even if that happened, ordinary citizens would never gain power. Only the elites at the top would continue to exploit the system.

​Finally, please stop leaving purely hateful comments online.

Every drop of vitriol accumulates into an avalanche that actively fuels alienation and radicalization.

When you attack and demonize people rather than critically discussing systems, you push individuals into defensiveness and extremism.

Help people think critically, understand historical contexts, and realize why violence is destructive, but basic name calling will never solve the problem. Once an avalanche of radicalization starts, reason is lost to anger and grief. Do not push people in that direction.