I am Biased…and so are You

I recently read a very intriguing riddle. It was thoughtfully posed by the author Rebeca Ansar in her post entitled, “Here’s a Riddle that Might Expose Your Blind Spot.” It’s a great riddle because Ms. Ansar is precisely correct. The riddle might expose your blind spot. But why are you blind?… Ahhh…that’s the rub. Others might judge you wrongly because of their inability to see.

First, you must read Ms. Ansar’s riddle before digesting my analysis below. In examining my response, I realized the need for a new article. I could not confine my thoughts to a simple reply.

Here’s the riddle:

“A father and his son sit inside a restaurant, finishing up their meal. They look out to see the beginnings of a big storm. Before they’re able to pay and leave, the storm is in full motion. They decide to brave the weather and try to get home.

The storm is blinding. It’s difficult to see anything past the torrential pour on the road. They decide its best to pull over. Just before they’re able to, they crash. Both of them are in terrible condition.

Due to the weather, hospitals in the area are overwhelmed by incoming patients. Upon finding the pair, paramedics decide that the father will be taken to a closer hospital, as his injuries are much more severe, and the son will be transported to another hospital with resources. That hospital is twenty miles away.

The son is prepped for emergency surgery when he is brought to the hospital. The doctor slated to perform the surgery lays eyes on the young man and says, “I can’t operate on him. He is my son.

Who is the doctor?”

The author answered that the surgeon was the son’s mother. Ms. Ansar presumes that if the reader fails to respond “mother,” the reader has a bias against women as surgeons.

I am a surgeon. I have four sons (and two daughters.) On reading the riddle, I thought the surgeon was the gay father of the injured son. I had little doubt. I didn’t consider that the surgeon could be the son’s mother. But according to Ms. Ansar, the answer to the riddle is “straightforward.” The son’s surgeon was a woman.

At first, I was embarrassed by what appeared to be a personal prejudice. Was I part of the problem of bias against women? So, I examined my brain to figure out my blind spot. As a surgeon, did I possess the horrifying subconscious bias that only males were surgeons? After all, my colleagues include fabulous female surgeons…surgeons who are better surgeons than I. Could I be so biased as to discount their prowess? Horrors! But, no…wait. That wasn’t it. The answer was more complicated:

Remember. I have four sons, and I am a surgeon. When I read the riddle, I imagined it was my bleeding son lying under my knife.

I have faced this very gut-wrenching scenario. One afternoon, as I dissected cancer from someone’s face, I was interrupted by a call from an Emergency Room two hours away. My son had been in an accident. He needed surgery. I was the most qualified surgeon. What should they do?

A wildfire suddenly raged in my head. Discipline had to overcome emotion. I had to finish the surgery before me. I had to do it well. I held the future of a patient in my hands. There was no choice, no way out. (By the way, it’s tough to do surgery on someone when your son lies injured and bleeding.)

Thirty-three years before this moment, on my 30th birthday, I watched another son, aged three. He was playing aboard the Coast Guard tall ship, the USCGC Eagle. Then he fell. I was frozen. I watched him fall, head-first, off the top deck onto a lower deck. I watched him bounce when he hit. At that moment, all my medical training disappeared. All my judgment caved to a father’s love and fear. I flew down the ship’s ladder. I scooped up my son. I did everything wrong.

Fast forward 33 years. I finished the cancer surgery. I drove the agonizing two-hour gauntlet of rush hour traffic. Now I stood in the O.R. Another son lay before me. I questioned my judgment, knew my head had to be clouded. I was technically the most qualified surgeon to reconstruct his face. But at that moment, was I the most competent? Who else would I trust? Would I forgive myself if the surgery weren’t done well by someone else? Or, would I forgive myself if I did it poorly? Any adverse outcome and my son and I would have to live with his deformity for the rest of his life…or my life…or both.

There’s a tiny window of calm just at the second before an operation starts. An instantaneous sense of clarity washes over the surgeon. And in that fraction of a moment, the surgeon mentally performs the entire procedure. And not just one procedure. Every permutation and alternative and consequence of misstep plays out in the surgeon’s mind.

I was in the eye of the storm. I was calm. I was clear.

My bleeding son lay before me; his face filleted open like a salmon. He was awake. I saw the trust in his eyes. I pulled out my scalpel. I was about to inflict pain. I was about to change both our lives forever, in one way or another. Our mutual destinies were in my hands, and the consequences were on my shoulders.

All of this was the image that I saw when I read Ms. Ansar’s riddle. What I saw was I, a male, a father, standing there as the surgeon. I saw my son lying there as the patient…putting his total faith in every movement of my hands.

Then, as I read the riddle, I saw another image. It was a replay of one of the bravest moments I have ever witnessed. It was the moment two years before, when one of my other sons, at age 14, told me something I had always known. I had known it intuitively since he was two months old…he is gay. As he summoned his courage, I knew the words he desperately searched to say. I reached inside myself to extract all my best abilities of empathy and love, abilities borne over years of caring for others as a surgeon. Now it was I who was outed as the father of a gay son, whom I love.

And I was so proud.

So, in the riddle, I did not see a female surgeon, but not because I am biased against women’s ability to be great surgeons. It was because life itself has biased my vision. When the riddle’s surgeon said, “This is my son,” I saw myself, a loving father and a tested surgeon standing over his child…And in answer to the riddle, I reconciled my male self, standing there saving my son’s life by imagining myself gay with my spouse in another hospital.

It wasn’t my bias against women that evoked my ‘male’ answer to the riddle. It was life. It was the love of my sons. It was the bias forged in my trials by fire, not by misogynistic prejudice.

There are good reasons to picture the surgeon as a male, reasons which may not automatically default to bias against women.

The writer states, “The answer is straightforward.” But the answer is only “straightforward” if you have not, or cannot, put yourself in the shoes of another…in my shoes. The answer is only “straightforward” if you presume your biases are the only views that work. In this case, the author’s “straightforward” bias is that the surgeon must be female. And voila! The riddle’s surprising one-and-only answer ‘female’ exposes the reader’s blindness.

No. It doesn’t.

There are many sides to every story. Only by our thinking broadly and empathetically, only by questioning our motivations and biases and fears can we see the world as others see it. In the process, we become less harsh and more accepting of our differences.

Just because we think one way doesn’t automatically make us biased against another view. Just because we believe “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t imply and shouldn’t suggest to another that we think “White Lives Don’t Matter.” Just because we choose to stand or kneel during the National Anthem doesn’t imply and shouldn’t suggest to another that we disrespect or defy the view of one who kneels or stands, respectively.

Others cannot know why we do what we do. Sometimes we don’t fully know ourselves. But we shouldn’t project our own biases onto the motivations of others.

In short, we need to stop being so ego-centric if our crowded world is to evolve into a better place to live.