Mixed sex wards and trans women.

Sex segregated areas should always mean sex segregated. However, it becomes a bit of a grey area post-surgery and I do think private rooms should be used when they are available. This matter, as with many others is a bit of a crossover with trans-rights and womens-rights.

The case of the hysterectomy care sounds horrendous, and a transman is still a woman. I find it disgusting the bad care that person received however I cannot immediately say it was because the patient was trans, having suffered horrendous medical treatment myself before that was (really) a case of cuts and not enough staff or funds.

Actually, I think Pink is totally wrong to think that feminism needs to be nicer and gentler. The US has just elected a president who has stated that he wants to roll back Roe versus Wade - Handmaid's Tale, anyone?

And in fact, one of the messages of the Handmaid's Tale is hidden in the retrospective parts, where the narrator is remembering life just before the theocracy came to power. She remembers that while she was busy laughing at her (implicitly second wave) old fashioned angry feminist mother, a government was creeping into place which was about to take away all the rights her mother won for her - and if only she'd paid some bloody attention, they might not have got themselves into a position of power "under the radar" and been in a position to do so. What seemed like dystopian fiction first time I read Atwood now feels like prophecy.

All this time third wave feminists have been worrying about microaggressions and misgendering and pole dancing being empowerfulising - and they haven't sodding noticed how precarious their reproductive rights are - they've now got, what, till mid January to get a mirena coil fitted before they have 4, probably 8 years of Trump, at the end of which there will be hardly any states in the US in which it's legally possible to get an abortion. Angry feminism seems to me to be needed more than ever right now. (I know professional women same age as me, in their fifties, in the states, who are busy dredging their memories for how to handle police aggression from demos back in the 1970s and 1980s because they're heading to the women's march in Washington on Inauguration Day, and they don't know how it's going to pan out, but they're readying themselves for the worst).

"how good for you. Want a medal? Yes, I am, because it's time for you to step aside. Your time has gone, your idea of feminism is dead."

Gods help us if Pink's brand of "feminism", complete with the rudeness, condescension to women, and fucking astonishing ignorance is the shape of things to come.

I want females to be treated the same as males in a hospital. That should be the benchmark. When that happens, then we can have a discussion about what to do with trans patients. As a female, I do not want my recovery trampled on because trans/male. As a female you really are at the back of the queue, metaphorically and literally.

Also there was a young female 20 years old who came onto the ward as I escaped, was discharged . She was not allowed to use her laptop, though I'd seen men using them. It was the first thing that was said to her. She had been in and out of hospital since she was 10.

There is no such thing as a male urology ward. It is mixed now. Obviously women are put in a separate bay. The men are given their pain medication first. I was last in a mixed urology ward (Kidney trouble), in 2009, not so long ago. I could write a thesis on the attitudes towards the male and female patients. There were no trans patients on the ward as far as I was aware. The only patients who kicked off were the males. We females had to have lights out at ten and laughing and talking was forbidden (we were too loud and the other patients, male, found it disruptive). They were, however, allowed to watch Match of the Day.

I've no interest in what Pink has to say, to be brutally honest, as it seems that Pink just wants to disrupt rather than contribute. This isn't an echo chamber, rather a forum for discussion and solutions.

[accidentally poisted this on another thread, not spamming!]

What I dont understand is this...
I have mental health issues, very clearly and obviously caused by life experiences. I am treated like scum and have been labelled in damning ways and treated like a nuisance and a waste of time (and if I do end up committing suicide it will be this discrimination and judgement that's done it, not the original problem!). Quite obvious, rational things are treated like bonkers delusions on my part. I am treated like an idiot.

Why then, do people with the mental health issues of thinking they are a woman/man despite demonstrably not being so, have their delusions pandered to so extremely?

Why is the NHS bending over backwards to accommodate them whilst other extremely vulnerable people are left without any treatment or support? We have to put up with positive thinking wellbeing shite rather than proper therapy - the equivalent of that for trans people is surely someone saying "you've got a cock, you're a bloke. Next!" (Am quite tempted to pretend to be trans to see how quickly/what type/level of services I get.)

Is there an equivalent slide for mental health? Women? - being refused adequate pain relief due to being female... etc.

And why does it matter if I am actually a woman or not, if I were a 50 year old redneck would that make my words any less?

You would have no right to comment on what is to be a female.

I didn't like Hermione's "castration" comment but Pink's "kitty comment" was unnecessarily rude and very patronising.

Well it was meant to be. Because I found her comment rather rude and people like Hermione are the reason you cannot be a feminist without being dismissed. Every time you argue with people they just say "but...(insert random stupid thing a (radical, for lack of a better word) feminist has said) so what are you on about".

And why does it matter if I am actually a woman or not, if I were a 50 year old redneck would that make my words any less?

Mortificado: "I hadn't been inconvenienced by being the only girl in my A level maths and physics sets and one of two in double maths ...it hadn't occurred to me to think why."

That's something we (the women scientists and mathematians in my workplace) quite often talk about. If you compare and contrast us with our male colleagues, there's a lot wider range of personality types, including more shy and retiring types, among our male colleagues - because only the bolshy, bloody-minded women survive the negative attitudes towards women doing science. We were wondering what scientific workplaces would look like if the gendered expectations at a much earlier age weren't there. (And they kick in incredibly early - I picked my son up from a science and maths enrichment course at the local university recently - this would be year 3 - and out of about 60 kids, only 10 or so were girls. Were the schools screening them out? Were the parents of girls not returning the consent slips? What the hell was going on? I happened to arrive to do pick up with a couple of female friends of mine, one a colleague, the other a SAHM, all three of us with maths or physics PhDs, and we just watched this seemingly endless stream of boys with the very occasional girl in there with absolute horror.)

(Funnily enough, last time I used the word "bolshy" someone accused me of using a gendered slur because they'd only heard it attached to women - I always think of it in its primary meaning of a contraction of Bolshevik, as in the sort of annoying political activist one encounters in student unions and trade union meetings, and would never have thought of it as gendered - but the other person obviously did think of it as gendered. Which is a bit of a digression, but just shows how weirdly open to misinterpretation of one's interlocutor's views and intentions internet discussions are.)

That makes sense, thanks ego

(I meant to say, I wasn't asking to be nosy, just that it is probably the most obvious example where being trans is completely relevant to where a patient is placed in hospital)

Bloody hell, kua that's a very disturbing story. This person clearly has no recognition or respect for women's boundaries. I think it would be completely and utterly unacceptable for someone like that to be placed on a women's ward, with women who are already very vulnerable and struggling with their own MH issues.

I really hope the women in whichever psychiatric unit it was were not thrown under the bus this time.

do you mind me asking which ward you were placed on for recovery following your recent bottom surgery

It was done in a private hospital (who do NHS surgery) - so again, my own room, TV etc. I don't think I could cope with being in a bay - all my operations I've had have been with private rooms (a long time ago, I worked for the NHS and had an operation in a place I worked. I knew the ward staff. They gave me a private room as well)

Do private hospitals only have private rooms? I just don't get why anyone would find a private room problematic, I'd be bloody thrilled to get one and it seems the logical solution in one way....in other ways I'd think private rooms on the NHS would be allocated in terms of the patient needs for quiet? So if a more ill person misses out on a private room because it's allocated to someone who refuses to be in a ward based on physical sex, that would be unfair?

Agreed MortificadosDragon

Lass - I think segregation by sex should be the starting point, but all other things being equal (such as no aggressive behaviour, no other patients such as the woman with psychosis who believed all men were trying to hurt her, and other relatively rare complications) I think that there can be commonsense decisions that make sense for all parties. Recovery from something like a tonsilectomy is different from recovery from something sex-related like a hysterectomy.

ego - do you mind me asking which ward you were placed on for recovery following your recent bottom surgery?

I would be pretty sure pink is who she says she is - so many of us seem to have recognised our own former selves, some combination of naivety and the arrogance of youth. Probably doesn't come across in a post but I mean that kindly, remembering back.

Back to the topic. I believe that medicine treats the body and as such wards should be separated by sex. I also include primary care in my view eg care of the elderly and mental health hospitals.

It has too really- from the point of view of expertise. I'm sure in an emergency the doctors and nurses on the male urology ward and those on the female gynae ward could turn themselves to anything but on a day to day basis probably better to have a nurse who is experienced in, and/ or being specifically trained in, inserting cold steel objects in the correct orifice doing the inserting.

Lass I know, I just wondered if trump card was a Freudian slip!

Oh sorry , got you. Sorry, I was being unnecessarily prickly.

Just think "Trump card" probably will have a completly different meaning to the next generation.


m.hulldailymail.co.uk/transgender-woman-banned-hull-sainsbury-s-store/story-15599308-detail/story.html

Take the case above for example. This transgender woman has been sectioned. I don't know where to or if to a women's wing.

Anyhoo...

Back to the topic. I believe that medicine treats the body and as such wards should be separated by sex. I also include primary care in my view eg care of the elderly and mental health hospitals.

Lass I know, I just wondered if trump card was a Freudian slip!

But Lorelei, the "you are a man" line gets trotted out with a flourish as if that is the decisive point that will win the argument, except it is frequently wrong. As in the one I referred to on another thread today where a victim of male abuse was told she was a man.

I didn't like Hermione's "castration" comment but Pink's "kitty comment" was unnecessarily rude and very patronising.

it is indeed Lorelei

Lol at trump card
Women with MRA views is how we ended up at Trump surely?!