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Original poster

Mixed sex wards and trans women.

632 replies

sarsleypage · 24/11/2016 17:46

I've opened a new account as the old one was too full of personal bits and someone could've connected the dots.

I am a medical student and we have a diversity lecture coming up, so I had a look at the LGBT slides. A lot of this seems to focus on trans.

I got curious about the requirements for sex-segregated wards, as I know this has been an issue for a while. Women want single-sex wards, both on wards for physical illness and those for mental illness, because they see themselves as vulnerable to abuse from men, especially whilst ill.

Fine. Nobody seems to oppose this, and it's become a requirement in pretty much all hospitals.

And then you see this: uktrans.info/attachments/article/5/trasngender_booklet_low%20res.pdf

"• Trans people should be accommodated according to
their presentation: the way they dress, and the name
and pronouns that they currently use.
• This may not always accord with the physical sex
appearance of the chest or genitalia;
• It does not depend upon their having a gender
recognition certificate (GRC) or legal name change;
• It applies to toilet and bathing facilities (except, for
instance, that pre-operative trans people should not
share open shower facilities); "

There's an example in the leaflet of a young female nurse refusing to wash a trans person because it was against her religion. This is held up as an example of trans discrimination.

I am struggling to square this away with feminism. In fact, I don't think it does square. Women have fought for this segregated space, based on female sexual characteristics (not a preference for make-up, long hair, but XY/vaginas/generally smaller in stature and weaker). But now, apparently, if you decide you feel like a woman, you're entitled to be on a woman's ward when women are at their most vulnerable.

It means if you're sectioned under the mental health act and a trans woman with a penis is on the ward, you have no legal argument to get them removed to make you feel safer.

How is this right?

OP posts:
M0stlyHet · 24/11/2016 18:16

Yes, I'm a bit Hmm about the washing example - a nurse couldn't refuse to wash a male patient because of her own religious beliefs - giving bed baths is part of the job - so would have no grounds for refusing to wash a MTT patient either. That strikes me as the sort of made-up example designed to get the Daily Mail frothers out in force, which doesn't really help people to have a sensible, reasoned discussion of the issues.

lougle · 24/11/2016 18:13

"There's an example in the leaflet of a young female nurse refusing to wash a trans person because it was against her religion. This is held up as an example of trans discrimination."

As a nurse she doesn't have the right to refuse to treat people because of her religion. The only legal right she has (all health professionals have) is limited right to conscientious objection to take part in termination of pregnancy except where that termination is lifesaving, and the absolute right to conscientious objection to taking part in the technological procedures to achieve conception and pregnancy.

There is no right to refuse to care for someone because they have a reproductive organ that doesn't match their chosen pronoun Hmm and she's in the wrong job.

Having said that, there is a requirement for single sex wards and we get fined if we have mixed sex breaches, even in intensive care once the patient is ward ready, even if we simply can't discharge a patient to the ward because they don't have a bed.

However, I have always understood it to be a 'mixed sex breach' not a 'mixed gender breach' so until this thread I'd never considered how a trans individual would fit with that system....I'll try to find out.

fakenamefornow · 24/11/2016 18:10

I don't know, it seems identifying people by preferred gender and not the inarguably biological fact of sex is creating loads more problems than it could ever solve.

Why do people feel they are the opposite sex in the first place? The trans people I've know have all been MtF and they've all been an almost caricature of a women with overly feminine mannerisms, very glam clothes, hair, makeup and nails always done. I don't know any women who dresses or behaves like that. I guess if they didn't dress like this, with loads of makeup they'd just look like men though. I think it's all quite sad really.

Original poster
sarsleypage · 24/11/2016 17:57

"A trans woman, who is a part-time cross dresser, dies in a
road traffic accident while dressed in female role. The police
at the scene establish that none of the documentation on her
reflects the gender in which she was presenting. At the
hospital mortuary, it is decided that as the documents of the
deceased state that they are male, they will be referred to
with male pronouns. This is a sensible assumption to make
as members of her family may not know that she was a cross
dresser. When the wife of the deceased comes to view the
body, all evidence of the gender in which the deceased was
found is removed (for example a wig, make-up, female
clothing). When asked about what happened to the clothes
the deceased was wearing, the wife is told that the clothing
was badly damaged in the incident"

And this - I just don't understand. How is it the job of a HCP to cover up someone's cross-dressing after death?

OP posts:
Original poster
sarsleypage · 24/11/2016 17:50

Another example:

"When I was admitted to hospital to have my hysterectomy
the doctor said I would be put in a side room near the
gynaecology ward. She asked me to shave my beard so I
would not embarrass female patients.

On arrival I was given a side room but in the main
women’s’ ward. Nurses would not care for me after my
operation and left me haemorrhaging. When I tried to
leave my room to get help I was corralled in my room alone
and unaided.

I felt stripped of my dignity and humanity by such
insensitive and unprofessional treatment"

What about their dignity? Why has identity politics reduced any argument over rights to who has the rarest characteristic?

OP posts:
WellErrr · 24/11/2016 17:48

Well, it's not.

Original poster
sarsleypage · 24/11/2016 17:47

*XX/XY

OP posts:
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