Mixed sex wards and trans women.

Whenever I had a gynae procedure, (unrelated to childbirth), the entire ordeal was made easier by the fact that the gynaecologist was a woman and the two nurses were women.

I would have felt uncomfortable if the nurses had been male (sorry, but it's true), but I would have felt 10 times worse if it had been a transwoman. Partly because I have no idea if they have AGP and partly because them claiming womanhood, whilst I am in a position which ONLY a woman would ever be in would make the context impossible to deal with. It's just a mind fuck.

As babies said, it's not how a person looks that's the problem.

I've been in hospital in a couple of countries while having my kids. My son has been in hospital in the UK. I was actually checked more often in my private room than on my ward bed in the UK - plus I was wheeled straight to the ward after my CS in the UK, but kept in recovery for 45 minutes (Similar to Cote - until I could wiggle my toes) when I was going into a private room.

On the other hand, I also see where Lougle's coming from, because my son was in a side ward (2 beds, but right by the nurses station and with windows) while he was serious, and then moved out to the general kids ward when not - and I noticed that both the cleaners, and the people serving food, and the nurses all kept an eye on people on the ward and heard them mention concerns more than once, so I can also see that it's helpful to have people out in the open. In fact, in the UK, when I was ready to be discharged they parked me in a side room on the maternity ward and promptly forgot me until I picked up my baby and just went to leave!

And all of this still makes no difference to the fact that women want women's wards, and that's fine.

Good post, Vincent

I'm tired of this crap too

violent and sexual crime

As Laith-Asheley will have no working penis and the same low levels of violent and sexual, as any other biological woman, sharing a ward with Laith-Asheley would be fine.

As it seems that all women are going to be upset by men in the wards, in one form or another, I vote to keep trans men in with us. As it is much safer to share with women who think they are men, than men who think they are women.

Same goes for bathrooms and changing rooms. I vote to keep trans men in with us and our bathrooms penis free.

Ok Cote, I'm not suggesting it can't happen. I'm just saying that in my experience, having worked in hospitals since the late 1990s, the reality is that a lot of patient deterioration is spotted by people noticing that 'the bloke in the corner looks a bit off' and asking someone to help. In many cases it will be the cleaner, quite happily mopping the floor, suddenly noticing that the patient in that chair/bed looks very unwell and telling a nurse/care assistant, who may well have been stuck behind some curtains for 20 minutes helping someone with a wash.

Can and does, Cote, but only with proper staffing levels and nothing else coming up to get in the way of proper monitoring. Eg I would put good money on the example quoted way upthread of a massive post-operative hemorrhage being due to overstretched staff rather than nasty transphobes refusing to provide proper care

I've had two operations and a CS, all of which was managed without a single second in a ward with multiple other people. I was kept for observation for a while after each operation (~ 30 minutes, or until I could move my feet after the CS) but then was moved to my room.

All of your stories of nurses coming by and checking on you in a ward can and does happen when you are in a room of your own.

I've got adverts for Pottery Barn at the top of my page (though I am in the US)...

I know that using individuals to illustrate an issue can be problematic, and that most transmen don't look like this, but would most women be happy to have
Laith Ashley De La Cruz on their gynae ward? (I'm not disputing that that might be the best place for him for clinical reasons, as well as reasons of sex, by the way)

"I'm not talking about intensive care, where things would surely be different."

We're lucky in ITU. We have remote telemonitoring, so we can see the physiological monitoring of every patient of the unit from two monitoring hubs on either side of the unit. We have invasive, moment by moment blood pressure monitoring. We have continuous ECG monitoring.

On the wards they have.....nothing. 3 or 4 portable blood pressure machines and oxygen saturation probes between 28 patients.

Their skill in observing the general condition of their patients - which patient was chatty earlier and is now just slumped in the chair, etc, is what saves lives and they can't do that easily if they're all in private rooms.

Well just as an example: A busy surgical ward. A patient has been back from theatre for a couple of hours so has now been moved to hourly observations. They are drowsy (who wouldn't be, they've just had surgery) and in a side room, that might mean someone doing obs at 10 am and obs at 11 am, but the ward is busy so they don't get seen in between unless they buzz. Then they'll be moved on to 2 hourly obs. So they'll be seen at 12pm and 2 pm.

That vessel that was nicked has been slowly leaking. The space it is leaking into is large, so no pain is felt. The body compensates remarkably well for some time, so no major change in obs is seen. But when they decompensate, it will happen quite quickly.

Same patient, but they're in a bay. The ward us just as busy. The obs are exactly the same. But the patient next to him, or across the bay, returned from theatre at a slightly different time, so someone is doing their obs in between the first patient's obs. As they pass, they notice that the first patient looks a bit clammy, a bit pale, is breathing a bit rapidly....enough that they decide to bring that 2 hourly set of obs forward. The patient is going into shock and needs urgent treatment.

That's the reality of nursing. People pass by the bedside and think 'that's not right....'. It's happened to me in ITU. A super experienced nurse walked past my bedspace, paused, and said 'you've got a cuff-leak, I can hear it'. A big problem, very quickly and easily fixed, but she would not have heard it had I been in the side room because she wouldn't have come in to the room.

That's just two examples.

I just dont understand why so many people are full of sympathy for men who choose to call themselves women. So what if they get (mis)gendered or people think they are freaky or they are laughed at? Some people think im a slob because I dont follow a feminine beauty routine, my lack of bother about 'personal care' to prettify myself is actually seen as a symptom of mental illness, and it very definitely causes problems for me in everyday life because people percieve me, an unfeminine woman, as freaky and unstable because of my non-conformity. I dont want sympathy for that, I want an end to gender stereotyping and female subordination! I fight it by being myself and hoping that people learn from their relationships and encounters with me that there are alternative ways of living as a female than the culturally 'acceptable' ones. I hope girls see me and think, oh its ok to have really short hair and be female, its okay to be a geeky female, its okay to be female and live in trousers and t shirts and not own a skirt or ever wear make up or shave your legs or whatever.

Germaine Greer said something along the lines of - so what if people laugh at them or call them names, people do that to women all the time and noone gives a shit. Im with her, So What?! Some guys feelings are hurt because I consider his surgically created cavity a symbol of his misogynist fetish and an insult to all women. My feelings are hurt at his insistence that creating a cavity in his body makes him a woman! My rights are hurt by my governments legal validation of his feelings and his surgical insult. My humanity is hurt by the idea that a woman can be created by making a hole in a man. Or even crazier, that a woman is something that only men get to define, because there are millions of women around the world who believe that a woman is a female human and that no man can become a woman, and we are told repeatedly that we are all transphobes who dont get to define "woman". Its all bullshit and im sick of being told to suck it all up, swallow and smile.

I don't know what staffing is like in the UK, but I doubt if it's much different. You are in a room, people come and check on you, there is a button to press if you need help.

What else do you think it needed regarding monitoring? How does it help to be in a large room with other patients?

I'm not talking about intensive care, where things would surely be different.

Are the staffing levels higher? TBH it seems to me that, as you say cote, wards aren't necessarily the norm nowadays elsewhere (I bet Jenner has never and would never be treated anywhere other than a private room, whatever gender at the time!) so this may be a situation which resolves itself in time.

Anybody else getting ads for Vagasil Prohydrate at the top of this thread now

Nope. I'm getting Dodderhill School, wherever the fuck that is. Nowhere local to me.

If MTT need their privacy and dignity protecting, I don't see why they can't take up side rooms in the men's wards rather than taking up side rooms in the women's wards.

Also, I'm getting more angrier about this whole fucking charade by the day.

"disadvantages of separate rooms from a clinical pov could be to a large extent overcome by remote monitoring technologies"

I wonder if you are all aware that in many other countries, there is no such thing as "wards" and everyone does have rooms for 1 or 2 patients.

I have only ever stayed in private rooms in two different countries, and not because I paid more.

There didn't seem to be any problem with monitoring.

Just come back, and wanted to ask lougle or anyone else knowledgeable, whether in the future the disadvantages of separate rooms from a clinical pov could be to a large extent overcome by remote monitoring technologies. I would have thought that there were distinct benefits to the patient simply because of more peace and quiet leading to better sleep.

I dont agree that there should be special rules for some males on the basis that they have supported the gender system for longer than some others. Access to women's space shouldnt be given based on time served living as a sexist imitation of a woman. I dont even think that we should make special allowances into women's space for men who were 'transitioned' as boys. Males need to be able to access male-only space safely and if other males are getting in the way of that then thats the problem that needs dealing with. Females need to be able to access female-only space safely and the only way to do that is to keep males out of it, regardless of their costume choices, cosmetic surgeries, beliefs, age, muscle mass, personal hi scores, shoe size, colour preferences, favourite biscuits, or whatever excuse they try to find for why they are 'different to other men'.

Drudge I have New Look!

OlennasWimple

It's not that I don't agree with you. It's that grading transpeople, on their authenticity or otherwise is impossible. And those who are sexually motivated, will have far more of a reason to present as authentic than anyone else.

It's simply unworkable.

If the transactivists hadn't been so insistent in their (hidden) agenda, none of this would have happened. Your hypothetical 80-year-old transwoman would have just carried on as normal.

You have to ask yourself why? Why the insistence.

Ironically, insisting on recording crimes under the victim's preferred gender means - I suspect - that there isn't clear data on sexual assaults on MTTs... Another reason why it helps no one to pretend that MTT are women and FTT are men

To be clear, I didn't make my hypothetical patient 80 years old because I think all old people are benign extras from a Werthers Originals advert. My point was more that for someone who had done so much more than self-identify as a woman to the extent that fifty years ago they underwent extensive surgery and had spent the years since presenting as a woman, I don't think that we can just turn around say, nope, sorry, still not good enough, the men's ward is over there.

Perhaps in the future we will have trans wards, or some other kind of third space, but maybe not and some form of compromise on all sides is required. It becomes too easy to dismiss us as nasty TERFy transphobes otherwise, and I personally think that our real battle is with those who would try to define what a woman is by feelz and "expanding the bandwidth". I know many on here will disagree with this approach , but I am indeed very much still Spartacus anyway

I agree Choc. It seems harsh to say so but we are constantly fed this notion that MTTs are at risk of being raped by men and therefore women have to fix this problem. The evidence simply does not support this. I have seen many more reports of women being sexually assaulted and raped by MTTs than of MTTs being sexually assaulted or raped by men.

Choc - maybe that's because the number of identified transwomen is currently small

No, I mean that I think that men wouldn't find appealing the idea of raping a male who looked like a woman on a hospital ward.

I think that the men that rape women on hospital wards are predators, or opportunistic predators, and the number of males who want to prey on transwomen either opportunistically, or by checking themselves in to mixed wards on the off chance there is a transwoman there are vanishingly small.

In contrast to the number of men who want to prey on women, or who would opportunistically prey on women, given a ward full of them and guaranteed, through the night, access, especially given it's a self-selecting group that has a large number of autogynephiles, especially among the more older males.

Anybody else getting ads for Vagasil Prohydrate at the top of this thread now