I am Janice Turner's No 1 fan - another excellent article

Women are being erased. From public life, from statistics, crime reports and news.

Also, yes, I too am assuming the first female marine announced today is MtT until it is clarified.

Which sucks whichever way round it actually is. The piece I read had a link about female US marines being filmed naked without their knowledge ... my assumption is they're not MtT.

On the whole GP/medical records/single sex wards/GMC advice topic:
All the GPs I know (and that's a fair few) were astonished by, and remain very uncomfortable with, the suggestion (and that was what it was, not a directive) that GPs should consider prescribing hormonal treatments to patients while they are waiting to be seen by GID clinics. We are well aware of what our competencies and are more used to the GMC reminding us to stay within them or face their wrath if things go wrong. The advice appeared to be in direct conflict with their document "Good Medical Practice" which is generally held to be sacrosanct (by them). It has led many of us to wonder what the motivation behind this has been.
Helen Webberley is currently under investigation. Based on this and the information available from the CQC and GMC I don't think there are many GPs who will want to model their practice on hers and she is not seen as some sort of trailblazer or the epitome of gold standard care because we are all well aware of what happens when we work outside of what accepted medical care is (aside from all the other difficulties relating to prescribing hormones in these cases).
CCGs are not responsible for medical records and health authorities no longer exist. Individual GPs can of course edit the medical records they hold in their practice. For example if I see a patient and record an entry in their notes and then 5 minutes later remember I wanted to add an additional detail I can do that. I can also delete the details of an entry. However, events entered into the notes are still coded and cannot just be removed. There is an audit trail for all of this and while it is fine for me to edit someone's notes to add in a blood pressure recording for example, widespread editing or deleting records is another matter entirely and usually results in a chat with the GMC.
Hospitals are fined heavily for having mixed sex wards. Through my training I worked in 10 different hospitals and never came across a mixed ward save for ITU, and even there beds were allocated to male and female. Patients often end up being shunted around, sometimes in the middle of the night, to accommodate other patients to the right sex bed.
Sorry, long post but I hope it's helpful.

Are trans people allowed in the US military? I thought Trump banned them? Or did he change whatever passes for his mind on this matter?

Also, yes, I too am assuming the first female marine announced today is MtT until it is clarified.

"who then suddenly announce, when they have reached their prime, that actually they are women".

I did hear on the radio a couple of months ago that there was a bit of a concern that there could be a growing number of men who transition very late and then claim retirement and pensions earlier than expected. I wonder if this could provide a motivation, in some instances.

I googled Lauren jeska when I heard about the crime a woman was supposed to have committed. That was the first time I thought hold on a minute

Me three bad and Jiggly. I thought now I'm going to have google the perpetrator and see if there's a picture to see if it is a boy/girl (as I heard it on the radio too).

Me too @badbadhusky. Our language now does not mean what we think it means. I shouldn't have to find a photograph of a criminal to try and figure out if they are a woman or a man who says he is a woman. I remember the first time that happened was Clare Derbyshire, way before I'd hit peak trans.

I was so horrified by the oddness of the crime that I looked it up online (I normally only listen to the radio). That was when I realised we'd sleepwalked into an Orwellian world of doublespeak

I thought that too about the US marine. What a load of absolute cobblers this all is.

BBC is reporting today that the US Marines has commissioned its first female officer...

I found myself wondering if it was a real woman - or just a MTF as was the case with the fairly recent announcement by the British army about a 'female' first.

I found myself doing the same listening to the evening news of the stabbing by a 16yo girl in Lincolnshire.

Our language was perfectly clear until this all started. Why can't MTF be "transwomen" and FTM "transmen" in the media, medical and crime statistics, E&D reporting? On that latter point, how are we to assess the success or otherwise of legal and other interventions to support trans individuals against discrimination if we can no longer identify the affected population to determine outcomes? It's stupidity on a really basic level.

The ones who really boil my piss are the late transitioners who have lapped up male privilege their entire lives in the public and personal spheres (including having wives who have often cooked, cleaned and cared for them to the detriment of their own careers, as well as borne them children) and who then suddenly announce, when they have reached their prime, that actually they are women. FTS.

My main concern with the whole business is: what safeguards are in place to prevent this Act being exploited by abusive cismen? If a predatory cismen invades, say, women's toilets/changing rooms/medical facilities, he is a potential danger to transwomen as well as ciswomen (don't forget, cismen often violently assault transwomen if they think, or want to claim, that the transwomen 'decieved' them).
Also, what of companies who are criticised for having an all-male management team? How soon before they are cheerfully deflecting criticism of those all-male Board pictures by stating that two of the suited, bearded men actually identify as female so they are promoting 'women'?

I also wonder how it would work if a whole load of ciswomen in male-dominated, sexist workplaces decided to identify as male and demand equal pay. I bet they've thought of ways round that loophole...

The person involved wishes to remain anonymous.

You don't know if it is a woman or a someone who is now a woman and could have been in the marines as a man anyway.

Utterly meaningless press release, unless they have another purpose in mind.

Almost certainly a MTF as the reason to employ them is to gain access to women's only spaces. They are good at that.

BBC is reporting today that the US Marines has commissioned its first female officer
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41394646

I found myself wondering if it was a real woman - or just a MTF as was the case with the fairly recent announcement by the British army about a 'female' first.

What a destruction of trust when you can't be sure whether a female first/winner is a real woman or not.

If getting a GRC becomes as easy as changing your name (ie. a paperwork exercise) then the whole concept of sex in law becomes pointless.

Stats collected become meaningless - if anyone can be a man or a woman because they filled in a form, then it's as irrelevant as your name.

Of course discrimination will still exist, in person, it'll be obvious for the vast majority of people which ones are male and which are female so bad bosses will know who to hire to avoid those pesky pregnancies, but no-one will be able to articulate that - the words will have been taken away.

StrangeAdventure
Women are not ok with this. We've been campaigning for single sex hospital wards and DV shelters for years.

At the moment, women can challenge men who are in womens spaces, and after self ID is introduced we cant. We could be sued.
GRC give men the legal right to be in womens spaces.

Do the decent thing, and campaign for a third gender neutral space. We can all support that.

@SeaRabbit - a Women's Place are on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/Womans-Place-UK-494295627591295/

and on twitter here: @WomansPlaceUK

They're doing great work about the importance of protecting and strengthening single-sex services and spaces.

Please everyone go give them a 'like' and a RT

It is all presented within a framework of 'the law' and very clear directions that unless you 'follow' the line, adhere to these beliefs, you are not only wrong, but transphobic and likely to be guilty of hate crimes.

It is not educational training - it is indoctrination - and the NHS and the Dfe are supporting and funding this. Most trainers would be ashamed to produce material this biased.

This is why things have changed so quickly because a small group of political activists have been enabled to spread their message so widely authorised by the state. And no one realises this is happening so there's no challenge.

I think there is a problem that the government has made cuts in the civil service and now use charities and voluntary organisations to do what they did. It all sounded very positive (and cheap). The trouble is these organisations have their own reasons for existing and their own aims and goals and they are not necessarily coming from a place of even handed common sense. They are presented as the 'experts in the field' when in reality they come into existence because someone wants something changed with good cause (eg friend dies of a particular cancer and they wish to make a particular test available) and that is why they are funded. (Then they get too much say and the message becomes 'you have to have that test whether it is good for you or not because x died and all those other people, and you don't want that happening to you, do you?)

Isn't our actual DNA male or female? Noone can change their DNA can they? The whole thing is mind boggling.

Strange I think that you have misunderstood the significance of a GRC. As I understand it, a GRC allows a male person to be legally identified as female. It has huge implications for the treatment of that person in law.

A GRC gives trans women legal entitlement to women's spaces (e.g. prisons, sports, girls' schools and women's colleges), jobs that currently require female staff (certain care roles, crisis centres) and protections (grants, awards, positive discrimination initiatives, separate sex wards etc etc). It's a far wider issue than toilets.

There should be some gatekeeping here.

Also we do have to declare our sex to the NHS. For most of us this is done by our parents at birth when we receive an NHS number. This is why women receive invitations to breast screenings and not men.

SuburbanRhonda
Thos GIREs materials are shocking aren't they?
As an experienced trainer I am horrified at the deliberate manipulation of the target audience using a mix of facts, opinion, subjective views dressed up as facts and downright lies. Unfortunately it is all mixed in with perfectly legitimate and positive information and anti bullying approaches. This means that, unless you unpick this line by line, very few in a target audience will be able to challenge it.

It is all presented within a framework of 'the law' and very clear directions that unless you 'follow' the line, adhere to these beliefs, you are not only wrong, but transphobic and likely to be guilty of hate crimes.

It is not educational training - it is indoctrination - and the NHS and the Dfe are supporting and funding this. Most trainers would be ashamed to produce material this biased.

This is why things have changed so quickly because a small group of political activists have been enabled to spread their message so widely authorised by the state. And no one realises this is happening so there's no challenge.

Strange you are missing the point. Although you do not have to produce a GRC to get into a toilet presently, the use of self-certification would effectively mean that no woman could object to the presence of a man in a rape crisis centre or doing her smear test without a woman chaperone or in a prison. They would have the same right of access as me.

If I saw a man using the changing rooms at work that were for women I would complain to building services. I would expect them to follow up on my complaint. In the new world they wouldn't be able to as they would be forced to view this particular man as a woman if he said he was. And since you can't discriminate between women and men who say they are women, there go my rights.