NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde withdraws trans advice for female-only wards - Times Scotland

I meant, 150 comments on the Times article:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6cf9add4-4891-11eb-9dbc-44d114c9d92d?shareToken=6281a2d28333a5b52bf5586ef503527d

I'd expect comments on Mumsnet FWR to support women!

150 comments, and all I’ve read so far are supporting women.

TheShadowyFeminist - good post!

I wonder how many MtF people really do “pass”, to the extent that anyone meeting them for the first time post-transition would not have a clue?

It’s fine when people are open about it, so everyone knows the score, but it’s really uncomfortable when someone seems to think that if they don’t mention it then no one will know. It’s like being in the presence of a really bad con artist - not because they are trans but because they don’t acknowledge it.

I was on a job interview panel when one of the applicants was, on paper, female but honestly looked like Les Dawson’s “gossipy wife” character with manly voice to match. Possibly a pleasant enough person but way more anxious than justifiable even for a job interview.

The job was a new post with a well-established all-female team. The best candidate was male and was appointed, although the panel all had reservations about the impact on team dynamics and practical arrangements in the workplace. As we were not supposed to know about the “trans status” of the other candidate mentioned, ie. their male sex, this could not be discussed, eg. in terms of team dynamics, access to team toilet, changing and shower facilities.

Things would have been, and would be, so much better if the GRA 2004 did not promote the idea that being trans is at the same time something shameful and unmentionable and also something so discreet and undetectable that you wouldn’t know someone is trans unless you were told. It is farcical and unhelpful to everyone involved.

But anyway I digress.

One would certainly hope no male patients in the maternity ward. But there were so many male visitors that I was really extremely distressed and frightened for both my own and my baby’s safety.

In the QEUH, with the exception of the admission wards , all wards have single rooms with en suite facilities. The wards themselves are mixed and this can cause some problems, especially with patients with dementia. Visiting a relative who had numerous long term stays in a variety of wards, it was quite common to see a nurse seated doing paper work in a chair, obviously on guard duty, outside a particular room.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime the largest hospital in GreaterGlasgow and Clyde has almost entirely single rooms. It opened in 2015. Patients having long admissions complain about loneliness and there have been complaints that deteriorating patients were perhaps not noticed as quickly as they may have been in open wards. I don't know whether the wards are all mixed or single sex with private rooms though.
As an aside, it has been mentioned on here before that the attached maternity hospital does NOT have mainly single rooms as an example of sexism. In reality, it is the pre-existing maternity hospital which was not rebuilt as part of the new hospital project. It was renovated a few years before the new hospital and I assume there wasn't space to convert to single rooms.

At the place I had my first child (the "never again" one that led to the other two being born at home) the delivery rooms at least had only one person in them at a time, along with the nursing staff and my partner.

I'd hope that it's pretty unlikely for a male-bodied person to be given a bed in a ward for new mothers, isn't it? Or has that all changed?

(But that’s a whole other story)

Yes money. I know. But money can be found for many things, just strangely never this kind of thing.

Of course. I suppose I am mostly thinking of maternity. Because those periods were two of the worst times in my life when they should have been the best.

If the question is "why not?" the answer is nearly always "money".

I agree, though there are things to be said for seriously ill people to be easily observed at a casual glance; a ward with eight people in it is likely to be observed by a nurse more often, during the course of a night shift, than eight separate rooms, and that might make a considerable difference if there is a sudden medical emergency for one of the eight people in the beds.

Should we not all have private rooms anyway? I think it is time we did.

I have been in a single room in three hospitals, visited someone in a single room in two others, and observed that a friend was not given one because a TV personality was given it in another. So that's six hospitals in four towns that I know to have had the facility already available, which makes me strongly suspect that they all might. I'd like to hear nurses confirm or deny this, really.

As with requiring accessible loos to be provided, it would be no difficulty to establish in law that all hospitals, by x date, must be able to provide private room space or areas that can be turned to single space use, proportional to population. I'd gladly support campaigning for that.

It is the only way to meet needs in a way that maintains equal values for all, regardless of sex. And yes: cue wailing about being singled out. Unfortunately this is the only possible compromise. Additional spaces, yes, absolutely. Removal of safe, private, dignified accomodation from all women in order to give these things to a male?

Explain that, in a way that isn't sex based discrimination.

Or the use of single rooms (most hospitals have a few) for individuals who should not, for reasons of criminal offences against women for example, be placed in women-only wards. Unless there were an influx of such patients all at the same time so that there was no available "private" room, this would be bad luck on the individuals who would otherwise be placed in those rooms, but better for all the other women in the hospital.

And I do not believe that the hospital would not be very well aware of the sex, as opposed to the gender, of their patients. Put someone male-bodied in a hospital gown and the penis can be observed easily enough....

The obvious answer as always is the addition of third spaces.

All very true.

And yes: several issues are often helpfully conflated.

Where there is an absolutely reasonable desire due to identity and/or transition (not wanting to make assumptions) for privacy from other patients of that sex, for safety from harassment or worse, for personal identity to be supported and recognised, and all this involving someone who may be unwell, incapacitated, vulnerable - yes, absolutely that person should have an unquestioned right to be placed in a situation where their feelings of safety, dignity, privacy and emotional needs can be met.

When however you conflate the aspect of required action that demonstrates treating that person as if they were someone of the opposite sex, this presents that it is not possible to provide this patient with any of the above without removing the right of all female patients to have their feelings of safety, dignity, privacy and emotional needs met.

That puts forward a very basic, sex based inequality: the needs of a male for x must take priority of the needs of all female patients for x. Male trumps female. Hello good old fashioned male supremacism.

When you add to this the idea of 'educate' the female, also likely to be incapacitated, unwell, vulnerable and in no state to advocate for themselves, who shows distress or protests their own right to the privacy, dignity, recognition of individual need and identity that is regarded so important to the male patient - which means essentially to warn them that they must behave as if they do not expect that right and that the male patient's needs must be their priority over their own needs - and that this may quite possibly lead to female patients discharging themselves and not being able to access any medical care in that place so that a male patient may have their exact choice of where and how they receive care...

It's unjustifiable.

It is absolutely right and possible to provide additional and inclusive provision to meet needs. It is absolutely wrong and unjustifiable discrimination to remove the exact same rights from female patients as are seen as so important for male patients, and female people should not be put in the position of being used in a wholly sex class based way, without equal recognition of their own needs, differences and diversity, to meet the needs of male people.

Kathleen Stock made a good point to the WESC recently about the whole privacy aspect that the GRA/a GRC was supposed to address, and her point illustrates the absurdity of the whole privacy aspect with self ID. There is no privacy for a male who self declares he identifies as a woman, if he doesn't undergo extended cosmetic surgery and I'd argue even with the 'extensive' medical interventions claimed would give transsexuals the ability to be stealthily accessing women's spaces, there are a vanishingly tiny % of males who would pass to the point women would be completely oblivious to the fact the person is male. So many appear convinced that their use of female only space is event free because they've 'passed' when it's more likely to be women's discomfort being suppressed or they're aware that to say anything puts them at risk. Especially in the current climate.

Placing any male on a female ward is effectively 'outing' them because so few women would be unaware of their male status. This aspect of the GRA & the right to privacy it claims to afford TSs is dependent on women just not speaking up. It's dependent on female socialisation & the expectation that women should put up & shut up. That's crystal clear in the various policies that the NHS trusts have implemented by their instructions to 'educate' any women & to deny the fact that there's a male person in the female ward.

The common sense policy would be to place the TW or TM in a private room, if there was a genuine attempt to maintain their right to privacy. Because anything else does the opposite & ensures there's no privacy for either the TW/TM nor the other patients who expect single sex wards. Any TW claiming it's their right to access single sex spaces such as hospital wards isn't trying to maintain their own privacy either.

There is definitely a balance to be achieved on a trans person's right to privacy in specific circumstances where they'd be subjected to possible discrimination but it's absurd we're in the situation where it's claimed to be ensuring a TW's right to privacy on their trans status by placing them in a female ward.

This is Ireland, not the UK, but it's an example of the worst-case scenario coming true as a consequence of mixed sex wards.

www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/judge-criticises-hospital-after-girl-sexually-assaulted-by-man-63-on-ward-1.4170837

Have you got any examples of this policy? It sounds like a misunderstanding of the very specific prohibitions in Section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004. This protects against disclosing that a person has a Gender Recognition Certificate or has applied for a GRC, although there are exceptions.

Hi Molesmokes - I’ve got it on my laptop and will dig out the exact document in a bit - it is either the Devon one or the Bristol policy (or both) - I’ve got a feeling that it was Devon as that seemed so draconian and badly written (prescribing anti libidinous drugs to known sex offenders placed on women’s wards) - it struck me because it specifically mentioned prosecution and potentially large fines for staff disclosing trans status.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I wonder how many women need to be assaulted in hospitals before this is recognised more widely as incredibly dangerous. (It's always 'n+1', isn't it?)

MoleSmokes Agreed. But NHS Scotland and NHS England are completely separate orgs, and while England has been working towards eliminating mixed-sex wards, it has supposed to have been achieved in Scotland (with exception of HDU).

I'm working on the premise that this should give us something more concrete to point NHS Boards at when tackling the infiltration of gender policies.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime - thank you!

Watermonster - thank you for the heads up!

BetsyM00 - I'll eat my hat if Ninewells has implemented a "same sex" rather than "same gender" policy

"The use of mixed-sex wards and bays has previously been widely criticised and they were ultimately abolished in Scotland in 2005."
www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/2015/07/16/use-of-mixed-sex-ninewells-wards-has-got-to-stop/

That's the theory anyway..

Could any of you wonderful women help the women of Devon please- Devon NHS want them to share women's wards with male rapists...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4114228-Attention-Women-in-Devon