Hospital refuses to operate after woman requests all-female care

Oh, that's such a relief. I can't imagine the stress she must've been under. It's bad enough when you're ill, but the powerlessness of having your treatment being arbitrarily decided, based on your adherence to reality - it's like some kind of nightmare film.

Maybe the reason she isn't going to court is that it was not specifically a hospital wide viewpoint, but a few individuals who got carried away.

Thanks Nutmeg for letting us know. Best wishes toTeresa .hope she is recovering well. Maybe this will be a turning point for womens rights to same sex care.

That news from Nutmeg was wonderful to read.

Great that she is getting the operation and the care that she needs. I wish her all the best for her recovery.

Delighted she is getting the surgery and good that the hospital is listening. However I do wish she had taken them to court so this could be kept in the public eye and so we could have a legal precedent.

I appreciate she may not be up to it health wise though. Wish her a speedy recovery.

So pleased to hear this news. All the best of luck to Teresa for her recovery.

I hope this hospital and its management realise the generosity of Teresa in engaging with them rather than taking them straight to court, and does something to improve their prejudiced and exclusionary policies for females.

To approximate one of the tweets: for male TQ+ people to be handed a veto on female people's medical care is wholly unacceptable.

I would add that for male TQ+ people and those who would define themselves as 'allies' to then exercise that veto as in this case, makes very clear that female people's concerns about TQ+ male people carrying out health care as a woman hcp are very much justified.

I think she's being very generous. I hope her surgery and recovery goes well. I hope the hospital listen and have learned.

I hope she's keeping the option of legal action open.

Here’s a link to the unrolled thread (good for non Twitter users):

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1587082094701944834.html

I’m so glad to hear this.

That is really positive, I hope her surgery went well and she is now recovering and being looked after by some lovely female nurses.

Teresa, the woman whose surgery was cancelled, has reached an agreement and her surgery is going ahead. She is pushing for the hospital to make changes to ensure female-only care can be accessed rather than suing.
So good to hear.
twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg has the details

I think some PP have said similar, or at least that they were trained to do so, upthread.

I've always wondered about the "assigned". It's a weasel word in the NHS trust statement that implies "computer error, certainly no evidence of premeditated intention to trample over a patient's wishes".

Hmm. Was it? Did someone else intentionally allocate that woman's smear to member of staff to make a point? Or did the member of staff put themselves forward to do smears?

This is so invasive. They must live in another world. I would have declined the smear test also.

When I next see a doctor I want him to be George Clooney

The person who has been seen on facebook boasting about intimidating a patient is almost certainly a fantasist who does not work in the NHS. But something very like that imagined scenario is already on record as having happened: a woman requested a female nurse to perform her smear, got "assigned" a transgender male nurse, and the nurse told her they weren't male when she queried it.

What incidents might there have been that aren't a matter of public record?

extract

The NHS has apologised to a woman who said she was "embarrassed" after a nurse who identifies as trans was assigned to carry out her cervical smear test.

The woman had requested a female NHS nurse to perform the procedure.

When the woman asked, the nurse replied: "My gender is not male. I'm a transsexual."

"[It was] weird where somebody says to you: 'My gender is not male' and you think: 'Well, what does that even mean? You are clearly a man', the woman told the Sunday Times.

(continues)

The woman declined to go ahead with the smear test but emphasised her complaint was not about the nurse's appearance or her gender status.

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust said: "We apologised to this patient for the recording error and because the staff member accepted they didn't manage the situation appropriately or professionally; the patient needed to feel listened to.

IB Times

I recommend that posters on this thread look at this post on twitter. Do you think many young female patients would have the courage to carry on insisting on a female member of staff to treat them after that? If your daughter's request was met with the appearance of a male member of staff interrogating her as to whether she counted transwomen as female, would she dare to say "no, thank you"?

twitter.com/LuciT00405829/status/1585812739598872576?t=7yEtVf8-J-6EPhwSqavZWQ&s=19

We were skiing in Austria and I went to the spa. I was lying reading my book on one of the heated beds. A man came and dried himself right beside me practically smacking me around the face with his willy.

I was in two minds whether to tackle him on it (pun intended). In the end I decided any attention would probably feed into his wank later so completely ignored him.

When I showed DH what an awkward position the guy had to stand in to do so DH was 😡. I didn't go back in.

Hi, can we not do this please? Unless they've stated it elsewhere and I haven't seen it, you have no idea whether the person you object to is autistic, and it's not necessary to try and categorise their behaviour within a diagnostic framework for neurodevelopmental disorder in order to call it out.

The links between autism, gender nonconformity and incongruity, and TRA-ism, the patterns we see in thinking and communication, the similarities in the workings of the online communities, and the possible mechanisms behind those links, are a phenomenon that I recognise and think is worth discussing — it's an interesting lens through which to analyse and understand the behaviours of certain social movements and groups, maybe public individuals who are open about their diagnosis, or perhaps those for whom there's other strong evidence to suggest that it's a useful possibility to consider.

But armchair diagnosis of autism, from very little evidence, in specific individuals you disagree with, doesn't help GC feminism or autistic people like me (or the many other autistic women among our ranks), IMO.

These on the spectrum, young lads can behave quite narcissisticly online.

Oh absolutely! It just seems politicians don’t seem to think they’re worth answering.

You could ask a wider question/adapt it so it's not focused on this particular case?

It's worth asking the questions.

And yet another 'male people are very sad and we must care for male people and listen to male people and male people are very very very important but sex definitely doesn't exist' lot of noises.

Gawd. Can we get any of the Muppets to form a political party? I'm desperate for someone to vote for at this point.

He’ll say
“I’m not going to get into individual cases without knowing the full facts… blah blah blah”

If any of you haven't commented on the 'Questions for Keir Starmer' thread, this might be a good thing to ask him about. What does he think about women being discriminated against in healthcare?

But my feelings on this really haven’t changed. I still only want to be seen naked by my husband.

A tangential aside but we regularly ski in the Alps. Every Swiss or Austrian hotel we've stayed in has a spa where swimwear is banned and this rule enforced. They will (under slight duress) let you wear a smallish hammam towel if necessary and yes, there's lots of naked people hanging out in the sauna etc (both sexes together).

Now, while I don't mind whether a male or female doctor treats me, I wouldn't choose to sit there naked with my friends of either sex. I think the Swiss think us Brits are very uptight on the matter. It amuses me as they say swimwear is unhygienic but someone's meat and two veg lolling over the seat in the steam room? No problem...