Nhs badge issue pronouns

Belief and fact are not the same thing... I feel like I'm being forced into saying a man is a women or vice versa when physically they're just not are they?

Whatever they want to say to do is secondary to the fact you cannot change biology surely?

What do you believe to be 'real' about a belief in gender identity?

People are welcome to believe in gender identity, just as they can hold any other religious or quasi-religious beliefs. But they shouldn't be forcing everyone else to behave as though they also hold this belief. That is what is unpleasant about this.

What about Oo/Ee/Oo/Ah/Ah/Ting/Tang/Walla/Walla/Bing/Bang?

@Ndd135632 OK, and all I said was that suggesting that someone with an outlook different from your own does not 'believe in reality' is fairly unpleasant, and it's hypocritical to do that and complain about 'bullying' in the same post.

I don’t want pronouns on hospital doctors badges as I want my doctors to practice in biological reality. I want to feel confident in them, that they are truthful and factual.

If a doctor’s pronouns correctly correspond with what I can see and hear then I think they are stupid for going along with this ideology, over reality, and I feel uncomfortable with this doctor treating me.

If a doctor’s pronouns incorrectly correspond with what I can see and hear, alarms bell ring as it’s biologically deceptive and I don’t want this doctor treating me.

I’d go for she, he, they, it, their, (there, they’re) who, why, when, what, bing, bang, bong, splish, splash, splosh.

Or the other thing iv just thought of...could you tell HR you have changed your pronouns to obviously/female or obviously/male?

I would just cut off bits of an address label and cover the pronouns up until I took advice from the union.

PS from what I see of my union, they are all for this ludicrous nonsense, so dont hold your breath that they'll help you.

I know, I know, it's a typo or an autocorrect.

But I just wanted to announce that I am very much in favour of ID bagels.

I should add our ID bagels have full name and grade. But the colleague concerned didn't have this on display but tucks it in her pocket.

In my hospital our name badges have first name only, to protect our privacy. Which didn't stop a man who recently had a very brief interaction with a colleague from seeking her out and finding her on Instagram and Facebook.

As well as blocking him she reported the incident on Datix, the nhs incident reporting system. Don't forget to do this if it happens to you. Better still set all your social media accounts to private.

Where does the nhs get the funding for these new badges and time spent squabbling over enforcing them? Ridiculous waste. I would as pp have said say you don't believe in all this requirement for pronouns and won't be needing a new badge with pronouns on.

A job title has a significance in the workplace that doesn’t really exist beyond it, regardless of the job.

Maybe that’s the real mismatch here?

Doctor is a bit of an anomaly as it specifically refers to an academic qualification (one that may or may not be medical) but is used in a manner that socially interchangeable with Ms/Mr (but in some contexts, ie the one discussed here, it refers to a job title).

English is such a weird and wonderful mish mash that I’m now wondering how society would look if we standardised so all politie titles referred to academic qualification?

(people would have to call me ‘Master’ for starters 🤣)

FWIW my favourite doctor of all time (besides dad obvs!) is referred to as ‘Professor Lastname’ by students and staff, ‘Dr Shortversion of Firstname’ by patients (paediatrics) and ‘’Whole Firstname, No Title’’ by parents of patients. When spoken about in the third person most people combine the above and go with ‘Prof Shortversion of Firstname’.

it’s interesting to ponder and using Babdoc’s example above I wonder if something like ‘Hello, I’m Doctor Lastname, I’m your anaesthetist today. You can call me Katie or Doctor, whichever you prefer’ is reassuringly professional, whilst still friendly and egalitarian and also gives a polite generic option for those who immediately forget all the specifics they’ve just heard (and thus functions in the opposite way to special pronouns)!

The ‘put to sleep bit’ should definitely be avoided, mind you.

If I'm at a hospital I want a name badge to say 2 things

1. Name with appropriate title, e.g. Mr, Mrs, Dr, Professor
2. Job role e.g. Senior registrar, Ward nurse, Anaesthetist, Reception

I maybe would like flags showing languages spoken.
I don't think I care about anything else.

I also actively don't want the badge cluttered up with unnecessary stuff because it makes it harder to find the needed information.

I disagree the title has more professional significance than any other.

If a person has a PhD they have worked for their title and it has significance. If a Dr does not hold the title in connection with a PhD the title is honorary and their professionalism exists through the letters after their name. In the same way as for an accountant or solicitor.

My ds has a PhD. His title is Dr. It was hard earned. He is not a physician or surgeon. His students would not dream of calling him anything other than Jack (not his real name). Similarly his wife's father is a professor. His title was earned after obtaining a PhD, after many years of research led practice and teaching. He is also a physician. He wears neither title on his sleeve. He introduces himself as Ian (again not his real name).

Gender Identity is a belief, you say so yourself.

Transitioned people who do not believe in the concept of gender identity exist.
They tend to describe themselves as people with Gender Dysphoria (or, depending on when they transitioned, people who were diagnosed as having ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ or ‘Transsexualism’).
For them, the best answer to their internal distress is (and in so far as it’s practically possible) to take on the cosmetic appearance of being the opposite sex.

To believe in the concept of Gender identity is believe that everyone has a GI (what I can only assume is some sort of gendered soul) and that language and society (including spaces reserved for women) should be organised via this internal sense of self.

People can hold this belief without being transgender themselves, they tend to refer to themselves as ‘cisgender’.

I’m a gender identity apostate. I sort of believed in it until I listened more and then I realised it was pure faith based position and there was no objective material reality underpinning it.

Not believing in the nebulous concept of Gender Identity doesn’t indicate anything beyond the rejection of a belief, a belief that is held by some trans people (and not others) and some non trans people (and not others).

Perhaps you yourself should ‘be a bit more respectful should listen a bit more’?

I've never been asked for my pronouns (or asked anyone else for theirs) but if I ever was I plan to use hee/haw and tell them I identify as a donkey😁

Maybe you should have tried that OP?

Totally agree

@Babdoc
''Don’t wish to derail the thread, but I still believe Christian names are completely inappropriate for the doctor patient relationship.
You are a) asking a patient to put their life in your hands and
b) often performing intimate and embarrassing procedures on them. They need the professional distance.''

I do have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Not all patients are the same and not all doctor-patient relationships are the same. For instance, I am a professor of veterinary medicine (I am not, but at a similar level of experience, expertise and seniority). I am not going to be reassured merely because you use your title and emphasise the difference/distance between us. I am going to be reassured by someone who treats me as an equal and gives me the information I need. However I don't expect you to have taken the time to read my c.v. before meeting me.
Your post seems to imply a certain homogeneity in the group called 'patients' which is largely grounded in your superiority over them. I don't think your assumption of what 'they need' is going to always be correct.

@Babdoc I hope you picked them up on phrasing it as "putting you to sleep" as well. A lot of adults and children would understand being put to sleep as being euthanized to end their suffering.

I mostly agree. In the hierarchy of humans doctors are not some sort of extra special entity worthy of worship, but in their professional environment their title has more significance that mine (Ms) does.

That doesn’t mean that doctors should default to patient’s first name though (it’s a jarring mismatch in etiquette for starters)!

Using a patient’s title is somewhat context specific as a GP can get through a 5-10 min slot politely and respectfully without needing to use a name at all (nor the patient needing to use the doctor’s name/title during the appointment) but an outpatient procedure or an overnight stay should definitely have a ‘would you prefer I call you Title Surname or something else?’ conversation.
No need to remember with multiple inpatients as it can go on the wall above/beside the bed.

I personally like the whiteboard signs that have patient name, consultant name, nurse-for-the-shift name because then everything is clear and easily glanced at in the moment (although I realise that gives the nurses have an extra job of updating the sign each shift so I don’t hold it against them when they forget!)

Adding pronouns as well is an unnecessary additional layer of information and actually decreases understanding for patients with literacy difficulties or English as a second language, as well as creating the potential for distrust/doubt/hostility/awkward situations (when someone accidentally intuitively reverts to sex based pronouns).

Pronoun displays are of no real use to anyone, including transgender people (who could use titles to indicate similar information).

The display of ’Personal Pronouns’ with a/slash, whatever the original intent, has become symbolic of a controversial belief system.

Most English speaking people are well aware that ‘She’ ‘Her’ ‘Hers’ ‘Herself’ are a set (even if they can’t identify them as subject/object/possessive/reflective) and we generally don’t mind those with ESL cocking it up a bit, letting wrong-forms pass without comment (unless it’s in a language lesson).

So what is the reason for the slash to appear on a badge or in an email signature?

The only practical explanation that I can come up with is that including the slash creates the possibility of a single person with multiple preferred pronouns eg she/they (which should really be she/them if we are using the slash to indicate subject/object consistently) or to explain unfamiliar neopronouns eg xir/xim (in which case it should be the whole set xe/xir/xem/xier/xierself, example found via Google)!

Personally, I hate the current pronoun dance, which I see a top-down imposition of someone else’s belief system (as in the OP if this thread) but I have no issue whatsoever with the addition of the Mx title to the existing Ms/Miss/Mrs/Mr selection.

That one feels like more of a grass roots request for a simple adaption to an existing system, as Ms was back in it’s early days.

I do find it rather odd that somebody goes into their place of work and gets called transphobic and yet it is those who don’t believe in gender ideology that have to ‘be more respectful and listen more’.

Gender realists don’t go round insulting people in the workplace.

Some euphemisms really should be binned, that's another of them. It scares and confuses kids, and isn't accurate applied to animals. It should be a phrase an anaesthetist could use literally, but isn't.

I caught one of my trainees in the anaesthetic room introducing herself to an elderly patient with “Hi, I’m Katie, I’m one of the team, I’ll be putting you to sleep”
I took her aside later, and asked her to imagine she was a frightened old lady

I'm not a frightened old lady but an anaesthetist telling me they were going to put me to sleep would be a definite 'choose your words more carefully next time' moment.