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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Doctors’ union votes for ‘identity-based care’ despite warning over lawfulness

80 replies

IwantToRetire · 26/06/2025 20:50

The doctors’ union has voted for transgender patients to have “identity-based care” and called for this approach to be embedded into training.

But the British Medical Association (BMA) has been warned the move risks going against the law, after the Supreme Court ruling in April that the terms woman and sex in the 2010 Equality Act “refer to a biological woman and biological sex”.

At the BMA’s annual representative meeting in Liverpool on Wednesday, a majority of members voted in favour of a motion said to centre on “respect, safety and dignity” of LGBTQ+ doctors and patients.

From https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/national/25267354.doctors-union-votes-identity-based-care-despite-warning-lawfulness/

Doctors’ union votes for ‘identity-based care’ despite warning over lawfulness

The vote reflected the ‘deep passion within the profession for delivering truly personalised care’, the BMA’s Dr Latifa Patel said.

https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/national/25267354.doctors-union-votes-identity-based-care-despite-warning-lawfulness/

OP posts:
ArabellaScott · 27/06/2025 09:24

This is not the rabbithole I needed this morning.

www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-water-wet

ArabellaScott · 27/06/2025 09:20

I believe that a trans woman who is a patient should have the right to request a female doctor.

Again, though, we see the inequality between sexes. Males requesting female doctors has a whole different set of issues than females requesting female doctors, or females requesting male doctors, even.

Allthegoodnamesarechosen · 27/06/2025 08:20

HiCandles · 26/06/2025 21:56

I have been a member for years despite colleagues all over the place leaving in droves after the junior doctor contract issues, but I will now be cancelling my membership. I cannot support this. I did not vote or remember seeing a vote offered to me, to be honest, though I could easily have missed the email assuming it was advertising.

Thank you

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 27/06/2025 08:16

The formatting of the article also makes it look like (the brilliant) Louise Irvine was urging fellow members to vote in favour of the motion, when actually she argued against it.

MissScarletInTheBallroom · 27/06/2025 08:15

The article is confusing and I feel like perhaps the motion was confusing too.

Why does the motion cover both patients and staff?

And what does it cover in respect of patients? I believe that a trans woman who is a patient should have the right to request a female doctor. (A man who is a patient may also have reasons for wanting to request a female doctor, for example, if he has been raped by another man.) Female doctors treat male patients all the time so I can't imagine it would be difficult to find one willing to accommodate the request. But I don't believe that trans women should have the right to request, for example, a gender affirming smear test. I believe that trans mens should be allowed to be referred to as though they are men whilst having a smear test if this makes them more comfortable receiving necessary sex based care.

The situation in respect of staff is completely different. If transgender staff don't feel comfortable using single sex changing facilities for members of their own sex then efforts should be made to find a third space. Other staff and patients should not be forced to pretend that transgender staff members are the opposite sex in situations where it is to their own detriment, for example, nurses wanting single sex changing rooms or female patients wanting a female doctor.

Theeyeballsinthesky · 27/06/2025 08:06

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2025.06.26-123521/www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/bma-in-turmoil-over-abysmal-handling-of-cass-review-critique-bfr39t6qv" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2025.06.26-123521/www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/bma-in-turmoil-over-abysmal-handling-of-cass-review-critique-bfr39t6qv

still digging their heels in

ArabellaScott · 27/06/2025 07:58

olympicsrock · 27/06/2025 07:37

I’m a BMA member and local committee member . I did not see anything about a vote on this subject and did not vote. This appears to have been a vote taken by a small number of people face to face at a conference and does not represent the wider memberships views

My understanding is the wider membership complained about the BMA leadership stance on Cass before. Why is there such discrepancy between leadership and membership, and is there any way to address it?

ArabellaScott · 27/06/2025 07:56

SinnerBoy · 26/06/2025 22:49

P.S. water isn't wet, it makes things wet.

This is actually devastating.

olympicsrock · 27/06/2025 07:37

I’m a BMA member and local committee member . I did not see anything about a vote on this subject and did not vote. This appears to have been a vote taken by a small number of people face to face at a conference and does not represent the wider memberships views

tedlassoforprimeminister · 27/06/2025 07:36

BeeSouriante · 26/06/2025 21:50

What crank site is that?

Doctors decide to do what's best for their patients and colleagues. Next on the news, water is, in fact, wet 🙄

Just because some trans rights have temporarily been taken away doesn't mean that suddenly everyone has turned into an anti-science crank.

What rights have been taken away exactly?

TheOtherRaven · 27/06/2025 07:31

We expect NHS organisations to follow employment law and good HR practices, ensuring all staff feel respected and included.

All, including women.

Respect, including women.

Inclusion, including women.

Parallel services, meeting all needs. No prob.

TheOtherRaven · 27/06/2025 07:28

Treating someone as if they were a sex that they aren't if that makes them happy - fine. Between the medics and the patient, so long as medics' consent is taken fully into account, and no one is compelled to enact beliefs they do not hold that involve intimate touch, or women forced to play games with a man who is obviously doing it for sexual reasons - which has happened and been the far end of this business.

This will have to be done in single, separate rooms however, as doctors obviously do not have the right to go providing non consenting women to men as props and resources, particularly when those women are ill, vulnerable, in a state of undress and indignity already, and need to be able to rest without being in a constant state of alert, discomfort, humiliation and fear because a man is being centred over them. Equally, staff will have to be able to come to work and have a working life that does not include being forced in distress to validate a man by undressing their body for him.

Doctors who do not agree with this and so are not able to put their patients' needs above their own performative politics, or see women as equal people rather than props to these more valuable and important men, shouldn't be in any caring profession at all.

And yes. It's going to be very expensive. For the tax payer. Again. When many of them know there isn't the money in the NHS for their own or their relatives' urgently needed treatment, because of political sillybuggers playing games. The voting public are only going to take so much of this.

FinallyASunnyDay · 27/06/2025 06:54

Many sensible drs have become horrified and left (I left many years ago over something else, actually relevant to their role), and of course this gives the extremists their head. There is no alternative/competition to the BMA. Loss of coincidence in the only body that can negotiate on our behalf is really bad for drs.

I am just hand wringing. I have no solution, other than being instrumental in pushing sex-realist policies in my own locality. But that isn't enough.

IwantToRetire · 27/06/2025 01:05

Theeyeballsinthesky · 26/06/2025 21:47

This is the newly elected Chair of BMA

No appropriate "react" button so quoted to be able to say:

😡

OP posts:
IwantToRetire · 27/06/2025 01:04

The newspaper article does say what this meeting was eg:

BMA’s annual representative meeting in Liverpool

and the article said:

The motion called on the BMA to “affirm the right of all LGBTQ+ patients and staff to identity-based care and working conditions – defined as care and policies that actively account for the individual’s lived, intersecting identities (including sexuality, gender, neurodivergence, race, and cultural background)” and for guidance and a “lobbying strategy to embed this principle into NHS equality standards, training frameworks, and institutional policies”.

Speaking against it, Louise Irvine said while it had a “laudable aim of protecting LGBTQ+ and other people’s rights to fair treatment” it also “risks advocating that the BMA and other organisations adopt policies which are unlawful”.

She noted two cases of nurses suing their health trusts for providing changing rooms based on gender identity rather than sex and urged the BMA to study the legal implications of the recent Supreme Court judgment.

OP posts:
TheBroonOneAndTheWhiteOne · 27/06/2025 01:00

What rights have transpeople lost @BeeSouriante

murasaki · 27/06/2025 00:56

Yes at least the batshit unions for universities are clear in their names that they are unions, the BMA dissembles and sounds like a governing body.

Codlingmoths · 27/06/2025 00:53

moto748e · 27/06/2025 00:49

Full admission: I was one of those, and I suspect I'm not the only one, who thought that the BMA was some kind of oversee body for doctors, rather than a trades union. Now, I know better. And they are loons, obviously.

a majority of them must be absolutely batshit fucking crazy

moto748e · 27/06/2025 00:49

Full admission: I was one of those, and I suspect I'm not the only one, who thought that the BMA was some kind of oversee body for doctors, rather than a trades union. Now, I know better. And they are loons, obviously.

SalfordQuays · 27/06/2025 00:12

I’m a doctor and a BMA member, and I was not made aware of this ballot. I’ve emailed the BMA to ask why I didn’t have a vote.

roseyposey · 26/06/2025 23:40

And I always thought you had to be quite clever to train as a medic…..

BundleBoogie · 26/06/2025 23:30

Doctors are supposed to heal people, not deliberately create lifelong medical patients.

The doctors that voted for this have clearly lost their minds.

Manxexile · 26/06/2025 23:22

BeeSouriante · 26/06/2025 21:50

What crank site is that?

Doctors decide to do what's best for their patients and colleagues. Next on the news, water is, in fact, wet 🙄

Just because some trans rights have temporarily been taken away doesn't mean that suddenly everyone has turned into an anti-science crank.

"Doctors decide to do what's best for their patients..."

So a doctor would be doing the best for their transwoman patient by ignoring their risk of developing prostate cancer?

Ditto a transman patient's risk of developing cervical cancer?

Because that would be the inevitable consequence of doctors adopting "identity based care". Unless identity based care means the opposite of what it says.

Sex specific diseases are blind to a patient's self-perceived gender identity.

And as others have asked, can you name a single legal right that you've lost?

Manxexile · 26/06/2025 23:13

Theeyeballsinthesky · 26/06/2025 21:47

This is the newly elected Chair of BMA

"Napwizard" 😐

Says it all really...

RedToothBrush · 26/06/2025 23:04

If you identify as a man, will you get an acceptable level of maternity care and not end up with life changing birth injuries and trauma?

Just asking.

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