The disgraceful RCN and Nurse Jennifer Melle

There is an obligation currently to use preferred pronouns in NHS medical care as I understand it. As there is an obligation to respect i.e. same sex marriage irrespective of religious beliefs that marriage can only be between a man and woman. There is an obligation to believe in i.e. vaccination. It's quite clear in the policy.

You may argue it shouldn't be there. But currently it is.

If we're going to keep Christian beliefs out of medicine, can we please keep gender beliefs out of medicine too, and just deal with physical reality? If someone kicks up a fuss about their physical reality being referred to, then I would expect a professional to try to defuse the situation. I think that is what Jennifer Melle was trying to do, by pointing out that she was not being deliberately offensive. It was at worst foolish to mention her beliefs, but that should be dealt with not by suspension but by a respectful discussion between her and her manager in the first instance.

Agree. Either it’s a serious mental health issue or they are robust enough to deal with reality and understand that others have different beliefs.

Okay thanks

1. "Refusing a request to change it will be unlawful indirect religion or belief discrimination unless you can objectively justify it.". The nurse concerned did not request to change it with her employer based on her belief.

2. "Unless you can objectively justify it". In the case of a nurse, as with the DWP it would be objectively based on them needing to treat /meet transgender individuals. And that transgender patients would find "misgendering" distressing.

I agree with this @ArabellaScott; however using a child's preferred pronouns is very different from using an adults in a medical setting. In the latter the adult patient has autonomy in how they wish to be treated.

And it's extremely unlikely even if you think using preferred sex pronouns is somehow harmful (which is debatable) that someone is going to change their mind based on a short interaction with a nurse.

I think any person claiming to be the opposite sex and often removing body parts and taking harmful drugs to change their appearance is pretty extreme.

It is clearly a debilitating mental health condition as it makes sufferers unable to function in their daily lives without extremely delicate handling and full participation from all they come into contact with.

"Specific responsibilities a medical professional has to their patient’ is first and foremost to treat their health issue with expediency".

Duh. However they do have to talk to and about patients and write reports don't they? I'm not suggesting stopping in the middle of a resuscitation to ask preferred pronouns.

I think we also disagree with what a straw man is. Making analogies to get to the heart of the matter is standard debate and here a nurse has said it is against her Christian beliefs. Nothing to do with science so comparison to same sex marriage objections is valid. That is often also a common fundamentalist Christian belief.

It's worth asking even if a medical professional disagrees with "preferred pronouns", that's the current NHS policy. Privately disagreeing or campaigning against it is different to ignoring it when dealing with patients.

You can keep presenting as many straw man fallacies as you like but it doesn’t change the facts of the matter.

‘the specific responsibilities a medical professional has to their patient’ is first and foremost to treat their health issue with expediency by not getting sidetracked by pronouns, which are irrelevant in a medical setting.

No one is entitled to force anyone else to participate in their delusions, and expecting medical professionals to do this is beyond ridiculous. Medical care is completely predicated on biological sex, if a man and a woman are both admitted to hospital with chronic stomach pain they need to be treated completely differently, because they ARE completely different. Muddying the waters by expecting the medical staff to participate in this nonsense is quite frankly ridiculous.

@PrettyDamnCosmic personally I don't care how staff refer to me behind my back..."pain in the arse" is fine! 😂

Staff do use pronouns though i.e. I get a copy of my medical reports with "she"/"her" etc.

Perhaps old fashionedly letters often start with "thank you for referring this pleasant woman"...dunno if there's a doctor code for "pain in the arse"?

He resigned, then brought a discrimination and harassment claim. The judgment held that they had tried to engage with him to find out if his beliefs could be accommodated.

Assuming that a health care professional should use the patient's preferred pronouns when talking to his or her family is surely not justified? When I went to see my GP because I was struggling with my son's brand new "gender identity", I was referred to a local mental health agency, which proceeded to write to me about my "daughter". That was one of the most offensive things I have ever personally experienced - to refer to my son as my daughter when my family relationships had just been thrown into the air and not even landed yet. My son's view of himself is his view, not mine. It is incredibly offensive to assume that I would be fine with the erasure of our whole previous relationship, and to imply that in future I have no choice but to suppress my cognitive dissonance and be delighted for my "daughter's" new found path in life.

It was immediately obvious that the new gender identity has put him on a difficult path, and one that for many people is a path to lifelong physical health problems from hormone treatments and even cosmetic surgery. Our family has been blown apart, having been close knit and respectful of differences. My DW misses our son, as do I. We worry about him daily. All because of a ridiculous social contagion to which he has proved vulnerable. Truth is hatred, love has to submit to ideology, and our somewhat vulnerable son is keeping company with people who will drop him like a brick if there's no longer anything for them in the relationship - unlike us, who will always have a place for him in our hearts, and in our home if he needs it.

I don't often swear, but I am fucking angry.

@RapidOnsetGenderCritic I'm really sorry to hear your story. It is awful how bigoted much of the TRA ideology is, they often encourage people to cut ties with family who are in any broad sense gender critical and see any objection as transphobia. I hope that they will come to their senses eventually and appreciate there are a range of viewpoints. That people don't have to share a belief system to be family, or to treat them fairly.

@BundleBoogie it's an interesting point, I am in agreement that compelled belief is an issue.

You might be interested in the Mackereth versus DWP case if not already aware.

Not a lawyer. But similarly doctor refused to use preferred pronouns stating religious beliefs and quoting Genesis as evidence of the fundamental importance of sex/gender.

Also defending by Christian Legal Centre and broadly lost including at Appeal.

My understanding being that it was proportional not to employ as he would be assessing transgender individuals, so this particular manifestation would impact DWP's aims.

Christians have widely varying views on ethical issues; this often relates to their position on the fundamentalist to liberal axis. Those at the liberal end find it quite easy to reject passages from the Bible that are inconvenient; those at the fundamentalist end find it quite easy to reject modern liberal societal values if they can find a Bible passage which expresses a different view. There are plenty of Christians in between the extremes, with a variety of understandings and theological perspectives.

I personally used to have no theoretical issue with gender identity thinking; I had only read about it in the Guardian; I could see very little directly relevant in the Bible or in the church teachings I had come across. But I know people for whom Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are foundational to their understanding of sex and who have a conservative approach to gender. I partially disagree with them, but at least they recognise the reality and immutability of one's sex and don't pretend that changing sex is possible.

Jennifer Melle has been punished for not having the right kind of respect. In a similar way, I have been punished by my son and his partner for not being OK with using the language they insist is required - I am apparently bigoted because I see my son as male (which is objectively true) and am not prepared to pretend that he is my daughter by referring to him as "she". That doing as they demand is extremely painful, and is in my view rejecting my son, doesn't seem to matter to them in the slightest. They are right and I am "transphobic" - but they refuse to discuss and justify their worldview. That fact, to me, shows just who is bigoted. They have written me off, it seems, for my heresy, because they cannot countenance the possibility that they might be mistaken. I have not rejected them, though I do reject their gender identity religion. They have rejected me as a bigot and almost completely cut themselves off from me, which is as bigoted a position as I have ever come across. Other trans people and their allies have not done the same.

I’m not accountable to you, and I’ll express myself as I see fit, thanks for your concern.

It wasn’t actually me who made those specific analogies, but some GC women who have experienced those conditions have also done so, and I don’t see why these arguments are any less relevant as analogies than some of the straw men scenarios you’ve come up with.

As pp said, lots of stupid policies have been made considering only one protected characteristic which apparently trumps everyone else’s rights and needs. It doesn’t mean they can’t be challenged.

These appear to be unlawful policies that discriminate against two protected characteristics though.

Just because some activist group wrote ridiculous and harmful policies doesn’t make them ok and enforceable.

causing substantial distress to transgender individuals including at their most vulnerable/ sick / dying

It is found that a number of men entering hi al stages of life with dementia forget that they ever identified as a woman and experience extreme distress at their missing penis/ gained breasts etc. In a medical setting patient safety should be prioritised over pandering to a delusion.

potentially "outing" transgender status to others who may not be aware adding to the above issues.

Their faces (and male behaviour) generally ‘out’ them as male.

include refusing to use non binary pronouns to a female feminist who wants a less gendered society.

Using ‘non binary’ pronouns is not moving us to a ‘less gendered society’ - it actually reinforces the sex binary by claiming that only the extra special people can transcend it and the rest of us ‘normies’ are tediously adhering ti those sex based stereotypes like glue (except that we are not).

I might call someone fat but I wouldn't expect a nurse to use that word to describe a relative however true it is

That’s a rather harsh word for you to use - I don’t see why you’d do that. I’m sure a nurse would find a gentler way to say it when necessary. It is in no way analogous to calling a man a man especially in a medical setting.