NHS won’t ban trans women from female changing rooms for months

I suspect that there are several places in the UK, not just Tower Hamlets, where situations like this are the norm. Women who rarely leave the house unaccompanied and who have not been able to gain a working command of English. And whose menfolk give them little agency and expect to make decisions on their behalf.

I speak an Asian Muslim language and have Muslim friends who have recently been involved in a significant court case which aimed to push back the gradual creep of Shariah law over civil law, in order to protect women's rights. My friends would see themselves as devout Muslims concerned about the cultural spread of Wahhabism, something they see as threatening women's rights.

In the UK we have got very timid about addressing real issues for fear of being labelled transphobic or racist or "right-wing". The irony is that by not discussing issues constructively within the centre-ground they become click bait articles for GB News. I would argue that this ultra-sensitivity is behind the appearance of Trump and Farage, in the same way that the the Treaty of Versailles created the environment that produced Hitler.

But back to hospital wards. I don't want men in women's wards. I also don't want men in womens prisons. A "case by case" approach puts too much responsibility of individuals. It is an easy cop out. So I might feel sympathy for the elderly man with the confused wife. I felt humiliated and concerned for hospital staff in a dedicated women's hospital. I would feel angry (and complain) if I found myself in a bed next to an AGP.

It won't be easy, but any policy needs to be both clear and robust.

it will be difficult. But in the case you describe it’s extra odd - the males were there to “protect” their women (?) but surely if men were all excluded from that space no protection would be required? It sounds like management were being slack because no one on the feminist side was complaining?

No complaint.

The first incident with the full bladder was in outpatients. I felt very uncomfortable and it was completely inappropriate, but I assumed that the problem lay not with the staff on duty at the time but the management who had allowed this situation to become general practice. When I returned from the tests there was another couple sitting there, beyond the "women only" sign, though not as much of an issue as I simply needed to get changed and go home.

The second was post-operation. Though she said nothing I picked up that the nurse working nights seemed happy for me to sit near her workstation reading a book whilst she completed paperwork and other duties. It was several hours before the harried F2 carrying a bleep arrived to sign off my discharge.

I therefore overheard the various demands made on her, of the warming babies bottles type, from people who were not her patients. Kids running round a post operative ward until the early hours was also not appropriate. The nurse was very impressive, firm but diplomatic, but she should not have been placed in that position. If a problem had arisen she would have been very vulnerable. There was obvious tension, which seemed to be based on misogyny/racism. How dare a black woman refuse the demands of a man.

Women should be able to be ill in their own space. Staff should be looking after patients, not visitors.

The general point is how do you prevent transwomen but not other men, whether they be carers or come from patriarchal cultures. Given NHS policy is written to allow flexibility to accommodate different needs. Especially given what seems to be an acceptance that at times the needs of women can be subordinated to the needs of men.

Genuine question. It won't be easy.

NHS Policy is written to allow flexibility to accommodate different needs. This seems to be why you were given a single room. The vast majority of other patients were seeking this sort of “familial” treatment and it had become practice in that setting as a result. Not good that you were promised female only spaces via signage in that situation though. Did you make a complaint?

My description of a man in a female changing room was not some sort of animus against a minority religion. Instead an attempt to illustrate that transwomen are not the only men the NHS allows in women's changing rooms.

What about the elderly lady with dementia who is accompanied by, and only feels safe with, their husband, who is also needed to describe her symptoms and to help her get dressed/undressed.

Based on my experience in East London, thought needs to be given to how to achieve dignity and safety of all patients and staff. My impression was that staff on duty were in an impossible position. There was a sign as you went beyond the main waiting room saying women only, which was roundly ignored. Sitting in a small room in a skimpy hospital gown and an overfull bladder (made worse by my appointment being delayed by an hour) with a man staring at me, was more than uncomfortable. However who should enforce?

Much worse though was the hospital ward. All the patients bar me, appeared to be Bangladeshi, and several families spent the whole night there. Luckily I had been given my own room. I felt quite angry on behalf of the nurse on duty through the night. I had to wait several hours for my discharge to be signed off, so only left at 1.00am and spent much of this time sitting by the nurse's station. She was black and treated with what appeared to be a combination of misogyny and racism by the men who approached her. There is no way she could have tried to enforce visiting hours.

Management, I assume, could have instructed her to call security to enforce visiting hours. But what would have happened? Would the female patients have been allowed to remain on their own? What would have been needed to get them to stay? Nurses who spoke their language? A commitment to a female only staff? Looking back over this thread suggests that even discussing potential issues is sensitive.

NHS guidelines are that we should not use family members but should book professional interpreters.
We have to be sure the information is being translated literally and not having someone else’s slant put on it. Sometimes we have to ask questions which the patient may not want a family member hearing the answer to.
However many people still bring a family member to interpret!

I agree with your concerns. Unfortunately, a lot of women from very religious communities such as you describe, don’t always speak much English and so the males argue that they are there to translate. It is very difficult to meet the women’s needs without hearing their voices.

We do not have such a thing as a class action in the UK, it is called a group litigation order.

Someone suggested starting a massive class action by patients concerned about institutional sex discrimination… bloody good idea! Who’s up for it?

Based On the NHS Audit work the policy wasnt authorised by a SofS so maybe Westminster Streeting won’t need to like a finger. The Chief Nursing Officer could simply issue a new memo

I can’t think of any other law, where it is clear and no infrastructure needs to be built to accommodate it, where the NHS would get away with say we won’t comply with the law, well maybe do it later.

They indicated to me that he was very religious which, with his wife's burka, suggested,he would not have wanted her to be in a hospital unaccompanied.

Most patients appeared to be Muslim and almost all were accompanied. I assume hospital policy was to allow this. I found the presence of men at a point where I was feeling very vulnerable, difficult. However I assume my concerns were outweighed by a hospital desire to ensure they were sensitive to cultural priorities.

In what way were the man’s beard and clothes relevant to your point though?

The NHS have decided that men's beliefs, whether religious or around gender identity, are more important to a woman's privacy.

I have a number of female muslim friends, who would argue that many muslim women want agency. The freedom to see a doctor on their own being one. But no. Men want something, they get it.

I don’t understand what the man’s religious beliefs or clothes had to do with it. It’s a moot point here. No man should be in a woman’s private space especially in a hospital setting, regardless of his appearance, beliefs, ethnicity etc.

I imagine they’re waiting to see what the Peggie judgment is and the other nurse judgments, and think that they might be able to get around it as per what trans orgs are saying.

The university sector is doing the same, with a couple of exceptions.

All it would take would be one chef exec to lose their job. One court case where the trust was found guilty.

How about making the head of an NHS trust personally liable for any payouts as a result of breaking the law?

Never cease to be baffled why the NHS decided to get involved with this ideology (actually I do: “Stonewall Champions” sticker chart for being good boys and girls). All their money, resources and time should be directed at healthcare, not virtue signalling.

I hope at some stage someone official investigates who signed off joining the Stonewall brainwashing scheme and how much public money has been wasted on this.

This is the issue isn't it? Successive governments have expected the NHS to sort out the dire quality of maternity care for example. But senior staff in the NHS are far more invested in redirecting public money into their niche luxury beliefs funding highly paid DEI staffing, training and initiatives (as NHS Fife have perfectly demonstrated to an appalled public). So maternity care continues to be grim while pointless rainbow crossings, flags, pronouns and mixed sex changing continues to flourish

Until these people are removed, so much of this will continue.

In fairness to Streeting, this is a top priority of Starmer and Streeting - abolishing NHS England and bring the NHS back under democratic control is one aspect of it. But it's far from an easy task. It's one thing for Streeting to intervene on individual cases, but another to work changes across such a gigantic bureaucracy which has become accustomed to being insulated from political oversight.

They just expect women to put up and shut up don’t they?

A Trust I worked for had unisex changing rooms. So will be interesting to see how that is tackled (I have to say it was quite the experience. And not the way you’d all think!). But for the NHS to drag their feet in banning trans from the women’s changing room is disgraceful. We shouldn’t be putting pervs in with non-consenting women.

There may be more to it that just trans.

I once had to have a test where you first had to fill your bladder to the max. It was in East London with a very high Muslim population. I waddled out of the cubicle in the women's changing room within a women's hospital wearing the skimpy hospital gown to face a heavily bearded Muslim man wearing traditional dress sitting next to a wife in full burka. He looked me up and down as if I was utterly brazen, leaving me with no dignity at all.

The hospital ward was similar. Visiting hours did not exist, as obviously women could not be left on their own. Men had to be with them, and so brought the whole family. Kids racing around at 3.00am. One nurse on duty, having to deal with outrageous demands as if she was some sort of waitress/servant. (Things like heating baby bottles.) Not fair on her, and potentially unsafe.

The NHS seems to prioritise men's rights over women's across the board.