Transwoman on women's ward

[Sallycinnamum]

Had a minor gynae procedure today but nevertheless was very anxious leading up to it.

Was wheeled back to the day ward to be greeted quite literally (started waving at me) by a transwoman in the bed opposite me.

There was no doubt he was a man and being completely immobile due to a spinal anaesthetic with no underwear on I asked the nurse to completely close the curtains so he couldn't look directly at me.

Spoke to a nurse who confirmed it wasn't a mixed ward.

I am so upset. I felt so vulnerable especially as I couldn't walk so had to pee into a bedpan in clear earshot of him.

I've emailed PALS but I feel so bloody fed up of it all. Had a man next to me in the M&S lingerie changing rooms a few weeks ago and was made to feel like a total bigot when I complained to the staff.

is the BMA still insisting on registering doctors under their gender not their sex?

I believe their latest wheeze is to record neither.

Exactly, you can chop off or add body parts with surgery as much as you want but you cannot change the fact that men pretending to be women have male brains! They think like men!

Other people’s genitalia need not concern us. Thank goodness! 😊

Spoken by someone who has clearly never been raped.

Nah, that was debunked many times

Evrn if that were true, plenty of people who don't identify as trans also have brains "more aligned with" the opposite sex brain than the mean.

Because there aren't two distinct types of brain. Any male can have any brain type and that's a male brain, and same for female people.

No, that's absolute nonsense.

Even if there was a major study, comparing actual brain scans of a large number of male and female trans people and an even larger number of male and female people who are not trans, which supported the theory of male and female brains and trans people's brains more closely resembling those of the opposite sex (which, to my knowledge, there never has been), how many trans people have actually had their brains scanned to see whether they look male or female?

The answer is basically none, because that does not form part of the progress of diagnosing someone with gender dysphoria, which is in any case done by psychiatrists and not by neuroscientists.

And even if good evidence for male and female brains did exist, do you think someone like Karen White, a violent criminal who has raped multiple women, would have a male brain or a female one? Do you think someone like Mridul Wadhwa, who cannot comprehend why female rape survivors might not want a male bodied person involved in their care, would have a male brain or a female one? Do you think the trans women spraying the steps of the Equality and Human Rights Commission with their own urine in protest about not being allowed to use women's toilets would have male brains or female ones? Do you think Lia "I just want to live my best life competing in the sport I love and frankly I don't give a shit if I take opportunities away from my female competitors who have worked their butts off for this because everything is about me" Thomas would have a male brain or a female brain? Do you think the trans woman convicted of exposing his penis to women in public would have a male brain or a female one?

Do you have w a copy of the research or the report. I would like to read it.

It's also worth noting that even if there were such a thing as a female brain, and even if trans women had all had their brain scanned and been diagnosed as having female brains, we would still not be able to see their female brains, only their male bodies.

So even if the female brain theory were proven, which it hasn't been, it would still only be relevant to the question of whether trans women should be placed on women's hospital wards if you are approaching the question solely from the perspective of how someone with a male body and a female brain will feel to be excluded, and completely ignoring the perspective of how people with female bodies and female brains will feel to share their space with someone who has a male body.

So not only is the female brain theory absolute nonsense, it still requires you to place people with male bodies above people with female bodies in the hierarchy of rights.

Now, I wouldn't generally argue that society shouldn't meet the genuine needs of minorities simply because they are small in number and taking them into consideration requires a disproportionate effort for the number of people it benefits.

However, accommodating the needs of minorities, whilst sometimes costly and time consuming, does not usually cause harm to another group.

Where the rights and needs of two different groups are in direct conflict with each other and the requirements of one group cannot be satisfied without disregarding the requirements of the other group, it is reasonable to adopt a utilitarian approach, and opt for whichever solution works for the greatest number of people.

If, at a generous estimate, trans women represent 0.5% of the population and women represent roughly 50% of the population, there are about a hundred times as many women as trans women.

This would indicate that the focus should be on the impact on people with female bodies of allowing people with male bodies into female only spaces, rather than the impact on people with male bodies and female brains of being excluded from female only spaces.

Only in circumstances where the impact on the female 50% of the population of allowing people with male bodies into female only spaces was negligible, and the impact on the trans identifying male 0.5% of the population of denying them access to female only spaces was catastrophic, should society ever contemplate prioritising the 0.5% over the 50%.

Because to do so would be to take the position that one male bodied person is more important than a hundred female bodied people.

As far as I am aware, even the Taliban don't have that as an official policy.

Why do you struggle with genitals so much that you can't even talk about them? Are you really so prudish?

They're a part of a person's body, just like an arm or an eye.

I will never understand people with an aversion to talking about a perfectly ordinary body part.

I don’t struggle with genitals nor am I prudish. Just a bit tired of TRA’s always using genitalia to prove a point. My take is humans have been able to correctly sex others since the beginning of time without looking at their genitalia, so why keep bringing it up? Also altering/removing one’s genitals doesn’t alter their sex. A man who removes his penis remains a man.

That clear enough for you?

There was a study. Apart from the very good explanations above of why the study wouldn't be relevant to this question even if true, here's a simplified¹ explanation of why the claim it makes is not true.

The study scanned the brains of several hundred people, about 20 of whom were men who identified as trans. Many of the trans people were on hormones, which may have affected their results; and the study didn't record their sexualty, which may also have affected some measures.

It looked at dozens of brain measures, and found 1 that differed between men and women. The ranges overlapped, but there was a difference on average. The range for the men who identified as trans was entirely within the male range, and entirely outside the female range, but with an average that was closer to the female end than the all-males average was.

For example, if you put it on a 1 to 10 scale men might have had a range of 1 to 5.5, with an average of 2; women a range of 4.5 to 10, with an average of 8; and men with a trans identity a range of 2 to 4 with an average of 3.

This was reported as men with a trans identity having 'more female' brains. Which may be strictly semantically accurate, but is so deeply misleading as to be a lie for all practical purposes.

¹ Because I don't have the exact data to hand, and even if I did Mumsnet doesn't make it easy to add graphs. But the principle holds without needing the precise numbers.

Well this thread has certainly moved on since I last posted.

Glad to say I'm fully recovered and no reply from the hospital but I was expecting it would take weeks.

A lovely mnetter shared the Trust's policy with me, which quelle surprise states that patients should be placed on wards depending on which gender they identify with so I expect the unit sister had her hands tied.

Thanks for all the support and I will post an update when the Trust responds.

It does concern you if you're a member of the biological sex class which does not have genitalia which can be used as a weapon, and you're spending the night in a hospital bed, in a vulnerable position and with limited mobility, on a single sex ward where there are not supposed to be patients of the biological sex class which does have genitalia which can be used as a weapon.

In that situation, other people's genitalia does in fact concern you.

My point was that ‘vulnerable patients in hospital beds’ will be surrounded by men, even if none of the patients on the same ward are men.
So if protecting a patient requires not having anyone with a penis around them, ensuring that other patients do not have penises will not suffice.
That is because there will be other people on the ward with penises - e.g. healthcare practitioners, cleaning staff. Etc. etc. etc..

I was in hospital quite recently, and yes I didn't want to have any men around me really, including staff and other patients' visitors, tbh. It was a gynae ward, and while I was lucky enough not to need any help with washing and dressing, I did have a catheter in, and 2 lines and a drain, and felt vulnerable as fuck tbh.

No I didn't want any fucking men to be there, whatever they were wearing and whatever they believed about themselves

Is that OK, I think I had justification tbh

Agree completely @TooSquaretobehip

I really try not to be rude online, but that was a breathtakingly stupid comment.

What the ward do seem to do, is keep male patients together and allocate the male staff to them, and female staff to the female bays. Which suits me. Obviously if they don't have female staff available, then that's how it has to be, but I wouldn't have liked it

That's a really silly point.

Of course the risk from staff is not zero, but patients are not vetted at all.

I'm a bit confused here. Do you guys think that the idea of separate sex wards is to prevent rape? I've seen so many posts about rape and I'm just not understanding how there's such a rape risk if a transgendered person is on the ward. I understand not wanting to be around males but I don't think I'd be fearful of being raped. It's the one situation in your life where you have an emergency button right next to you.

@Grammarninja single sex spaces are there for dignity, privacy and safety. Are you unaware of the situation where a woman was raped in hospital and the hospital denied it was possible as the ward was just for women… including of course male women/rapist. Not only was the poor woman raped but her trauma was magnified by the institutional gaslighting

What rubbish! People working in the healthcare sector are vetted and/or have a DBS check. Men pretending to be women who are put on a female ward are quite likely to have mental health issues and might well have nefarious reasons to be in a women’s space

I just never thought that being placed on an all-female ward was about protecting me against rape.
How do they protect men against rape on male wards? I'm sure there are pretty vulnerable males there.

Not the same argument. At all.

No you don’t - you have a nurse call button next to you. Ever tried buzzing one ? Depending on how busy they are, there is plenty of scope for an assault before anyone gets to you. Separate sex wards are to provide privacy and dignity as well as being safe spaces. The NHS is gaslighting women even after the high court judgement. It’s illegal for a trans woman to be on a female only ward. End of.