Mixed sex wards and trans women.

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I've opened a new account as the old one was too full of personal bits and someone could've connected the dots.

I am a medical student and we have a diversity lecture coming up, so I had a look at the LGBT slides. A lot of this seems to focus on trans.

I got curious about the requirements for sex-segregated wards, as I know this has been an issue for a while. Women want single-sex wards, both on wards for physical illness and those for mental illness, because they see themselves as vulnerable to abuse from men, especially whilst ill.

Fine. Nobody seems to oppose this, and it's become a requirement in pretty much all hospitals.

And then you see this: uktrans.info/attachments/article/5/trasngender_booklet_low%20res.pdf

"• Trans people should be accommodated according to
their presentation: the way they dress, and the name
and pronouns that they currently use.
• This may not always accord with the physical sex
appearance of the chest or genitalia;
• It does not depend upon their having a gender
recognition certificate (GRC) or legal name change;
• It applies to toilet and bathing facilities (except, for
instance, that pre-operative trans people should not
share open shower facilities); "

There's an example in the leaflet of a young female nurse refusing to wash a trans person because it was against her religion. This is held up as an example of trans discrimination.

I am struggling to square this away with feminism. In fact, I don't think it does square. Women have fought for this segregated space, based on female sexual characteristics (not a preference for make-up, long hair, but XY/vaginas/generally smaller in stature and weaker). But now, apparently, if you decide you feel like a woman, you're entitled to be on a woman's ward when women are at their most vulnerable.

It means if you're sectioned under the mental health act and a trans woman with a penis is on the ward, you have no legal argument to get them removed to make you feel safer.

How is this right?

Cote - I agree that many trans people are 'read' as their birth sex, but how does the NHS manage its beds when it is unlawful to discriminate & you might not know the 'female' patient who you've planned to put in a mixed bay turns up on the ward & is noted to be trans? From other recent posts, it seems medical and other records are decoupled from the previous other-sex record so it may not be apparent from documentation or records systems. Honestly, I think we are both arguing similar points & are at cross purposes.

Bingo! Full card of MRA standard comments.

With an added dash of ageism. Well, maybe the time of second wave feminism is past - but your third wave style is turning out to be ineffective. In an age where in addition to the infringements of womens rights by transactivists there is the resurgence of conservatism (e.g. erosion/abolition of abortion rights in Poland and the US), I'm glad to see the emergence of the forth wave.

Does anyone on the thread honestly believe PinkRad is actually female, young or feminist?

Not any more, no.

I think she is female. I've just commented on another thread about calling out posters you don't agree with as being a man.

It's the trump card isn't it? Except when it's wrong. I've seen it used several times when all other evidence from a poster's history is that she is a woman. My favourite being the poster who was less than half my age telling me I had so much to learn about being a woman.

You can disagree with and demolish arguments but "you are a man" is a rather feeble line to use.

Fair enough Lass, but there is a heavy dose of condecension in Pink's posts.

Lol at trump card
Women with MRA views is how we ended up at Trump surely?!

it is indeed Lorelei

I didn't like Hermione's "castration" comment but Pink's "kitty comment" was unnecessarily rude and very patronising.

But Lorelei, the "you are a man" line gets trotted out with a flourish as if that is the decisive point that will win the argument, except it is frequently wrong. As in the one I referred to on another thread today where a victim of male abuse was told she was a man.

Lass I know, I just wondered if trump card was a Freudian slip!

Anyhoo...

Back to the topic. I believe that medicine treats the body and as such wards should be separated by sex. I also include primary care in my view eg care of the elderly and mental health hospitals.

m.hulldailymail.co.uk/transgender-woman-banned-hull-sainsbury-s-store/story-15599308-detail/story.html

Take the case above for example. This transgender woman has been sectioned. I don't know where to or if to a women's wing.

Lass I know, I just wondered if trump card was a Freudian slip!

Oh sorry , got you. Sorry, I was being unnecessarily prickly.

Just think "Trump card" probably will have a completly different meaning to the next generation.


Back to the topic. I believe that medicine treats the body and as such wards should be separated by sex. I also include primary care in my view eg care of the elderly and mental health hospitals.

It has too really- from the point of view of expertise. I'm sure in an emergency the doctors and nurses on the male urology ward and those on the female gynae ward could turn themselves to anything but on a day to day basis probably better to have a nurse who is experienced in, and/ or being specifically trained in, inserting cold steel objects in the correct orifice doing the inserting.

I would be pretty sure pink is who she says she is - so many of us seem to have recognised our own former selves, some combination of naivety and the arrogance of youth. Probably doesn't come across in a post but I mean that kindly, remembering back.

Agreed MortificadosDragon

Lass - I think segregation by sex should be the starting point, but all other things being equal (such as no aggressive behaviour, no other patients such as the woman with psychosis who believed all men were trying to hurt her, and other relatively rare complications) I think that there can be commonsense decisions that make sense for all parties. Recovery from something like a tonsilectomy is different from recovery from something sex-related like a hysterectomy.

ego - do you mind me asking which ward you were placed on for recovery following your recent bottom surgery?

Do private hospitals only have private rooms? I just don't get why anyone would find a private room problematic, I'd be bloody thrilled to get one and it seems the logical solution in one way....in other ways I'd think private rooms on the NHS would be allocated in terms of the patient needs for quiet? So if a more ill person misses out on a private room because it's allocated to someone who refuses to be in a ward based on physical sex, that would be unfair?

do you mind me asking which ward you were placed on for recovery following your recent bottom surgery

It was done in a private hospital (who do NHS surgery) - so again, my own room, TV etc. I don't think I could cope with being in a bay - all my operations I've had have been with private rooms (a long time ago, I worked for the NHS and had an operation in a place I worked. I knew the ward staff. They gave me a private room as well)

Bloody hell, kua that's a very disturbing story. This person clearly has no recognition or respect for women's boundaries. I think it would be completely and utterly unacceptable for someone like that to be placed on a women's ward, with women who are already very vulnerable and struggling with their own MH issues.

I really hope the women in whichever psychiatric unit it was were not thrown under the bus this time.

That makes sense, thanks ego

(I meant to say, I wasn't asking to be nosy, just that it is probably the most obvious example where being trans is completely relevant to where a patient is placed in hospital)

Mortificado: "I hadn't been inconvenienced by being the only girl in my A level maths and physics sets and one of two in double maths ...it hadn't occurred to me to think why."

That's something we (the women scientists and mathematians in my workplace) quite often talk about. If you compare and contrast us with our male colleagues, there's a lot wider range of personality types, including more shy and retiring types, among our male colleagues - because only the bolshy, bloody-minded women survive the negative attitudes towards women doing science. We were wondering what scientific workplaces would look like if the gendered expectations at a much earlier age weren't there. (And they kick in incredibly early - I picked my son up from a science and maths enrichment course at the local university recently - this would be year 3 - and out of about 60 kids, only 10 or so were girls. Were the schools screening them out? Were the parents of girls not returning the consent slips? What the hell was going on? I happened to arrive to do pick up with a couple of female friends of mine, one a colleague, the other a SAHM, all three of us with maths or physics PhDs, and we just watched this seemingly endless stream of boys with the very occasional girl in there with absolute horror.)

(Funnily enough, last time I used the word "bolshy" someone accused me of using a gendered slur because they'd only heard it attached to women - I always think of it in its primary meaning of a contraction of Bolshevik, as in the sort of annoying political activist one encounters in student unions and trade union meetings, and would never have thought of it as gendered - but the other person obviously did think of it as gendered. Which is a bit of a digression, but just shows how weirdly open to misinterpretation of one's interlocutor's views and intentions internet discussions are.)

I didn't like Hermione's "castration" comment but Pink's "kitty comment" was unnecessarily rude and very patronising.

Well it was meant to be. Because I found her comment rather rude and people like Hermione are the reason you cannot be a feminist without being dismissed. Every time you argue with people they just say "but...(insert random stupid thing a (radical, for lack of a better word) feminist has said) so what are you on about".

And why does it matter if I am actually a woman or not, if I were a 50 year old redneck would that make my words any less?

And why does it matter if I am actually a woman or not, if I were a 50 year old redneck would that make my words any less?

You would have no right to comment on what is to be a female.