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?

Oh now ladies, don't get your panties in a wad. Quite funny how you talk about me being condescending and using straw men, when all you do...

Panties? Urgh - one of the worst words ever

Why would a pregnant woman who was not a transman get a side room just because they self-identified as a man? They would have no physical characteristics that might make other women on the ward feel uncomfortable, and they pose no threat to the other women, so I agree it was a flippant comment.

I'm genuinely struggling to think of a situation where a woman would be better off self-identifying as a man for non-genuine purposes TBH

Pink

Are you American? (panties/wad).

Datun The Blind Side, car pool scene.

Pink - is that a no?

Only we tend to say knickers in a twist, and that's fairly old fashioned, as it is.

Datun indeed a no, was a reference to the America movie where that quote is from.

they hysterectomy case:

How was it transphobic that he hemorraged? I hemorraged after surgery, it was misdiagnosed as another type of shock, what did my hemorrage being missed have to do with my gender? I don't get it?

Oh and a trans man having a hysterectomy could be cared for on a general surgery ward. Most hospitals have them because there aren't always beds on speciality specific wards and the general ward takes the over-flow. Consultants include those wards in their rounds and they general surgery wards are staffed by surgical nurses. They have male and female bays.

Men and women must transition for completely different reasons. I think men have a far greater sexual motive, and women just think it would be better to be a man.

Either way they need to be put on the ward according to their biological sex. If they are uncomfortable there is little to do. It's uncomfortable being in hospital anyway. If the other patients are uncomfortable, it needs to be explained.

I'm wondering why, instead of curtains around the bed, there can't be something more like a blind, or shutter, making it more private.

I'm wondering why, instead of curtains around the bed, there can't be something more like a blind, or shutter, making it more private

There are, there are "pods" that can be errected around a bay bed making it an extra side room during an outbreak without enough side rooms. I think they must be very expensive though because hospitals don't have many of them at the moment.

Bay pods: www.bioquell.com/en-uk/products/hc-products/single-occupancy-rooms/bioquell-pod

Either way they need to be put on the ward according to their biological sex. If they are uncomfortable there is little to do

Oh good. So as someone who has transitioned, who has had surgery, who has breasts and who presents to the world in a way that would make someone think they were female, you'd be happy for me to be on a male ward where there are men who are more than happy to commit acts of sexual violence, to try and grope people and to stare at me.

You are ok with that?

Ego - that's exactly what self-identification will do to ALL female sex-segregated spaces. Soon there'll be just as much chance of you being groped and harrassed in women's wards. I think you're seeing the problem now. Maybe it's time to start campaigning for safe trans spaces?

I think you're seeing the problem now

That's just a little bit patronising TBH.

Maybe it's time to start campaigning for safe trans spaces

So every ward would need a space for men, women, MTF and FTM? Given the NHS has no money, I don't think that's workable.

Do you?

Ego, I think when you've spoken before that you aren't completely down with the idea of pure self-identification - that you think there are some hurdles that it would be fair to cross before having the right to be legally seen as a woman?

Side rooms do cover this as best we can I think, then for other circumstances, there's no reason that if a born woman can't be on a mixed ward, then a transwoman can be on a mixed ward.

Self-identification harms all of us, because then the blokes who once snuck in, or who planted secret video cameras (as someone did at my first retail job in the ladies toilet), can now just say 'but I'm a woman' and walk straight in with no opportunity to challenge or remove them. They can walk straight in on you or I.

Without self identification, both you and I have a chance to demand that our spaces be free of such males.

ego147

Sorry ego. No, I'm not happy but that is exactly the problem with this - women are already experiencing exactly what you're worried about. The net result of all this is unisex everything ! So everyone suffers.

Argh - I just re-read my second paragraph, and I don't thinnk it's clear - I meant to say that if a woman should be fine on a mixed ward, then there's no reason that a transwoman shouldn't also be fine on that mixed ward.

I'm not 50 and it was only recently I stopped thinking that feminism was just some aggressive thing that bitter old women did - that's something that as young women who are fresh from being shaped to please men, be attractive to men, and judge ourselves on the basis of how effectively we do this, whilst believing we're not doing that at all tend to think - until we start trying to extend beyond those ideas. It wasn't women telling me that feminists were just bitter either. And thank god it makes us angry because this whole idea of anger simply holding us back is bollocks. It's not attractive to be angry, our shrill angry voices piss men off the poor lambs.

This is about smaller pieces - little erosions of women's rights (like wards for women being accessible to people who are physically male), how we're treated by both men and other women - of a bigger picture, where despite most of us knowing and loving many men who don't outwardly seem to show us (or notice themselves) that women are still bottom of the pile, we're so busy focusing on them that we forget to look at the overall state of women's rights globally.

Right now it's not cool to be a feminist, but younger women don't seem to realise that being 'one of the lads' is desirable because being a woman isn't.

ego, if you fear male violence then why are you okay with putting a man into a woman's ward?

Or do you think that women don't fear male violence?

And this talk of side rooms is worrying. The side rooms are for those patients who have the greatest clinical need. If we are saying that all trans patients automatically get a side room on a women's ward, then that means that this side room is not available for the woman with the greater clinical need for it.

Consequently, the services for women are reduced. Which is a bad thing. You'll end up with women being moved to General Wards because of lack of space so that they share space with men so that a trans person doesn't have to. That is discrimination against that woman based purely on her sex.

And you'll get the situation where women will discharge themselves against medical advice (see also the thread on men staying overnight on post-natal wards).

kate

Those are very complex questions - and there's no simple answer. The reality is money is an object. Trans people also don't go around with ID saying they are trans so this is how I should be treated. There are trans people who you would not be able to tell are trans - and there are those who you can definitely tell. There are trans people who have had surgery and there are those who haven't - you can't tell unless you check.

That could lead to the situation where someone is thought to be trans and is asked to move - but is not trans.

Trans men at risk - yes. I have said on here before (and elswhere) that trans men must face dangers as they are 'in the lion's den' so to speak in male spaces. There have been cases of trans men being attacked and even raped and murdered by men when they have been exposed as trans. The film 'boys don't cry' is all about that and it's awful.

But then if trans men were on a female ward because they are female, that could potentially lead to issues amongst the women on there.

None of this is news to people here. There are so many issues and concerns that all groups face and there are no simple, practical solutions that do not potentially expose other groups to danger - given we live in a real world and not one which is as yet adapting to trans people as well.

As for trans activists, you'd have to ask them why they do it.

Personally, I just want to try and live in this world without being noticed, without making a fuss and without making myself and other people feel uncomfortable.

kidnapped

So you don't seem to want trans people in side wards.

You don't think trans people should be in the same ward with women / men.

You acknowledge that trans people are at risk from violence as well.

So where should trans people go?

Can I just check your usage of must; "trans men must face dangers [as] they are in the lions den". Do you mean, they are obligated to / ought to face those dangers as the quid pro quo for self declaration

No - must in this case means that they 'do face dangers when they are in an all male space'

Not 'must' as in they have to accept it.

Being a trans man in a male space must be incredibly worrying.

And of course - if you have a trans man in a female space, you don't know if they are trans or not - and that must worry women as well.