Mixed sex wards and trans women.

[sarsleypage]

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?

When I read "Hospitals don't treat anyone on their looks but by their biology", I understood that treatment to refer to medical treatment, not use of pronouns.

Medical treatment would be determined according to sex, which doesn't change, and not according to makeup, heels, and preferred pronouns.

Trans people should be accommodated according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns that
they currently use.
It does not depend upon their having a gender recognition certificate (GRC) or legal name change;

The way they dress and preferred pronouns? Thats it? So a male 'crossdresser' who presented himself as 'Mrs Doubtfire' would be slung in with the females? Am I reading this correctly?

It's a rapist's dream come true basically

Quite.

Utter insanity.

< sits back and awaits the lawsuits>

I doubt it will be too long.

Yet if it's been recommend practice since 2009 and we haven't heard too much of it in the press, then perhaps it's working out ok? If transgender people represent 600 per 100,000 (0.06%) of people, of whom 80% were male at birth, then 0.048% of people are MtF trans.

Then you'd have to see how many male patients are treated each year (biological sex) to see many MtF trans people statistically are treated, then see how many women are treated each year also. My phone is playing up so I'll split my post.

Ok 6.82 million male admissions in 2013-14 and 8.68 million female admissions. content.digital.nhs.uk/article/6053/Hospital-inpatient-care-almost-900-more-admissions-per-day-compared-to-previous-year

So 6.82 million male admissions = 3127 MtF trans admissions.

For every 1 MtF transgender admission, there would have been 2776 female admissions.

Taking a standard 6-bed, 4 bay ward with 2 side rooms, totaling 26 beds, There would be one MtF transgender person per 107 wards.

So while there will be situations that need to be sensitively handled, I think that it will be quite statistically uncommon.

source of transgender statistics

for Lougle for doing the sums.

"If transgender people represent 600 per 100,000 (0.06%) of people"

I think there is a decimal error there. 600/100,000 = 0.6%.

That sounds like an improbably high ratio, by the way. Maybe if you include any man who has ever contemplated putting on mascara, numbers would come to that.

Ok, a B+ on account of the error.

Also, I don't think you can average T popularization over the entire UK. As with LGB, I would also assume to T be far more likely to live in large cities.

T popularization population

Was that autocorrect or freudian?

You're right, of course, Cote. So it's more like one in 11 wards.

Having said that, I don't think anyone should pay attention to my posts of last night, because thinking about it further, presumably the MtF admissions were all counted as female in the first place, and the FtM admissions were counted as male, so if you calculate from admission numbers, you're counting transgender admissions twice.

So 6.82 million male admissions = 3127 MtF trans admissions.

One problem, wouldn't MtF trans be recorded as female admissions and appear in female stats.

I don't want to fear monger, but I am thinking about this.

I've worked with someone who was subsequently found to have planted cameras in the toilets, and was eventually prosecuted for raping underage girls (and I thank God I stayed away at Christmas parties, because, whilst I thought he was a bit strange, it was my first job and I was making an effort to fit in and be friendly with everyone, and he didn't seem that odd). Now, this guy, he wasn't stupid, more than once he got a bit closer than I liked in the lunch room for example. If he was on a ward, I've no doubt that it would be subtle enough that you wouldn't really have anything to report - when you were sleeping, or still groggy from a procedure.

Hell, how many women have realised that they've had things done to them (in the course of 'education' for junior doctors) while they were under anaesthetic? How many women has it happened to, and they didn't realise?

Those guidelines are scary. It literally says that a bloke can put on a dress and be put on a women's ward if he's convincing enough.

fakenamefornow yes, I've said that in my post this morning.

Hell, how many women have realised that they've had things done to them (in the course of 'education' for junior doctors) while they were under anaesthetic? How many women has it happened to, and they didn't realise?

What does this mean?!! (Ugh - not sure I want to know...)

Also the whole reason this has suddenly become so concerning, is because of Maria Miller's crusade to eliminate the criteria for becoming trans. If we don't see an upsurge in people identifying as the opposite sex, for all sorts of reasons, I'll be very surprised.

The junior doctors thing is that it used to be the case that if you were under anaesthetic for a gynae treatment, junior doctors were allowed to practice doing internal exams, and no one thought it important enough to ask for the patient's consent.

There was a big scandal about it maybe 20 years ago, as it was apparently fairly routine. Pretty sure it has been stamped out, but the fact that it happened in the first place is outrageous.

yes, as treacle says.

There was a harrowing post once on here, where a woman in another thread had some memories from an operation when she was younger (18ish I think), which she didn't understand, then someone mentioned that this happened, and it all clicked into place for her.

treaclesoda

'fairly routine'. Dear God. What on earth bred that attitude?

Luckily (as I now realise) I wasn't under anaesthetic for either of my two, but the 'top man' for the area was a twat of the first order. He seemed to have nothing but contempt for the women he was treating. Made my blood boil at the time, but what can you do when you are so reliant, and in such a vulnerable situation?

Actually, to all intents and purposes that is sexual assault, surely!

This is really nagging at me now. Why wasn't there a massive scandal? Wasn't it being treated as historical sex abuse?

And how DO Junior doctors learn about internal exams? Are women routinely asked if a junior doctor can have a quick practice?