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?

My family had an elderly male child rapist in it. Jimmy Saville was an elderly male sexual predator. Men are happy to use "age aint nothing but a number" as an excuse to predate on young women for decades but we are supposed to suddenly apply a rule change when they become old and (allegedly) vulnerable? Yeh, no.

That's a point. What do they call a trans women's vagina? I bet it does have some medical/scientific name.

Going on links to trans resources posted on MN recently, I seem to recall transwimen have vaginas and actual women now have "front holes", which just wrong every which way you look at it.

Oh FFS! So many typos.

I disagree that getting (seriously misogynistic) cosmetic surgery should entitle a man to extra special treatment and access to female spaces.

I have been flashed at as a child and an adult by elderly males.

CoteDAzur

Thanks for that. It comes to something though when someone who identifies as female and acts so male that you can't name it appropriately.

Ego. I've seen your posts before. Please believe me when I say you have my sympathy and compassion. My irritation and fear over the trans-ideology does not preclude that.

However, claiming womanhood, and then actively arguing against what most women want, leaves a bitter taste. You are asking women for suggestions to solve your dilemma, which is not only not their fight, it's in direct conflict with their own interests.

It's a big ask for women to even give two fucks tbh. You're asking for a solution that either directly discriminates against women, or elevates trans people and treats them in a special way.

Anybody else getting ads for Vagasil Prohydrate at the top of this thread now

Choc - maybe that's because the number of identified transwomen is currently small

No, I mean that I think that men wouldn't find appealing the idea of raping a male who looked like a woman on a hospital ward.

I think that the men that rape women on hospital wards are predators, or opportunistic predators, and the number of males who want to prey on transwomen either opportunistically, or by checking themselves in to mixed wards on the off chance there is a transwoman there are vanishingly small.

In contrast to the number of men who want to prey on women, or who would opportunistically prey on women, given a ward full of them and guaranteed, through the night, access, especially given it's a self-selecting group that has a large number of autogynephiles, especially among the more older males.

I agree Choc. It seems harsh to say so but we are constantly fed this notion that MTTs are at risk of being raped by men and therefore women have to fix this problem. The evidence simply does not support this. I have seen many more reports of women being sexually assaulted and raped by MTTs than of MTTs being sexually assaulted or raped by men.

To be clear, I didn't make my hypothetical patient 80 years old because I think all old people are benign extras from a Werthers Originals advert. My point was more that for someone who had done so much more than self-identify as a woman to the extent that fifty years ago they underwent extensive surgery and had spent the years since presenting as a woman, I don't think that we can just turn around say, nope, sorry, still not good enough, the men's ward is over there.

Perhaps in the future we will have trans wards, or some other kind of third space, but maybe not and some form of compromise on all sides is required. It becomes too easy to dismiss us as nasty TERFy transphobes otherwise, and I personally think that our real battle is with those who would try to define what a woman is by feelz and "expanding the bandwidth". I know many on here will disagree with this approach , but I am indeed very much still Spartacus anyway

Ironically, insisting on recording crimes under the victim's preferred gender means - I suspect - that there isn't clear data on sexual assaults on MTTs... Another reason why it helps no one to pretend that MTT are women and FTT are men

OlennasWimple

It's not that I don't agree with you. It's that grading transpeople, on their authenticity or otherwise is impossible. And those who are sexually motivated, will have far more of a reason to present as authentic than anyone else.

It's simply unworkable.

If the transactivists hadn't been so insistent in their (hidden) agenda, none of this would have happened. Your hypothetical 80-year-old transwoman would have just carried on as normal.

You have to ask yourself why? Why the insistence.

Drudge I have New Look!

I dont agree that there should be special rules for some males on the basis that they have supported the gender system for longer than some others. Access to women's space shouldnt be given based on time served living as a sexist imitation of a woman. I dont even think that we should make special allowances into women's space for men who were 'transitioned' as boys. Males need to be able to access male-only space safely and if other males are getting in the way of that then thats the problem that needs dealing with. Females need to be able to access female-only space safely and the only way to do that is to keep males out of it, regardless of their costume choices, cosmetic surgeries, beliefs, age, muscle mass, personal hi scores, shoe size, colour preferences, favourite biscuits, or whatever excuse they try to find for why they are 'different to other men'.

Just come back, and wanted to ask lougle or anyone else knowledgeable, whether in the future the disadvantages of separate rooms from a clinical pov could be to a large extent overcome by remote monitoring technologies. I would have thought that there were distinct benefits to the patient simply because of more peace and quiet leading to better sleep.

"disadvantages of separate rooms from a clinical pov could be to a large extent overcome by remote monitoring technologies"

I wonder if you are all aware that in many other countries, there is no such thing as "wards" and everyone does have rooms for 1 or 2 patients.

I have only ever stayed in private rooms in two different countries, and not because I paid more.

There didn't seem to be any problem with monitoring.

Anybody else getting ads for Vagasil Prohydrate at the top of this thread now

Nope. I'm getting Dodderhill School, wherever the fuck that is. Nowhere local to me.

If MTT need their privacy and dignity protecting, I don't see why they can't take up side rooms in the men's wards rather than taking up side rooms in the women's wards.

Also, I'm getting more angrier about this whole fucking charade by the day.

Are the staffing levels higher? TBH it seems to me that, as you say cote, wards aren't necessarily the norm nowadays elsewhere (I bet Jenner has never and would never be treated anywhere other than a private room, whatever gender at the time!) so this may be a situation which resolves itself in time.

I don't know what staffing is like in the UK, but I doubt if it's much different. You are in a room, people come and check on you, there is a button to press if you need help.

What else do you think it needed regarding monitoring? How does it help to be in a large room with other patients?

I'm not talking about intensive care, where things would surely be different.

I just dont understand why so many people are full of sympathy for men who choose to call themselves women. So what if they get (mis)gendered or people think they are freaky or they are laughed at? Some people think im a slob because I dont follow a feminine beauty routine, my lack of bother about 'personal care' to prettify myself is actually seen as a symptom of mental illness, and it very definitely causes problems for me in everyday life because people percieve me, an unfeminine woman, as freaky and unstable because of my non-conformity. I dont want sympathy for that, I want an end to gender stereotyping and female subordination! I fight it by being myself and hoping that people learn from their relationships and encounters with me that there are alternative ways of living as a female than the culturally 'acceptable' ones. I hope girls see me and think, oh its ok to have really short hair and be female, its okay to be a geeky female, its okay to be female and live in trousers and t shirts and not own a skirt or ever wear make up or shave your legs or whatever.

Germaine Greer said something along the lines of - so what if people laugh at them or call them names, people do that to women all the time and noone gives a shit. Im with her, So What?! Some guys feelings are hurt because I consider his surgically created cavity a symbol of his misogynist fetish and an insult to all women. My feelings are hurt at his insistence that creating a cavity in his body makes him a woman! My rights are hurt by my governments legal validation of his feelings and his surgical insult. My humanity is hurt by the idea that a woman can be created by making a hole in a man. Or even crazier, that a woman is something that only men get to define, because there are millions of women around the world who believe that a woman is a female human and that no man can become a woman, and we are told repeatedly that we are all transphobes who dont get to define "woman". Its all bullshit and im sick of being told to suck it all up, swallow and smile.

Well just as an example: A busy surgical ward. A patient has been back from theatre for a couple of hours so has now been moved to hourly observations. They are drowsy (who wouldn't be, they've just had surgery) and in a side room, that might mean someone doing obs at 10 am and obs at 11 am, but the ward is busy so they don't get seen in between unless they buzz. Then they'll be moved on to 2 hourly obs. So they'll be seen at 12pm and 2 pm.

That vessel that was nicked has been slowly leaking. The space it is leaking into is large, so no pain is felt. The body compensates remarkably well for some time, so no major change in obs is seen. But when they decompensate, it will happen quite quickly.

Same patient, but they're in a bay. The ward us just as busy. The obs are exactly the same. But the patient next to him, or across the bay, returned from theatre at a slightly different time, so someone is doing their obs in between the first patient's obs. As they pass, they notice that the first patient looks a bit clammy, a bit pale, is breathing a bit rapidly....enough that they decide to bring that 2 hourly set of obs forward. The patient is going into shock and needs urgent treatment.

That's the reality of nursing. People pass by the bedside and think 'that's not right....'. It's happened to me in ITU. A super experienced nurse walked past my bedspace, paused, and said 'you've got a cuff-leak, I can hear it'. A big problem, very quickly and easily fixed, but she would not have heard it had I been in the side room because she wouldn't have come in to the room.

That's just two examples.

"I'm not talking about intensive care, where things would surely be different."

We're lucky in ITU. We have remote telemonitoring, so we can see the physiological monitoring of every patient of the unit from two monitoring hubs on either side of the unit. We have invasive, moment by moment blood pressure monitoring. We have continuous ECG monitoring.

On the wards they have.....nothing. 3 or 4 portable blood pressure machines and oxygen saturation probes between 28 patients.

Their skill in observing the general condition of their patients - which patient was chatty earlier and is now just slumped in the chair, etc, is what saves lives and they can't do that easily if they're all in private rooms.

I've got adverts for Pottery Barn at the top of my page (though I am in the US)...

I know that using individuals to illustrate an issue can be problematic, and that most transmen don't look like this, but would most women be happy to have
Laith Ashley De La Cruz on their gynae ward? (I'm not disputing that that might be the best place for him for clinical reasons, as well as reasons of sex, by the way)

I've had two operations and a CS, all of which was managed without a single second in a ward with multiple other people. I was kept for observation for a while after each operation (~ 30 minutes, or until I could move my feet after the CS) but then was moved to my room.

All of your stories of nurses coming by and checking on you in a ward can and does happen when you are in a room of your own.