noname99
You've just complained that I named 3-4 activists, then a few posts later said that "Stonewall are dominating everything". It's not just a few noisy activists, it's Stonewall and noisy violent dangerous activists who have the Govt ear. That frightens me.
observed/assigned at birth (for m not getting into that semantic and utterly pointless argument)
Actually, it's a vitally important distinction. Assignment indicates a choice on the part of the midwife, observation indicates no choice. I didn't assign the sky blue this morning, I observed that it was blue. Core to gender essentialist beliefs is the tenet that the midwife somehow chose your sex and might have got it wrong.
Why is the HCP such an issue?
Read the following very very carefully because it hurts me emotionally every time I have to type this out:
- As a child aged eight, I was sexually assaulted, cornered in a mixed changing room by two older boys who groped my vulva.
- In my twenties, my then-bf raped me, leaving me with a tear that healed badly and acts as a reservoir for thrush and other microbes. This has permanent effects on my sexual health.
- All three of my sexual assailants and every sexual harasser in my life have been male. Male = threat.
When a HCP inserts a speculum for a smear test, she is hurting me where my rapist hurt me.*
When a gynaecologist inserts a speculum, then clamps my cervix, then dilates my cervix to insert a IUS or IUD, she is hurting me where my rapist hurt me* so much that my screams of pain can be heard from the waiting room outside.
If you have a shred of empathy, you will understand why having a male-bodied person inflict that kind of pain would be extremely bad for me psychologically. If not, read on.
When I went abroad for my not-available-in-the-UK frameless IUS as a last-ditch attempt to manage my endometriosis and dysmenorrhea because the NHS will not hysterectomise a childless woman unless it's to save her life, I had to see a male gyn because he invented the IUS and was the only gyn I could find who would fit it. This man has devoted his life to improving women's health, his wife was staffing the reception desk outside, he wasn't going to abuse me. Knowing that didn't stop my rising anxiety as I took off my trousers behind the curtain, nor did it stop my vagina from clamping shut involuntarily when I felt the speculum, nor did it stop me from suffering a brief dissociative episode when he injected my cervix with lidocaine (why don't the NHS offer pain relief like that?), nor did it stop me from collapsing into shaking and tears the moment I stepped out onto the street afterwards. If I had had any option to see a woman gyn for that IUS, I would have seen one. I very nearly bottled out when I came to walk in, it was only the thought that I had to face the insertion "now or never" that gave me the mental strength to go ahead with it. If I bottled out I would have had to go home and it would be terrible to travel so far only to give up and still have agonising pain every month forever, so I steeled myself to stay and it was the single scariest thing I have ever opted into.
As sexual violence survivors go, I'm lucky to be relatively unaffected when it comes to gynae health procedures. Despite this a man, a good man who genuinely cares about women's quality of life and proves this with deeds but a man nonetheless, fitting me with an IUS was still traumatic. There are women out there who do not attend smear tests at all because they've been sexually assaulted or raped. These women are in danger of developing undetected cervical cancer, just as Jade Goody did. There are other women survivors who can cope with a smear test performed by a female person but would not cope with one performed by a male person. I wouldn't go for my smear if I thought a male would perform it: without the urgency of "I must do this now or get the Eurostar home without the IUS", I woulf keep putting off making the appointment, and putting it off, and putting it off. And, frankly, I shouldn't have to put myself through dissociative episodes, anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, shaking, and sobbing for routine NHS healthcare. (Ideally, I shouldn't have to go through that for exotic IUSes either, but NICE suck.) I should not have to put myself through that distress for the sake of a male person who wants to validate their womanliness by turning up to do a smear when the patient has requested a female HCP. I want my HCP to have had smears and know how it feels, so she knows what she is putting me through.
It is not acceptable to endanger women's lives by making it harder for women who have been raped and sexually assaulted to access vital gynecological health care, just because a tiny number of male-born people want their womanhood validated. Trans rights don't exist in isolation, female people still have, and need to retain, sex-based rights, and gynae care is one of the cases where that matters.