"[P]utting LGBT people’s needs at the heart of the NHS": Government spokesman

[gcscience]

What a ridiculous comment: to put any particular group at the heart of the NHS - apart from the most sick, disabled or suffering of course - seems to go against its very ethos.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/trans-rights-reform-lgbt-gender-recognition-conservatives-maria-miller-theresa-may-a8707691.html

Has someone just made a payment to MM or is she always like this.

The reform pledge faced a backlash from some feminist groups, who have raised concerns that people who identify as a different gender could gain access to single-sex spaces, such as bathrooms, or services.
Ms Miller called on the government to make clear that no one’s rights would be eroded by making the legal system fairer to trans people.
“My advice to ministers is that they should be clear that there is no threat to single-sex services, they are clearly protected in law and they need to be clearer on that,” she said.

No threat to single-sex services? taking the most obvious example, 'Karen White'...
If anyone can post comments on the newspaper articles (I assume you need to be registered?) a link to the prison review petition might be appropriate.

Anyway. Yes, let's correctly handle trans peoples medical needs by clearly recording their sex on medical records, together with accurate medical history, no obfuscation or redaction of past.

People with learning disabilities are four times as likely to die of preventable causes compared with the general population

1,200 people with a learning disability die avoidably inNHS care every year. That’s three people dying unnecessarily every day.

....as shown in The Learning Disabilities Mortality Review.

Until there are learning disability liaison nurses and training put in place in all areas of healthcare, this is what I would like to see in the headlines.

“Many trans people simply don’t have access to the basic healthcare that the rest of us take for granted – things like cervical smears are often things that trans men are not able to access,” Ms Miller told the Press Association.

I think this is one of the goadiest/stupidest statements I've seen from a politician. This is exactly the situation Maria Miller worked for and now she's complaining about it.

If trans people are to be treated as members of the opposite sex then this is one of the many adverse outcomes.
So did Maria not understand what she was fighting for?

I'm wondering if "NHS services" means mental health services - which transpeople may possibly need in larger numbers than the general population.

But the thing is - gender dysphoria has now been changed from being a mental health condition to a physical one.... so the NHS doesn't have to provide counselling or therapy to help people deal with it. That's what the trans lobby asked for.

This is the result of a healthcare provider recording people's gender identity rather than their sex. This is what trans lobbyists have demanded

So being a trans man makes it impossible to pick up the phone and make an appointment?

I really don't think she did. I think that politicians as a group are so short sighted and short termist that they really do not engage brain before championing a cause. But awareness is growing, people are waking up and this will help to prod people in the right direction I hope.

I'm sad to say that Miller is my MP - I am pretty certain she is only interested in scoring political points... she will change her tack to suit the circumstances.

But Marguerita their fear of misgendering means that they are afraid to according to Hewitt.

In the interest of the clarity (with respect to single sex provision) that Maria Miller is suddenly so keen on, perhaps we could ask her to confirm that sex referred to in the equalities act is biological sex not legal sex. Don't hold your breath for a reply.

It's worth a push though whilst this is in the news?

God forbid that we put sick people at the heart of the NHS

MIL died nearly 18 months ago

Completely and utterly the fault of our current NHS which did not put the needs of a sick 72 year old at the heart of its fucking organisation

And thats not a pop at any of the staff who attempted to help her

The NHS killed her through neglect

Dd has ME ...is she getting any help? Fuck me no...again not down to individual staff

Friends 14 year old boy died from cancer, NHS staff this time refused him pain killers

the amount of women with life changing (albeit low level) injuries following childbirth

The NHS is fucked at the moment and its such a shame

“Many trans people simply don’t have access to the basic healthcare that the rest of us take for granted – things like cervical smears are often things that trans men are not able to access,” Ms Miller told the Press Association

Ridiculous

Yeah why dont they have access?? Eh?? Eh??

The solution appears to be to register sex and note preferred gender separately, with the former enabling appropriate health care and the latter allowing politeness.
Yup. That's the answer right there, but instead I suspect Miller's comments are a precursor to another £££ consultancy exercise (maybe Jess Bradley could lead it if they're still looking for a job) and more leaflets about people with cervixes.

I'd like a bit more detail about the "not able to access" part. If TRAs have demanded that all traces of a person's biological sex be wiped from the profile their GP's office sees and that results in transmen not being called in for smears etc then that's the fault of TRAs, not the NHS. If what's meant is that if a transman turns up at their GP and asks for a smear to be done, and is refused even though they have told the GP that they are trans and have a cervix, then that's outrageous.

If what's meant is that transmen have trouble finding a provider who'll do their smear while convincingly pretending that they're not female then their problem would seem to be that nurses, gynos, GPs etc are neither therapists nor actors.

I agree that actual collected cases of "non-access" would be useful. With dates, postcodes, context - the whole bit.

In the interest of the clarity (with respect to single sex provision) that Maria Miller is suddenly so keen on, perhaps we could ask her to confirm that sex referred to in the equalities act is biological sex not legal sex. Don't hold your breath for a reply.

^This. Why aren't journalists doing their job? Miller is on record saying that people who 'transition' from male to female should have access to women's refuges and rape crisis centres. If she doesn't want to talk about self-id (which was a recommendation of the committee she chaired!), fine, let's talk about services. What does she mean by single-sex services, and how does she propose to resolve the misgendering vs biological reality conundrum wrt trans healthcare?

I am imagining a situation in which a transman doesn't get his reminder for a cervical smear because he's had his gender changed on NHS systems

That's what came to my mind, but is that it? Not getting a reminder letter is hardly 'can't access basic health care'. Smear uptake is important but, as you say, the immediate answer seems pretty clear.

Does anyone have a link to the report? It would be interesting to see what actual substance there is.

Just realised that Hewitt was pulling stats from this report.

www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/lgbt-in-britain-trans.pdf

Yes agreed. 'Not able to access' needs unpacking.

Some GC people on twitter seem to have welcomed this as a u turn and as the start of rowing back from self id.

It is an illuminating read!

Pain this is my hope too.

This is a new kind of crazy. How on earth can it be the case that trans people don't have access to "basic" healthcare? Who or what is stopping them?

There are people who genuinely have difficulty accessing basic healthcare - homeless people, for example. Young people with mental health problems may have to wait months for a CAMHS appointment. But trans people? Are they being denied appointments by their GP? What does Miller imagine is going on?

The statement 'basic healthcare that the rest of us take for granted' is simply not true. Or rather 'basic' can be really basic. (Though other times it is excellent - there is a lottery element.)

We ended up paying for DD to have surgery. She was on repeat prescriptions of the sort of painkillers that you are only supposed to take for 10 days and was barely getting any sleep. The wait list where she lived was 4 years. The private surgeon said his NHS wait list was 10 months and far too long for her to wait, as it would have meant a lifetime of restricted mobillity. Similarly we paid for my 89 year old mother to have private physio as she would never have got back on her feet had she waited 6 weeks for the NHS. (Tip £100 for 3 physio sessions was the best £100 she will have ever spent. Whilst DDs surgery was less than the cost of her repeating her University year, so again a sensible, if unwelcome, investment.)

The NHS is free so restricts demand through queuing. There is something really entitled about healthy young people, deciding that they are 'in the wrong body' so deciding to physically or chemically mutilate themselves, and to then expect to queue jump in front of seriously ill people. And even less acceptable when coupled with a refusal to accept that gender dysphora might be a (rare) mental health issue that needs to be diagnosed by a psychiatrist.

My guess is that the NHS accountants have been at work and calculated the lifelong cost of a teenager who has decided she is dysphoric, including the cost of treating side effects and/or any later decision to detransition. Plus perhaps

the cost of fertility treatment.

I suspect this is going to be the big difference between the US and UK. In the US, you get treatment is you pay (including those who opt for cheap drugs from the internet.) In the UK, society pays. Which gives society the right to set priorities, and to question a healthy fertile teenager who self-diagnoses, and then demands a massive share of the available resource.

My mums psychiatrist confirmed that a decision about 8 years ago to push to diagnose Alzheimer's was directly related to Aricept coming out of patent. Aricept delivered sufficient improvements in capacity that the savings in care costs outweighed the (now much reduced) drug cost.

Bloody Mermaids

Maybe she thinks there's a shadowy cabal of evil witches who stand at the doors of medical buildings refusing entry to anyone insufficiently gender conforming.

Which of course is exactly what you'd expect a group of women containing a statistically higher than average percentage of lesbians to do.

(Nods seriously.)