"[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.

Maria Miller called me a fake feminist over gender self-ID. Now she says I was right all along

In a shameless U-turn, Miller has now cooled on self-identification of gender, and says single-sex spaces must be protected.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/01/maria-miller-called-me-fake-feminist-over-gender-self-id-now-she-says-i

Ha! Was about to link to the very same piece.

I think we are on the cusp.

I wish I could upvote your post, needmoresleep.

Tara works for the NHS and has done for several years in a variety of positions. Was Hewitt speaking as a NHS capacity or on the basis of personal experiences/own consultancy/TELI involvement?

This was unclear tbh but I think it was a personal rather than professional appearance on the radio. Hewitt attacked NHS staff which cannot have gone down well.

Thanks Pineapple!

The flip side of 'follow the money' is watch the resource.

I assume TRAs are realising that as well as gaining public acceptance they also need public support in priorising their needs when it comes to allocating limited public resources. And the cost is not inconsiderable. For example Bristol University has committed £3million to provide gender neutral toilets, three times their annual student welfare spend.

The UK is very different to the US. TRAs in the US will assume that they, or their insurance pay for medical care. The lucky few will have the money or have employers who pay. The rest will assume internet drugs and Brazilian surgery. Social/legal acceptance is therefore the obvious priority.

In the UK TRAs will need to campaign. Resources, not legal changes, will be the real battle. It will be far harder to argue that their needs are not in competition with the needs of others. (Though any legal reform would then be used to help demand the resources, which is why I expect a Conservative government will be cautious.)

(And interesting perhaps to see which TRAs prioritise access to womens spaces over access to medical transitioning.)

It's a shame that they campaigned to de-medicalise their condition really. It has thrown those with genuine gender dysphoria under the bus and meant that private clinics will proliferate. They have definitely shot themselves in the foot.

And Need that will be the acid test of who is genuinely dysphoric in my opinion as opposed to the AGP brigade.

It can't be about cervical smears. (Although, it's quite true that we have had a number of transwomen saying they're looking forward to getting their letter, as it's so validating). Because it's so easy to disprove, by the 'picking up the phone' scenario above. Plus, it's what they asked for. It's really bad PR. I can't believe Miller actually said it in print.

It has to be about hormones. That's what they bang on about all the time. The feminisation hormones. Which isn't 'basic health care' in anyone's book.

Hewitt specifically mentions smears for transmen being missed which was countered by Nic Williams saying that transwomen are called for them for validation purposes only.

I suspect that smears are being weaponised and, as you say, hormones are the real goal. I have never heard a TRA show any concern for biological female medical care before so it is definitely suspect.
The Stonewall report just seems bizarre to me.

Many relevant, interesting and sometimes amusing comments under the Telegraph (and the usual number who don't understand that 'transmen' are biological women). This one seemed especially pertinent:

"What she calls basic healthcare appears to be specialised healthcare for LGBT people. This is a fallacy of definition where someone redefines a word, "basic" in this case, to prove a point."

I wonder if that is what Hewitt actually means - as someone earlier suggested, access to hormones, etc.

If they are talking about smears, they are on a hiding to nothing. No one is going to buy that. Pick up the bloody phone. And change your bloody ideology so you can tell men to stop using smear letters as a validation technique.

Or.

Keep going and alienate the entire country.

3 million quid on toilets??? Really! Bloody hell.

All the kids that need support but they're using it on loo's that affirm peoples inner identities. Fast forward 20 years and these will be the same people complaining that their children have no privacy.

Datun, sounds like any access to healthcare problems have been created by the very ideology which they want the whole of our society to adopt. What an absolute bunch of bollocks.

All the kids that need support but they're using it on loo's that affirm peoples inner identities. Fast forward 20 years and these will be the same people complaining that their children have no privacy.

Bristol has had a spate of student suicides and has serious problems with its mental health provision. But they can find three times the student welfare budget to spend on gender-validating toilet facilities.

I thought Sick and ill ppl should be at the heart of nhs
When did it change ?

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

Rufus what was their rationale? I didn't think painkillers are expensive. Were they afraid he'd get addicted, even though he was dying?

I don't care whether consenting adult trans people get hormones on the NHS, cash strapped though it is. Hormones aren't expensive. Trans people should absolutely not be prioritised over other people for interventions like fertility treatment, cosmetic surgeries, hysterectomies, electrolyis, etc. If the government open a consultation around this then that would be an important point to make. If TRAs think they're not getting those interventions fast enough to suit them, they should campaign for the whole of the NHS to be better funded.

Well, once again someone has used LGBT to mean 'let's talk about trans needs'.

What does Maria Miller mean by saying we should put lesbian, gay and bi people at the heart of the NHS? Has she also identified problems with LGB people accessing healthcare? If so, what and why?

(I'd be a really annoying journalist. I'd sit there saying 'Why?' and 'How do we know?' and 'What do you mean by that?' until we lost the thread completely.)

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6554031/Transgender-woman-shave-twice-day-says-NHS-mucking-peoples-lives.html

home

As far as I remember the nurse said he didnt look like he was in pain even though he was asking his mum for it

They moved him to a hostel in the end, they were wonderful apparently. Very patient focused

I am genuinely interested in how much a 15 year old who decides they are gender dysphoric, might cost the NHS.

Lifetime hormones from age 16. Surgery. The cost of medical issues caused by the long term use of hormones. I assume it is massive. I am old enough now to understand how important it is to build the foundations of good health when you are young. Coming up to retirement age, and some people I know are already "old". Drinking, smoking, HIV, teenage anorexia, party drugs, obesity, occupational health problems, have caught up with some of my peers. It may not seem important when you are young, and even people of Susie Green's age may not fully understand, but the difference between looking forward to two decades of active retirement, or struggling with health issues, is huge.

Someone posted a link, either here or on Twitter a few months back, to an American transexual, the first transexual member of a californian policeforce, giving a talk. Not unlike some of the older transexuals in the UK there were clear warnings about gender reasignment not being something to be undertaken lightly, in particular because of the longer-term health implications. I have not been able to find the link again. A pity as it was both honest and shocking. The brave and stunning stuff is OK when you are young, but no one really seems to be looking at the longer term implications, perhaps by researching the experiences of the first generation of transexuals.

Ha! Was about to link to the very same piece

That peice includes the line ‘I’ve had two tedious years of being abused online as a transphobe and a “TERF” or “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” – despite my belief that trans women are women, and trans men are men‘

But transwomen are not women and transmen are not men. If they were there would be no problem.

Rufus, that's so awful. I'm glad he got good treatment in the end. I don't understand why some patients are taken so seriously and others are dismissed so callously.

Dr EM supports Meghan Murphy
@PankhurstEM
Piece by
@helenlewis
, Maria Miller has rebuked herself. Nevertheless I still feel the terms sex and gender are being used interchangeably and don't understand how Lewis's statement that a man is a woman on there say so

Helen Lewis
@helenlewis
Replying to
@PankhurstEM
My model for gender is citizenship: you can be born into one category & go through a civic process to enter another. So just as a Germany-born person can become a British citizen, so a person born male can become a woman. Birth sex & gender are distinct.

mobile.twitter.com/PankhurstEM/status/1080817065081167873

I agree with dr EM and what she says in the rest of the thread

Need wondering if you are referring to Rene Jax, author of "Don't Get on the Plane: Why A Sex Change Will Ruin Your Life"