LBC this morning

[starcrossedseahorse]

Anyone listening to Nick Ferrari this morning? Tara Hewitt was on claiming that trans people are unable to access basic healthcare due to NHS staff being mean to them. Some spurious statistics were dragged out ( as usual) and Nick Ferrari mixed up gender and sex which made it difficult to follow if you are not clued up.

Dr Nic Williams was given less air time but did a good job focusing on the issues in hand and pointing out (again) the issues with reform to the GRA.

I have a really good feeling that Maria Miller is on the back foot and has been told to refocus the debate on to health matters and to kick the GRA reforms in to the long grass.

It feels like the start of it and for the first time in ages I feel hopeful.

Didn't hear it. What makes you think that?

I read the report in the Indepedent

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

Where she says everyone in the Uk could feel support regardless of their sexual orientation, race or gender identity.

Not a single mention of feeling supported due to sex?

To switch the debate to a lack of health care is an interesting turn. I don't understand what standard health Care trans people are missing out on?

The article mentions transmen not getting smears - but I don't understand why. They should be routinely sent reminders along with everyone else and can probably request a male to carry them out should they wish. There may be a low provision of reassignment surgery under the NHS - but this isn't unusual for any type of non-essential surgery.

The health angle doesn't feel like an argument with any merit at all.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3467877--P-utting-LGBT-people-s-needs-at-the-heart-of-the-NHS-Government-spokesman

I would think it is due to this article in the press being discussed on this thread. Hopefully you are right! I think so many more people are waking to this ideology.

I’m so glad we’ve all this spare money to throw at the NHS, so the me me me brigade can have their alternative reality validated. 🙄 FFS!

Miller seems to be saying that the government has focused on the wrong things and her initial review/report was clearly aimed at improving health outcomes. I'm not sure that is true.

She also points out that the government has failed to make it clear that single sex provisions will not be affected. but for someone is legally female, these don't apply.

Maybe it's a lack of mental rather than physical health support?

We've found (with other MH problems) that everything grinds to a halt as no one available has sufficient expertise to cover, say, both OCD and autism, or both autism and eating problems; or that everything under the sun gets put down to one issue and problems such as dental pain or stomach ache are all assumed to be part of MH. I could imagine the same happening here.

Or maybe health issues arising from hormones, binding, surgery scars and blockers are going untreated.

I’m so glad we’ve all this spare money to throw at the NHS, so the me me me brigade can have their alternative reality validated.

Looks like the extra £350 million a week is bearing fruit early!

Thanks for posting that link, Trinity.

rememberatime, I commented on the other thread that I can imagine that exact scenario you've outlined failing because the transman has changed his gender on NHS systems, but the data policy has conflated sex and gender so he's ended up gaining a preferred pronoun but losing appropriate healthcare in the process.

I think it's actually quite an important issue and one that TRAs need to understand. Let's record sex as sex and treat gender as the social construct it is - everywhere.

The result should be that transmen still get called for smears (with letters addressed to Mr), crimes are still recorded by natal sex AND with preferred gender, and everyone rubs along a little better.

I think I feel hopeful as she is not banging the drum about GRA reforms but has shifted the debate to healthcare (to be seen to be doing something?)as it is recognised how unpopular and unworkable reforms to the GRA are.

Those are the issues that really matter to trans people’s lives, and then look at the review of the Gender Recognition Act – that was not the most pressing issue for trans people that we met as part of the inquiry
There also appears to have been little thought as to how the legal reforms of the Gender Recognition Act would be achieved, she added
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

I know it's only words of course and I could be completely wrong of course but it feels like something may have shifted a little.

If trans men change their NHS record to male, they don’t automatically get invited for smear tests.

Pineapple you make an excellent point. People must be made to register for healthcare under their birth sex. Hewitt did not agree however (babies assigned a gender blah blah) but then proceeded to moan about transmen not being called for smear tests!
Incidentally that is the only time that I have heard transmen being used in an argument by a TRA, I presume they thought it would be more appealing to the audience.

Ah found a couple of articles since you first posted. I agree with you. Seems like a change of focus.

Is it not possible to listen back on lbc?

How ridiculous to complain about people not being invited for a smear test if they’ve legally (fictionally) changed sex. Is the NHS supposed to send smear test reminders to millions of men every year just so the trans men doesn’t have to take the responsibility of remembering that they have a cervix?

I think it is available via the app but am pretty sure it will appear on twitter soon. Someone already called for NF to be 'removed from the airwaves'!
Hewitt has tweeted about being on but nothing really since being on.

You don’t even need a GRC to change your medical records. You just need to ask your GP to amend.

You can listen to it here www.lbc.co.uk/radio/aod/?episodeId=ef2feb94-f820-4bb5-9a1e-0c86bb64f728

Hope that works - Fast forward about 1hr:30.

Thanks for posting the link Toe Was quite interesting-Tara really doesn't have a leg to stand on....when it comes to healthcare of course biological sex is hugely important and needs to be recordered accurately. Kind of disproves the notion that TWAW beautifully.

Yes and it is in transpeople's interests to do so which makes the anti bio sex transactvitsts seem like they are NOT acting for transpeople at all. Almost like getting in to women's spaces is more important than accessing healthcare. Who'd a thunk it?

That was hilarious.

How on earth can they get the correct health care when no one's allowed to use their birth sex.

This is exactly what you have campaigned for and now you are moaning it's having implications such as not getting the right care.

Wtf

It's amazing that they didn't work this out for themselves. Just called transphobe on anyone who raised any issues at all and now here we all are.

James Kirkup's Spectator lead article October 2018:

'Trans rights have gone wrong
The new gender orthodoxy allows no room for dissent'
(extract)
"What explains the disproportionate number of girls (child ‘assigned female at birth’, to use the approved term) who are starting a journey that can lead to hormone treatment, then binding and ultimately removing their breasts? Is it possible that this is simply part of a wider crisis of mental health among girls?

I don’t know, and neither do the doctors and scientists who study this issue. If you talk to the clinicians at the Tavistock Clinic in London, the NHS centre for the treatment of gender-variant children, they’ll tell you that all the factors I mentioned may be at work, but the evidence base is still incomplete, that they need more time and data before offering explanations. (They’ll also tell you that quite a lot of the children referred to them as ‘transgender’ will in time ‘desist’ and decide to live in their original gender.)

The government now intends to commission research into all this. You might think that sounds sensible and mundane. You would be wrong.

According to Tara Hewitt, founder of the Trans Equality Legal Initiative (TELI), prominent campaigner for transgender rights and an adviser to numerous public bodies including the NHS, the proposed research is ‘absurd and offensive’. The project should be ‘dropped in the bin — it’s simply not an inquiry that needs to happen,’ Hewitt reckons.

This is the quintessential trans-rights response to scrutiny: even looking for facts about children’s welfare is transphobic. Just accept that trans girls are girls and trans women are women. End of debate." (continues)
www.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/trans-rights-have-gone-wrong/

threads:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3385533-Prominant-campaigning-role-of-Tara-Hewitt-NHS-TELI-Social-work-universities-etc

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3374926-What-influence-does-TELI-have-on-government-public-services-and-charities-policies-Co-founders-include-Jess-Bradley-Tara-Hewitt-and-Michelle-Hudson

Analysis of NHS conflation of gender and sex since the GRA:
medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-bb86b0c3ebb

medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3396859-Weve-been-lied-to-about-Single-SEX-wards-since-2010

OP Barracker wrote:
"They were ALWAYS based upon 'gender'.
The evidence is in NHS documents from 2010.
And the Department of Health were told, by the NHS team, not to tell people wards were segregated by sex, because they knew the policy was based on gender.

But the DOH purposefully used the word sex to the public instead.

We've been deliberately misled."

Just listened to the LBC link. I think that was a GC win. Hewitt was really floundering and NF didn't give an easy ride.

The call they took afterwards from a doctor that I heard was broadly supportive of Nic Williams. And misgendered Tara, I don't think he caught who Tara was or realised Tara's gender

Tara shot h**self in the foot there, with the insistence that birth sex is a traumatizing label only. Can't help feeling Tara may genuinely be more traumatised when Tara realises Tara's prostate has not been listening to the approved ideology and is causing Tara problems, which will be worse because of the denial Tara has been living in for years.