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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Never thought I'd post on here but males on female hospital wards. Wtf

289 replies

ryzen · 03/08/2021 06:43

I thought we were making progress by getting rid of mixed wards. I'm really upset by this. Can I do anything?!

I am a victim of endless sexual abuse and harassment.

I have suffered very much for being female and being physically weaker than most males. I do not want to ever have to end up on a ward with one. I actually hide away now due to the attacks I have suffered in public. I never get a taxi alone. I plan my days around being home before dark.

In all honesty I do avoid men but I feel I should be able to if I want to especially with something as intimate as my healthcare. I've read a report in the times today that says if a female does not want to be next to a trans person then they should be treated as a racist would. I find it disgusting to even compare these scenarios.

OP posts:
Thread gallery
16
R0wantrees · 03/08/2021 09:23

Here's a novel idea, because it might be quite difficult for hospital staff to know, how about we keep biological males, the people who commit the vast majority of sexual crimes, away from biological females, the people most likely to be their victims.

Really doesn't sound complicated does it? So how have we ended up here?

Anne Harper-Wright
'Sex, Gender & the NHS'
October 16th 2018

(extract)
"When the law added the legal concept of ‘gender’ to the measure of who is male and who is female, it created an almighty conflict with sex. Sex or gender can be paramount, but both cannot be balanced equally. Because there an irresolvable clash between the two concepts, and one must win. Are you ‘of the female sex’? Or ‘of the female gender’? It’s essentially a question of ‘who do you share common characteristics with, what are those characteristics, and how important is that commonality to you?’ (continues)

The birth of Legal Gender; the death of Legal Sex. The Gender Recognition Act.
In 2004, a piece of legislation called the Gender Recognition Act quietly became law. The primary purpose of the act was ostensibly to allow approximately 5000 mostly biologically male transsexuals, via a tightly controlled and medically certificated approval process, to be treated as if they were female so that they could marry another man. In the era when same sex marriage was prohibited, there was a greater appetite for creating an apparent ‘heterosexual’ marriage from a same sex relationship, than there was to legalise same sex marriage. A ‘legal fiction’ was approved. Birth certificates were altered. Biologically male became legally female. ‘Gender’ became legally recognised, and, it was agreed, gender trumps sex.
The Act in essence changed the definition of male and female from a biological definition to a psychological one.
This set in motion the re-categorisation of an entire society into two psychological gender groups instead of by the sexes.
Gender gradually REPLACED sex. For all of us. People started to be sorted by purported ‘psychology’, not biology.

The votes for the Gender Recognition bill were split down party lines. A Labour Government whip resulted in 289 labour votes for the bill. Most conservative MPs however, voted against the passing of this bill that enabled the concept of ‘gender’ to supersede sex. A conservative MP, Andrew Lansley, however, rebelled and voted aye.

Andrew Lansley was in no doubt of the distinction between sex and gender. He voted for gender to legally outrank and overwrite sex.
Six years later in 2010 Andrew Lansley rose to the role of Health Secretary within the coalition government.
(continues)

In 2005, shortly after the Gender Recognition Act was made law, an NHS exercise was commenced to standardise patient information and data within the various IT systems across the NHS. Within this exercise a suite of documentation was created, dedicated to designing a system architecture that could attempt to cope with the challenges specific to using BOTH sex AND gender as data.
Because the consequences of an NHS mix up between sex and gender was recognised as dire. And this risk was noted in several NHS documents, produced by the Microsoft Health Common User Interface team" (continues)

In 2010, to great fanfare, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley of the Conservative party announced the Coalition Government’s laudable commitment to place all NHS hospital patients in single-sex wards — with any mixed sex breaches made public and financial penalties imposed.

“It should be more than an expectation, it should be a requirement that patients who are admitted should be admitted to single-sex accommodation,” the Health Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme.
“Patients should be in single-sex accommodation, meaning that all of their period that they are admitted they should be in a bed or a bay which only consists of people of the same sex." (continues)

Categorical statements such as these from Lansley were uttered in the same year that a new Act; the Equality Act 2010, committed to continuing to protect biological SEX based rights, with sex being one of 9 protected characteristics that would be monitored to stop discrimination. ‘Gender reassignment’ was one of the nine protected characteristics, and biological sex was another, protected in its own right. The two characteristics are differentiated and distinct in law.
So when the Government announced the characteristic for NHS ward segregation would be ‘sex’ that was an unambiguous statement relating to a specific protected characteristic. Biological sex is a tangible, physical reality. NHS Wards were promised to be explicitly single sex, not single gender. Bodily dignity and privacy for the biological sexes, not segregation by invisible personality type." (continues)

The truth: “The policy commitment relates to gender, not sex”.
Despite what the public were told, the policy was always explicitly based upon segregating by ‘gender’ and not sex, right from its inception.
NHS documents and records dated from 2010 show that before the policy was implemented, whilst still in its design stages, the specifications always related to gender, not sex. And yet the name of the policy, and all references to it to the general public were explicitly instructed to be sex, not gender. The opposite of the truth.

The deliberate use of the word SEX to name the policy, whilst using GENDER to facilitate it, was a Department of Health mandate from Andrew Lansley." (continues)
medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-1e8f4e6363a6

MurielSpriggs · 03/08/2021 09:25

@GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman

I agree with the article that to assume criminal intent as a first point of risk is discriminatory. Clearly you've never volunteered to read in a school. EVERYONE, whoever they are (frail old lady), whatever their connection to the school (daughter on staff, grandchild in school), however well known in their community (very small town, lived there decades), no matter that they will never be actually alone in a room with a child (readers all heard out in the corridor with everyone walking past: head, caretaker, children on errands) will have a DBS check done.

I can only conclude that the assumption is that anyone can commit an offence, and also that if you leave a loophole even a tiny bit ajar, a sexual predator will spot it and slide through.

So yes, the assumption is that criminal intent is possible. Is that 'discriminatory' against sweet old grannies? Or just the first rule of safeguarding - that it applies to everyone who might pose a threat?

EVERYONE, whoever they are ... will have a DBS check done.

Is that 'discriminatory' against sweet old grannies?

Obviously not. Everyone is treated the same. No group is singled out.

TableFlowerss · 03/08/2021 09:27

@MarleneDietrichsSmile

Do you know how hospitals work?

I was taken into hospital last year and placed on an all male ward. Adding me made the ward mixed

That was that

7 blokes and me in 1 room, and me shuffling to the loo in my gown that is open at the back, with my bare bottom on show

THAT is the much revered and much loved NHS (yes, staff are great, the system isn’t)

Saying you don’t want to be next to a trans person would be a pointless wish anyway, as you may be sharing a room with 7 men anyway

Such fun

The difference would be if there was no alternative. What happened to you, for example, was surely (hopefully) because they had no other beds elsewhere? It’s certainly not ideal but if that was the only place to go then I suppose ‘needs must’.

It must have been awful, as you say, even going to the loo would be traumatic for some women as they’re self conscious anyway, never mind on a ward full of men.

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:28

The vast majority of wards are mixed sex. Most people only make this discovery when at their most vulnerable.

You might be lucky enough that all the men's beds are grouped at one end and there may be separate sex toilets, but you'll still have men in your line of sight able to see you in bed and walking past you. With easy access to you when you are sleeping.

Some assessment wards incl surgical ive seen women alone with male patients in beds either side and opposite them. Whilst lying there vulnerable, in pain and groggy. No staff in those bays other than for occasional obs. No safeguarding.

One woman left her bed and sat on the corridor floor sobbing.

If you are "lucky" enough to be in an all female bay, there is nothing to stop male patients wandering in at all hours of the day and night - and they do. In one day 2 male patients wandered into the same female bay and fortunately were challenged by staff (which was pure luck because most of the time there were no staff there to have challenged anyone walking in to rape a sleeping patient.) "I was looking for the toilets" - the clearly marked toilets that they had to walk past in order to leave their bay.

Safeguarding women in NHS hospitals doesn't happen. Hence recent cases of female stroke patients being raped by staff.

And that's just the ones we know about because one woman died, leading to an independent professional discovering her injuries. Otherwise it would have continued.

The cases of abuse that we hear about in NHS hospitals are the tip of the iceberg. People would do well to remember that when they're attempting to silence valid challenge and criticism with their blind hero worship.

Rosesareredd · 03/08/2021 09:30

From your experience I can understand why you’d feel that way. However, as a female, I wouldn’t be worried about being on a ward with males.

SailYourShips · 03/08/2021 09:31

We have let it creep in in small ways...female booktubers delighted that a book by a transwoman is on the shortlist for the Women Prize for Fiction and upset it didn't win and large forms declaring that everyone should declare their preferred pro-nouns.

Women cheerfully declaring themselves Trans Allies and happily referring to themselves as Cis women.

Where did people think it would lead? Here, that's where and in my gloomy opinion much worse is to come.

CarlottaValdez · 03/08/2021 09:33

I’m amazed how little awareness there is that lots of wards are mixed sex. That’s what we should all be furious about. Not much point singling out trans women in this instance (although I also don’t want them on my ward) when there are men there anyway.

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:34

It must have been awful, as you say, even going to the loo would be traumatic for some women as they’re self conscious anyway, never mind on a ward full of men.

A significant proportion of the female population are survivors of sexual assault. Of those, many will be living with PTSD.

Doesn't take a genius to work out the serious damage caused to those women's health to be dumped on a male ward.

And also why people living with mental illness have a shorter life expectancy due to being unable to access the physical healthcare they need.

Despite the NHS having legal obligations to protect those women from the harm of being put in such a position. NHS doesn't give a shit about its legal duties around consent, why would it care about the public sector equality duty in Equality Act or its overriding duty of care to vulnerable patients.

Buy hey who cares? NHS doesn't give a shit about legal obligations and will fight legal cases all the way even when their conduct was quite clearly unlawful and despicable.

NHS is toxic and destroys lives.

ginghamstarfish · 03/08/2021 09:35

I hope that when incidents occur (sadly we all know it happens) the assaulted women will sue the hospital and make it very public. I'm not a fan of compensation culture but the NHS would surely take notice of legal action, and it might lead to them - mostly male managers I would guess - NOT dismissing women's justified concerns about this topic.

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:38

@Rosesareredd

From your experience I can understand why you’d feel that way. However, as a female, I wouldn’t be worried about being on a ward with males.
Good for you. Have you experienced it or are you commenting on a hypothetical?

Hospitals are legally required to protect their most vulnerable patients, not sink to the low of only catering to the "I'm alright Jack" patients with no such needs or vulnerabilities.

StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind · 03/08/2021 09:39

My rights and the rest of women's rights are not yours to give away @Rosesareredd

LemonRoses · 03/08/2021 09:41

I guess the argument involves recognising that trans women are very likely to be assaulted. I do accept that, but think there aren’t many cases where it’s happened on a hospital ward.
Most wards are mixed with sex specific bays, so it’s not much of a divide anyway.
Psychiatric hospitals are very different and a real problem because there are more likely to be very vulnerable women, for longer periods of time.

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:41

@ginghamstarfish

I hope that when incidents occur (sadly we all know it happens) the assaulted women will sue the hospital and make it very public. I'm not a fan of compensation culture but the NHS would surely take notice of legal action, and it might lead to them - mostly male managers I would guess - NOT dismissing women's justified concerns about this topic.
Ha ha. Have you ever followed an NHS legal case when someone has the financial resources to try and go up against them?

They behave in some of the least ethical ways I have ever seen. They try to break and smear the person. They falsify records and lie under oath.

And that's when they're responsible for somebody dying, not a "mere" (in their view) sexual assault.

Pellewsmate · 03/08/2021 09:41

I was put on a men's ward as there was no space elsewhere. Luckily, there were only 2 men present. 1 was a prisoner chained to the bed with a guard next to him and the second was an older gent who kept shouting at me about the prisoner chained to the bed, he was convinced that he was whispering.
Though if you count the guard it was 3 men.

Leafstamp · 03/08/2021 09:43

Template letter here, if not already posted:

mobile.twitter.com/sleeepysandy/status/1422475320444268589

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:44

Just look at the way Connor Sparrowhawk's family were treated, and how little has changed since.

The NHS killed their son and then fought tooth and nail to shirk responsibility and try to blame him and the family.

It was abhorrent.

user16395699 · 03/08/2021 09:49

So many posters on this site seem to have a view of the NHS based entirely in the realms of fantasy of some safe, caring, well-run institution that will keep them safe, treat them with humanity, and take responsibility if something goes wrong.

That is pure fantasy. That is not the NHS we have.

Mixed sex wards are standard. There is no safeguarding. Patient dignity is not considered. If a problem occurs they will not take responsibility. If there is a serious incident they will blame the patient and continue the same unsafe or harmful conduct. People are routinely neglected and verbally abused. Patients re not even treated as human. Consent is violated (I.e. patients are assaulted) on a routine basis for convenience. Coercion is rife.

Mulletsaremisunderstood · 03/08/2021 09:50

I agree OP, its horrible. This is wrong on principle, we shouldn't be waiting for the worst to happen before acknowledging this.

I'm just going to leave this here for all those who will say that we are overreacting - www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/judge-criticises-hospital-after-girl-sexually-assaulted-by-man-63-on-ward-1.4170837

This really isn't actually just about trans people, this is about bad laws and bad policy that are not considering potential safeguarding issues. Any male who wants access to vulnerable women can easily get it, the doors are wide open, and anyone who questions that is shouted down as unreasonable and treated with contempt. Have we learned nothing from the various sex abuse scandals?

Also, surely trans people know that however they identify, their biology is unchanged and therefore if they have a medical issue it may be very relevant to their care to inform the hospital what their biological sex is.

DottyHarmer · 03/08/2021 09:50

As usual, I think many women are ok hypothetically sharing with a “sex change” person. Not so much with a person identifying as female but retaining full male genitalia and - in the case of some activists I’ve seen - a beard too. In other words, just “feeling” like a woman, maybe only for that particular day.

Having spent some weeks in hospital a while ago I feel that safety could have been a bit of a problem. On one occasion a male visitor came and sat on an empty bed in my ward/bay to make a long loud phone call. It was 3am or so and it was ages until a staff member came round and asked him to stand in the corridor instead. I wasn’t going to say anything!

quizqueen · 03/08/2021 09:52

The next bloody thing will be elderly women in care homes expected to share a room with a bloke. Let's see how long that takes to happen.

Mulletsaremisunderstood · 03/08/2021 09:53

@user16395699

So many posters on this site seem to have a view of the NHS based entirely in the realms of fantasy of some safe, caring, well-run institution that will keep them safe, treat them with humanity, and take responsibility if something goes wrong.

That is pure fantasy. That is not the NHS we have.

Mixed sex wards are standard. There is no safeguarding. Patient dignity is not considered. If a problem occurs they will not take responsibility. If there is a serious incident they will blame the patient and continue the same unsafe or harmful conduct. People are routinely neglected and verbally abused. Patients re not even treated as human. Consent is violated (I.e. patients are assaulted) on a routine basis for convenience. Coercion is rife.

You say all this like better care is something we shouldn't even expect, and how dare we even try. Of course what you are outlining is shocking and horrible, but we shouldn't just roll over and not give a shit, or not talk about ways to make it better. Talk about a race to the bottom.

Don't even bother wanting better folks, nothing to see here!

StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind · 03/08/2021 09:55

*You say all this like better care is something we shouldn't even expect, and how dare we even try.
Of course what you are outlining is shocking and horrible, but we shouldn't just roll over and not give a shit, or not talk about ways to make it better. Talk about a race to the bottom.

Don't even bother wanting better folks, nothing to see here!*

This, completely.

Rosesareredd · 03/08/2021 09:59

@user16395699 (Yes I have experience of mixed wards, both when I was 18 and older!)

@StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind (No one is giving your rights away, I simply stated I was happy to be on a mixed ward, I am speaking for myself, not for all, free speech and all!)

ryzen · 03/08/2021 10:01

@Rosesareredd but you can see that it's not that all women should have a problem with this situation, it's that a lot do and no one is allowed to say they do have a problem with it. And it's now being compared to being a criminal if you suggest there's a problem.

They've found yet another way to shut down women on the subject and not open it to debate. For me it's an extension of women being told what they'll be doing and how they will react.

OP posts:
LemonRoses · 03/08/2021 10:02

@user16395699

So many posters on this site seem to have a view of the NHS based entirely in the realms of fantasy of some safe, caring, well-run institution that will keep them safe, treat them with humanity, and take responsibility if something goes wrong.

That is pure fantasy. That is not the NHS we have.

Mixed sex wards are standard. There is no safeguarding. Patient dignity is not considered. If a problem occurs they will not take responsibility. If there is a serious incident they will blame the patient and continue the same unsafe or harmful conduct. People are routinely neglected and verbally abused. Patients re not even treated as human. Consent is violated (I.e. patients are assaulted) on a routine basis for convenience. Coercion is rife.

This really isn’t true. It’s not perfect but over 95% of patients are happy with the care they receive. Mixed sex wards have entirely separate bays and washing facilities. Men and women sleeping alongside each other is not standard.

I’d love to see your evidence base that most healthcare professionals don’t seek consent and SI investigations blame patients. Stop simply not true.