NHS rainbow badge scheme

[WarriorN]

Just seen this:

As pointed out, where are the badges for people with learning disabilities?

Inclusion excluding people with real needs.

so if I saw a NHS staff member with a rainbow anything, I would have assumed it is a continuance of the NHS rainbows that appeared last year around covid.

That is what happens when someone comes along and creates a symbol from one that has always had a message attached to it previously (ie. hope) and is a natural phenomena. You simply cannot own it.

@Helleofabore

so if I saw a NHS staff member with a rainbow anything, I would have assumed it is a continuance of the NHS rainbows that appeared last year around covid.

That is what happens when someone comes along and creates a symbol from one that has always had a message attached to it previously (ie. hope) and is a natural phenomena. You simply cannot own it.

iirc, the Rainbow Badge scheme has been running for years. It used to be the sideline project of a doctor but it's now too big for him to manage so it's now been taken up by some team or other.

I see the rainbow flag with the trans arrow storming across as a men's rights dominance display now, albeit with many of the participants ignorant of what they support.

I am chilled to the core at its intrusion into the NHS. There are posters with it on in my local GP surgery.

Dominance because the message is that women are to be dehumanised with the slur "terf". It tells me that the organisation is institutionally misogynist. This is of course true about the NHS. Their "single sex" wards were always single gender and they record staff and patients by gender ID not sex.

But the fact it is in my GP means that I know that I cannot ask if my HCP is female. That just asking for what I need as a woman, survivor and ptsd sufferer will be considered a "transphobic dog whistle". I'm terrified of being mistreated when vulnerable.

This situation puts my health in danger. I don't really know what to do about it.

Be what you want to be, feel how you want to feel but don't get offended if I don't want to join in and agree. It's your choice and mine too! I hate this recent insistence on naming, and identifying everything thing if you want an inclusive society why get so fixated on separting into little identity groups, sorry, I just don't understand and it's really not the place for the tax £ to be focused.

iirc, the Rainbow Badge scheme has been running for years.

I am sure that it has been running for years. The issue is with the very first creation of it as a symbol when it was widely used as a symbol of hope, has a very long history in folklore and is part of nature.

@Helleofabore

so if I saw a NHS staff member with a rainbow anything, I would have assumed it is a continuance of the NHS rainbows that appeared last year around covid.

That is what happens when someone comes along and creates a symbol from one that has always had a message attached to it previously (ie. hope) and is a natural phenomena. You simply cannot own it.

Very good point.

Likewise with the individual wearing it, you have no way to know are they a full on adherent to the politics it represents with the many issues it presents to inclusion of women and homosexuals -

or have they just been told This is Good. Wear It. Don't Ask Questions. There will be Consequences If You Don't.

Not bloody scary at all.

@Helleofabore

so if I saw a NHS staff member with a rainbow anything, I would have assumed it is a continuance of the NHS rainbows that appeared last year around covid.

That is what happens when someone comes along and creates a symbol from one that has always had a message attached to it previously (ie. hope) and is a natural phenomena. You simply cannot own it.

I got really pissed off with them. The rainbows started as a way of the kids painting them and being able to spot their friends' ones on their daily trudge around the local area. Then they got taken over completely by the NHS - we couldn't even allow the kids to have their naffly painted rainbows.

Uni are huge on rainbowing the shit out of everything - I try to assume that someone wearing a rainbow lanyard is just someone who's thought "free lanyard and our faculty ones are shit and itchy" rather than anything else.

Wish they'd give as much prominence in the NHS to OTHER groups for once - or the "hello my name is" campaign instead of just putting out MORE rainbow shite. Or, you know, and this is a really radical one - starting to address parents of children being treated by name instead of the endless "are you Mum" - if you can take the time to respect and adjust Steve from Grimsby's pronouns to acknowledge that today he's having a Shania Twain moment and feeling like a woman - you can at least ask me if I'm "Freddie's Mum" or "what do you like to be called" when you see my child every week for an intervention.

I loved the ‘my name is’ campaign. It made such sense and was truly heartfelt (and bloody useful). This rot is just divisive nonsense. And a bloody waste of money.

@AnyFucker I will see your e mail pronouns and raise you pronouns ANNOUCED ON A CALL. I had to resist the urge to say "That's nice dear"

[quote JustcameoutGC]@AnyFucker I will see your e mail pronouns and raise you pronouns ANNOUCED ON A CALL. I had to resist the urge to say "That's nice dear"[/quote]
I see you both and mention the people who put them in their Zoom name even before Zoom introduced the space for them.

I'm a lesbian. I would not want to be treated by someone proclaiming their virtue by wearing a rainbow badge. Like many of the lesbians I know, I regard anything with a rainbow on it with extreme suspicion.

The badge will be a useful way of identifying the 'be kind' and woke brigade if nothing else.

This is my good friend Shed... (she’s a lesbian you know...) do let Shed speak! She’s a lesbian... here you are Shed, a nice cup of tea (she’s a lesbian)...I’m so gooood I have a lesbian friend. I’m an ally. Some of my best friends are (they they are going to drop the Q word).

Oh I have worked with people like that (usually along the lines of race through)

Bloody madness

@Shedbuilder

I'm a lesbian. I would not want to be treated by someone proclaiming their virtue by wearing a rainbow badge. Like many of the lesbians I know, I regard anything with a rainbow on it with extreme suspicion.

The badge will be a useful way of identifying the 'be kind' and woke brigade if nothing else.

Quite.

We've gone back to an era where I see someone else's signal and think that I need to act in a certain, conforming way not to attract scary, negative and discriminatory attention. It's like the 80s all over again with added glitter.

@AnyFucker

I work in the NHS and I got an email the other week with a sign off name then she/her

Oh, how I laughed. And puked.

*The trust I work for has decided it wants us to put pronouns on email signatures. I'm disappointed in the people that have fallen for this crap. No way am I doing it.

@MissyB1

My friend at our local hospital got threatened with disciplinary if she refused to wear the rainbow lanyard. She told them “go ahead then!” They didn’t dare so instead they sent the diversity and inclusion officer to “have a chat” with her. She’s still not wearing it - good on her!

This is so authoritarian, how is this allowed?

Nothin free about the rainbow lanyards, £3 a pop going straight to Stonewall.

It doesn't make sense...

People say these lanyards are to show LGBTQIA+ people that they're safe with staff (you'd hope that everyone is safe with staff), and that the people wearing them are allies.

But they're creating a toxic environment where people are shamed or their job is threatened if they don't wear one, so they'll wear one because they feel like they have to. That will include people who aren't allies...

So they're back to square one, are they not? You can't tell who is wearing one because they want to, and who is wearing one because they felt forced to. So what is this achieving, exactly?

Nothin free about the rainbow lanyards, £3 a pop going straight to Stonewall.

And why should women feel obliged to donate to a lobby group that is campaigning to remove single-sex exemptions that protect women and girls from the EA?

I am an L woman and NHS and i will not be wearing any rainbow lanyard or rainbow badge.
When i wear my uniform i am deemed approachable by anyone......i dont need a badge to advertise this, it should be a given.
Those that dont wear the rainbow can be seen as not approachable so how does this help in any way.
What a load of tosh!!

@endofagain

For me, the rainbow badge/lanyard/anything signals the wearer's politics and their disrespect for women/women's rights. It tells me they don't care about women's safety or the provision of single sex wards for example. It is a political and ideological statement and should have no place in the NHS, the Police, the Civil Service, Local Government or anywhere else that deals with the public. Aside from that, it is a completely unnecessary waste of tax payers' money.

It should go without saying that services like the NHS treat all people with compassion and non-judgement. Even people a lot of us think are awful. Neonazis, sexual offenders, whatever.

What do they think will happen to the diversity of their workforce when people who are members of conservative religious groups feel they can't go into nursing because of this stuff? Or worse, that their patients feel like their care provider won't respect them?

Or worse, that their patients feel like their care provider won't respect them?

I'm troubled that a number of women seem to have fairly adversarial relationships with their HCPs already, mostly because they're seen as unreliable narrators of their own experience (e.g., black women and maternity care). It's difficult to see how women are going to find any comfort or reassurance in a clear signal that in any perceived conflict of rights, womens' are the ones that will be deprecated.

[quote TimeToDateAgain]Rainbow zebra crossings: ‘dangerous for disabled people and children’

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rainbow-zebra-crossings-dangerous-for-disabled-people-and-children-g2lvmn0kr[/quote]
And horses

Nothin free about the rainbow lanyards, £3 a pop going straight to Stonewall.

And why should women feel obliged to donate to a lobby group that is campaigning to remove single-sex exemptions that protect women and girls from the EA?

Exactly this. I am not going to be complicit in the erasure of my own sex, and I'm certainly not going to pay for the 'privilege' of having my rights to single sex exemptions removed.

I must admit that whenever I hear someone in the public sector moaning about "underfunding", I can't take them entirely seriously while public money gets pissed up the wall on this sort of thing.

I work for the NHS too, and I’ve noticed we have an upcoming awareness session on LGBT+ and correct use of pronouns.

I can’t see there being much uptake in my dept though, the management are all female and proper no nonsense. In fact there are only are only 2 people in my trust that I have come across so far who have their pronouns in their emails. Both young women. (And I’m admin so most of my work is done via email)