Trans women to be banned from female hospital wards

[Imnobody4]

Yes¡ Just done a little victory dance. I hope it really is as good as it sounds.

https://twitter.com/Baroness_Nichol/status/1708956051683295391?t=daMUSC8mbF_9sSi9ynIsIg&s=19

On Tuesday, Steve Barclay will announce proposals to push back against “wokery” in the health service that has led to women’s rights being increasingly sidelined.The changes would give men and women the right to be cared for on wards only shared by people of their own biological sex, and to have intimate care provided by those of the same sex.Mr Barclay said the plan would mean the return of “a common-sense approach to sex and equality”, ensuring that women’s dignity was protected and their voices heard.The proposals follow concerns from patients and staff about biological men being allowed on to women’s hospital wards. In 2021, NHS guidance said trans patients could be placed on single-sex wards on the basis of the gender with which they identified.

As we've said many times before, a clearly mixed sex space is preferable to one that purports to be single sex, but isn't.

I actually disagree with this having given it some thought. I spent nearly two weeks on a mixed sex general surgical ward and it was fucking awful. I had to walk past men to get to and from the shower I repeatedly had men hanging around with their arses hanging out the back of their gowns or (on two occasions in only two weeks) completely naked from the waist down.

I completely support single sex provision and that means no men at all regardless of how they identify but I fail to see that I was any better off in the mixed sex ward with loads of men than I would have been in a single sex ward with a risk of some trans identifying men. There would have been likely a lot less of them at least.

I think this is pretty bullshit as a policy until we have proper single sex provision, better than nothing perhaps but only fucking just. Even on a bloody post-natal ward (my other hospital experience) you have men using the toilets for their leisurely shits while women are waiting to shower and bleeding onto the floor plus they snore all night. Get men in all guises out of women's wards please!

100%.

But the idea that women concerned with and fighting for women's rights/spaces is 'anti-trans' is an idea that has been pushed very hard, repeatedly, by various groups, activists and lobbies.

Get men in all guises out of women's wards please!

I'm with you on that, Webex!

And yes, post-natal experiences of male visitors wandering in and stinking up the loos that were for traumatised women with surgical wounds were fucking gross.

Agreed. It's a cop out and a roll back not a step forward if we end up with more mixed sex wards which I do think is the inevitable outcome.

Women will be able to challenge even less than now, because the mantra will be just be grateful for any care at all in a race to the bottom.

We need commitment and enforcement of single sex provision from politicians. We are no where near that because the Tories are obsessed with cost cutting and Labour are obsessed with pleasing the men with hurty feelings.

Neither are addressing the inequality of healthcare provision and standards based on sex.

Agree too

I remain unconvinced it's good news.

KJK's most recent video addresses the point that many, many people (including some journalists) still think a trans woman is a woman who identifies as a man.

There is some really good discussion about the NHS generally.

I know the terminology is deliberately misleading, but we need a real campaign to use clearer language so that more people understand.

(

Might be worth reading up on boundaries, assertiveness, female socialisation and people-pleasing tendences?

Thank you @ArabellaScott you're right and I feel embarrassed for even posting that comment! Have asked MNHQ to scrub it so I don't derail the thread with my oversharing 😳

Right have dug out the document [edited to remove link - will paste it separately below because it made the post unreadable], and as I thought it specifies single sex accommodation and areas not specifically 'wards' or 'bays'. Layouts are too variable to give particular names to whatever constitutes an 'area'.

"• Patients should not normally have to share sleeping accommodation with
members of the opposite sex.
• Patients should not have to share toilet or bathroom facilities with members
of the opposite sex.
• Patients should not have to walk through an area occupied by patients of
the opposite sex to reach toilets or bathrooms; this excludes corridors.
• Women-only day rooms should be provided in mental health inpatient units."

So a mixed ward is OK, provided the bays within the ward are properly separated, with doors and their own facilities.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/NEW-Delivering_same_sex_accommodation_sep2019.pdf

I've just watched Rees Mogg interviewing Miriam Cates and Michael Crick on this matter. Cates putting the reasoned, logical, non transphobic view, that was settled and universally accepted until 5 minutes ago, that men in women's spaces are a potential risk and thus unacceptable. Crick, batting for the other side of the argument, saying a seperate wards policy was unfair, transphobic, cruel etc to transwomen, who've had terrible lives and are just wanting simple medical care with no hate or prejudice attached.

So, this is it. Even an older journalist, ostensibly always somewhat conventional in his views on politics and social policy, is also on the side against women's sex based rights.

I shouldn't be shocked, or even feel anything about this. My cynicism has been forming for 7 years now. But today I feel angry about what I just heard from him. It means the sledgehammer of this attitude is absolutely established and deep rooted on the Left and thruout media circles, Crick is no outlier here. He's a bellweather for how the media and liberal Left think.

Watching Cates' face as Crick shrugged off the real and present danger that she relayed to him, said it all. She was horrified. He was dismissive of her and complacent.

Now the danger is not just trans activist radicalism and tran allies energy, it's also the swathe of people in positions of influence like Crick who wave it thru, who don't provide any skeptical resistance. The rot has set in very deep indeed.

I guess that most adult trans people are not as stupid as the RCN seems to think they are. They will, I imagine , know about what makes adult bodies tick , they will have read through thousands of blog posts, articles and stories about transition.

So they will be far better informed than many people, particularly women, who don’t speak English well, or who have poor or non existent reading skills, or whose family culture means that they are excluded from many information sources but whose access to health information is being compromised by a collective madness that the .RCN seems determined to be party to.

If the RCN is really concerned about health outcomes they need to concentrate on getting information and services to people who need them instead of muddying the already murky waters by using inclusive language and terms that actually exclude many people.

Trans people know who they are, and what their bodies are, stop pandering to their unrealistic beliefs and give people with real health inequalities the respect and information they deserve.

So a mixed ward is OK, providedthe bays within the ward are properly separated, with doors and their own facilities.

But this is not what actually happens now - are they providing the funds to upgrade the existing provisions to make this happen?

I cannot see why it has to be a Left Right issue. Nor can I see why the majority of the Left, (or is it just the noisy ones?), have fallen so completely for this rubbish. The majority of us know what male and female are.

And what happens when a transwoman has a problem with his prostate? A gynae ward will be no place for him.

But this is not what actually happens now - are they providing the funds to upgrade the existing provisions to make this happen?

Perhaps they could divert the funds from the 40 new hospitals which Boris Johnson promised us, which now seems to be completely forgotten?

Well quite, this is such bollocks. It's a really easy statement to make which has no particular real world effect if they aren't actually going to make changes.

Which does make me wonder, how much of this NHS trans mess was due to trying to find a cheap solution? Mix the sexes in a single-sex ward and tell the girls it's transphobic to complain, then we look tolerant and it costs nothing.

It should be - should have been for over a decade. And was in all the hospitals my various relatives have been in over the last few years (HDU excepted, but that's excluded anyway).

I think we have to draw really clear boundaries around the issue and very much resist the colonisation and reconfiguration of every issue by TRAs.

The issue is that people should have a right to single sex provision in a whole range of circumstances and the need for the NHS to ensure this right. Every human has a biological sex.

The issues for people who want gender to be an organising principle in society are totally separate. And should be treated as such.

When you design a service, it needs to be usable by everyone who needs to use it. Yes. But sometimes you comes across design decisions that require trade offs. In this case, the design that meets the needs of over 99% of the population (single sex provision) is the right choice. Some sort of alternative arrangements - that do not impinge on the right to same sex provision - should be made for the small number of people who cannot use the service designed in this way.

The alternative of designing the service so that it meets the demands of TRAs will exclude far, far more people - often in groups who are very vulnerable and who have poor health outcomes. That means it requires far, far more alternative routes simply to ensure some very basic rights.

The example of knowing the sex of HCPs is a very good example of this. Patients need to know the sex of HCPs so that they can make informed decisions about - often extremely intimate - treatment. The very small number of trans HCPs who do not want to give people the information required to make informed decisions cannot be the determining factor in the service design. The sensible route there is something like their employers to modify their duties so that they never need to disclose their sex to patients. Sure, that might mean they don’t get to do the work they want to - but their wants simply cannot override the basic rights of their patients to make informed decisions.

Arguably, an HCP who wants to undermine informed consent for patients in this way is simply not fit to practice. Ensuring informed consent is crucial to healthcare and HCPs who think their feelings override that are potentially extremely dangerous.

Transwomen don't have prostates. They have a cervix. Didn't you know?

Just ask rentagob India Willoughby, who is the leading authority on how biology is transphobic.

Yep give them a gynaecologist.

(Who now, despite the inadequacies of gynaecological care, now have to learn how to treat prostate issues because this is soooo beneficial to women's healthcare which we already know is substandard compared to male health care)

Just cos hurty feelings and men being nasty. Women are easier to tell to shut up, quite clearly.

Binary male and female wards (or changing rooms) don't capture the nuance as society

I realise the debate has moved on, but I’m just catching up with the thread. A couple of days ago, a person on TwitterX was whining because women’s pants were too skimpily-cut to contain his…well, yeah. A further comment (may have been from the same person, I can’t remember now) observed that sometimes SRS seemed an appealing option but then how would that work for those enjoyable moments of gender-fluidity?

This is what we’re dealing with. So…what? An infinite number of different wards to cope with every flavour of identity - or ‘nuance’ if you prefer - shifting on a whim from moment to moment?

No. Just no. Kick this nonsense into the back of beyond. People cannot change sex, however they identify. It’s an upside-down world for sure when I’m agreeing with any Tories and yes, it’s a cynical vote-grabber but on this they happen to be right.

The tragedy is that people have become forced into entrenched positions and so opposing the Tories on everything bestows a virtuous glow of self-satisfaction, a la Michael Crick. That’s where you need nuance. Because of course taking a common sense view of women being treated fairly and with dignity is not ‘woke’ and it’s not taking anything away from transwomen. People have gone completely crazy on this.

I realise the debate has moved on, but I’m just catching up with the thread. A couple of days ago, a person on TwitterX was whining because women’s pants were too skimpily-cut to contain his…well, yeah. A further comment (may have been from the same person, I can’t remember now) observed that sometimes SRS seemed an appealing option but then how would that work for those enjoyable moments of gender-fluidity?

Why does society need to care about this at all?

everything bestows a virtuous glow of self-satisfaction, a la Michael Crick.

Is that the same Michael Crick who has gone on TV and said that a small number of rapes in a hospital are a fine tradeoff to allow for the dignity of transwomen?

That Michael Crick?