Glamour Mag on plans to ditch Annex B (single sex NHS wards/bays)

[NitroNine]

In essence “I was in hospital once & got care in a single-sex space; & thus am qualified to demand other women have no boundaries & prioritise male people” 😵‍💫

This is not a woman who needs ongoing care. She’s merrily voluntelling other women that they are WRONG to be so mean as to notice the sex of a male person & respond to them as they would any other male person.

How blissful to be so crashingly ignorant of the realities of the life of disabled women. (Funnily enough, the disabled women who cheerlead for this stuff aren’t those of us who require significant hospital treatment of any kind. One might even say many of them self-ID as disabled…)

As for the patronising tone towards elderly women 🤬

What on earth is a "Purpose Editor"?

She’s a prime example of the hard of thinking.

I got as far as I want morphine and gave up. She is a cretin, young and stupid and not thinking of Merle and the other lady, only of herself. Most people hate hospital stays and it's definitely much more stressful on a mixed ward, single sex space in hospital should be a priority, it's not my place to worry about a man masquerading as woman not getting validation because he's in a private room or the mens ward.

She clearly didn’t have to even think about whether the two other ladies were female because they obviously WERE.

If there was any doubt, I wonder if her article would’ve had a very different slant. I’m sure the lack of yoghurt would be lower down her whining list than ‘there’s a man in the ward’.

That tired old trope "you can't possibly tell if any random woman isn't a transwoman". I'm surprised she didn't bring in the threat of genital inspections.

She might have been a bit more bothered if Norma or Merle had actually been a man who identified as a woman and stood over her at night with his dick out, as happened to my aunt back in the day before mixed sex wards were phased out.

Apparently he had dementia and didn't mean anything by it, so that was alright then.

She clearly didn’t have to even think about whether the two other ladies were female because they obviously WERE.

This.

She doesn't get to give consent on behalf of others. That's it in a nutshell so far as I'm concerned.

She clearly didn’t have to even think about whether the two other ladies were female because they obviously WERE.

Exactly.

I’m not surprised to see that the author is still in her twenties. She writes as though the experience of being a hospital in-patient gives her rare insight, but most women already know exactly what it’s like (even if our medical conditions will have varied).

I’ve got off lightly - my only experience so far has been a week on a NHS postnatal ward following a C-section. However, these wards are well-known for being grim. My experience of post-surgical care does not compare favourably with stories from acquaintances who’ve had surgery for other reasons.

I can only think that sexist thinking is behind this - mums don’t need much care following major abdominal surgery as they must be made to get on with it and care for their babies. Besides, if the wards were more comfortable, the women might be tempted to stay for longer and we couldn’t have that.

I was lucky in that the dads on my ward behaved themselves and stuck to the visiting hours. They didn’t hang around day and night, keep the women awake by watching videos on their phones or try to watch me breastfeeding or expressing. I’ve read accounts from women who fervently wish that men’s access to postnatal wards was more restricted. Single sex wards matter to them.

Forrest Gump: Stupid is what stupid does.

How arrogant of the author to assume that her ONE experience (of a single sexed ward) qualifies her to argue for something different for all of us. It doesn't seem to have struck her that she wasn't bothered by her ward companions because they were all the same sex.

What an incredibly moronic and childish article. I don't know this publication, is it usually full of nonsense like this?

"I'm not thinking about Norma or Merle when I start howling at 3am. It doesn't occur to me that interrupting their sleep in this way might be upsetting, not to mention tiresome. "

Of course you weren't love. but at least they did what was expected and put you first
"I feel a glimmer of shame. Norma smiles, “I'm sorry you had such a hard night, petal."

God forbid you should ever feel a glimmer of shame. For anything ever. Even volunteering up other women's bodies as validation. Get right back on with drawing lobsters love.

Very much so, yes

Thanks @anothernamitynamenamechange - you spared me looking it up & finding more articles to read to confirm my suspicion this was the case 😬 I came across this one on TwiX 🙂

When a 28 year old simply assumes none of these other women, many older than her and plenty far older, have experienced pain or illness, and this is even when she has just observed (and I expect she thought these passages were elegiac in their poetic deeply empathic wording) that the older women in her ward seemed very familiar with pain…. Completely incapable of examining her view for any kind of rational consistency, or of thinking of anyone’s experience but her own. She should be 15 still, reads like it.

I had a horrendous 5th month miscarriage that meant I had to be admitted to a general ward after A&E cos of infection
Beds were limited, so I shared my ward with men and women, and at least 10 hours were basically in a corridor on a trolley

id be more sympathetic to these arguments if I thought they would in any way be applicable in real life

ultimately, almost every ward is mixed sex because the nhs is so underfunded and overstretched. Maybe we should target anger towards that?

The thing is, in the rare instances where transwomen fully pass, they can indeed go unnoticed in single sex spaces. Whilst this is problematic in that this being permitted undermines the confidence women can have in single sex spaces actually being single sex, women using the space will not be adversely impacted at the point of use.

However, In cases (by far the majority) where they don't pass, an additional burden (additional to the failure to provide a single sex space when this has been promised) is the distress that many feel trying to navigate the situation of finding a male in situ.

Then there are the cases (also rare, but my worse case scenario) is where you don't notice that a male is present and you are availing yourself of the space (which you wouldn't have done had you noticed a males present).

@Littlepinkstarsbyradish

I’m incredibly sorry for your loss; & also that you experienced care in that setting.

Lots of us are angry about the general state of the NHS - that stereotype of women as multitaskers holds true in the sense of our caring & campaigning about multiple issues. On MN, where you can namechange freely & hold multiple usernames concurrently, many of use one name for the feminist board & another/others elsewhere, to [try to] prevent identification by TRAs.

I require frequent hospital care. I would find sharing a bay with a male person traumatic, like so many other survivors of [C]SA. Any of the many devout Muslim women with whom I’ve shared a bay in the past would be distressed by having to share with a male person. Wards being mixed sex is quite usual there isn’t space in hospitals for 2 of everything. But women should not have to suffer the further indignity of sharing a bay with a male patient, however he may identify. No male can understand what it is to inhabit a female body, even if they are in the tiny minority of TW who have had surgery to invert their penis. That makes them a male with an extreme body modification; not a male who is any closer to being female.

TW of course deserve to be treated with dignity - but not at the expense of all the other women. We are not props, we are not service humans, we are not tools for validating the identity of TW. If a woman were placed in a male bay she would not doubt her identity. If a TW requires the ceaseless validation of others to believe in their “womanhood”; i. they are a controlling narcissist & ii. they need to detransition because that is a wholly unreasonable demand. I’m more willing to clap for Tinkerbell & say I believe in fairies than I am to cause myself the [di]stress of lying about the sex of the person in front of me. Women should not be expected to move over & “corrected” for “transphobia”. Men should make TW feel safe & welcome in the male spaces they belong in by virtue of their sex; & any actual transphobia should be addressed. Side rooms should go to those who have a clinical need for them.

Some new hospitals are being built with lots of single rooms - as those increase in number, TW arranging their planned care where they can have single-sex accommodation seems logical. (Of course in some areas, eg Cornwall where there’s one hospital, that’s impractical.) But women’s rights can’t keep being trampled on in the interests of another group. Some women being fine with it - mostly hypothetically fine with it, naturally - matters not one jot, because they can’t consent for us all. The women saying “no” need to be heard. Doubtless there will still be breaches, but all males in female bays should be recorded as breach, not just the ones who acknowledge their sex. Annex B is a disgrace - pure trans activism with no care for the rights of women & girls (I consider the 16-18 year olds on adult wards to be girls) - & desperately needs revision to balance the rights of TW & women rather than considering only the former.

I don't understand her point. She was treated on a single sex ward and says she did not bother about the gender identity of her co-patients so why should transwomen be excluded from single sex wards? Her argument seems to be 'it wouldn't bother me if the person next to me had been 'assigned male at birth' because I did not wonder whether Norma and Merle (fellow patients) were 'assigned female at birth', so nobody else should worry about this. As arguments go it's a non-starter and utterly tone deaf to what others may feel, for example that they may be unhappy/distressed/traumatised at a time of great pain and worry, if they realise the person in the next bed, who can hear when they pee, knows when they use a bedpan, is aware of the conversations of medics which may be intimate, are not 'assigned female at birth' but are male. Thoughtless young woman.

I'm sure that poor woman who was raped by a TW - that was ordeal enough, let alone the shit she had to go through trying to prove it - would be happy to sit down and clearly explain the other side of the debate to her.

They say ignorance is bliss. She didn't need morphine with all that ignorance flooding through her veins.

Not sure if this was aimed at me?
if not, I apologise
if so I think you missed the point I was making entirely and have hugely mischaracterised it in your response

I wish these ‘right on’ virtue signalling women would stop trying to decide for all women.
Annoying and infuriating

I just remembered this thread - I am in bed at home recovering from an unexpected trip to hospital for urgent surgery this week. I was only in for a day, on a women only ward, and it really brought home to me how much I needed a women only space when I was feeling that vulnerable.

It felt different every time a man appeared on the ward - a porter, husband sitting with wife waiting for her discharge papers. When I went to the bathroom at one point and had to move past a maintenance man pushing a trolley of laundry I felt uncomfortable. You're in a state of undress, unwell, on heavy meds, vulnerable. Having multiple conversations with health professionals about personal biologically female issues behind a thin curtain.

Single sex spaces are so important.

@Iamnotalemming
I hope you feel better soon 💐🍫🍇

As you say, it’s quite bad enough oversharing those intimate details of your malfunctioning body with other women. With just a curtain for “privacy” ahahahahahaha there’s no way to avoid it. But the idea of - for example - having to discuss the specifics of a burst ovarian cyst & the clean-up thereof with a man, however earnestly he might believe he’s a woman, able to hear the lot, really is grim.