I’m not sure if this has been posted already but it highlights the consequences of women requesting same sex care. The ordeal this former solicitor went through after a male nurse entered her room whilst she was preparing for an operation, prompting her to request same sex care, resulted in her care being cancelled and a terrible ordeal.
“The scarlet lipstick was the first thing that stood out. It continues to baffle Teresa Steele today.
‘I was transfixed by it because it seemed newly applied,’ she explains.
‘You know when you have bright red lipstick with a very clearly defined edge? It doesn’t last. It has to be reapplied. This lipstick looked as if it had just been done.
‘With the rest of the heavy make-up — and there was a lot of eye make-up, too — and the blonde wig, my first thought was that this was a patient who had got lost. It was about 6.30pm, so I remember thinking specifically that it was a patient leaving, on their way to a night out.’
This was not a patient. The person who had knocked on the door and simultaneously entered the hospital treatment room where Teresa had been undergoing pre-operation assessments, including intimate swabs, was a nurse — but not a nurse who had anything to do with Teresa’s care.
‘The whole situation was just peculiar, most unnatural. The nurse who was already in the room with me indicated that the room was occupied. There was a brief exchange.
‘I don’t know what exactly was said, but instead of just backing out or saying “Oh, sorry”, as you’d expect, the person lingered and made eye contact, which again I found odd and disconcerting.
‘As soon as he had started to speak, though, it had confirmed my first thoughts — that it was a man.’
Actually, the nurse was a trans woman, but already at this early point in our interview — an interview about how potentially dangerous it can be when trans rights clash with women’s rights in a hospital setting — we get into trouble with language.
‘I won’t say “she”,’ insists Teresa, when we get into the inevitable tangle about pronouns.
‘I won’t buy into this language. Obviously if I were speaking to this person directly, I would observe courtesy by using their chosen name. But in certain contexts, I reserve the right to call him a man, because he is a man.”
To read about what happened next please have a read of this article. It was also reported in TT.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12398959/amp/Retired-solicitor-left-deaths-door-surgery-cancelled-dared-object-trans-woman-nurse-hospital-room-tells-shocking-story-vowing-cancel-Im-not-scared-speak-out.html