NHS trust uses derogatory ‘terf’ slur in official guidance

[Shadowsunray]

Absolutely insane that the NHS uses the term TERF in official guidance signed off by two executives. Imagine if someone used the trans offensive word trxxy in NHS documents, it would never happen. I don't understand how this anti women attitude has been allowed.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/2025.05.03-071448/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/03/nhs-trust-uses-derogatory-terf-slur-in-official-guidance" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.is/2025.05.03-071448/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/03/nhs-trust-uses-derogatory-terf-slur-in-official-guidance/

Can't get the archive link to post and work.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/03/nhs-trust-uses-derogatory-terf-slur-in-official-guidance/

I’m not sure if I even find this shocking anymore. It’s horrific but I’m so used to hearing that some in the NHS are anti-women at this point.

I know the comms manager of one south east trust and she is a card carrying TRA who posts repeatedly on social media about how we should all protest the SC clarification and that men with special lady feelings of course should have every right to enter our spaces. It’s maddening.

It's behind a pay wall so can't read it.

https://archive.ph/uLsfi

free link

Within this document it refers to “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”, also known by the acronym “terf”, stating that this group “may feel that trans inclusion is an infringement on their beliefs or values”.

It's quite astonishing, isn't it. No mention of safety or dignity for women because who cares about women anyway just "infringement on their beliefs".

The trust’s guidance also makes claims “some cisgender people have unlawful discriminatory views of trans people using single-sex spaces such as using gendered toilets”.

Like other trusts in London, its single-sex accommodation policy for patients allows trans women to share wards and lavatories with women.

NELFT specialises in mental health care so presumably this means it's potentially been forcing vulnerable women under section (i.e. who are locked up and not able to leave) to share facilities with biological men?

Even more appalling when you consider how many women admitted to mental health wards have experienced male violence and may be on the ward because of the resulting trauma. Or that women with a history of mental illness are too often dismissed if they try to report assaults, least of all if they occurred whilst an inpatient.

What happened to basic safeguarding?

I'm not naive enough to think that any heads will actually roll when we finally unwind this carnage, but they bloody should.

It's utterly disgusting. SO many heads should role. It makes me furious and there just isn't any justification for it because men aren't women. If they were fighting for a third space fair enough but it's just insanity and it harms women. I'm hoping a few years from now people will look back and wonder what on earth they were thinking and feel shame for their foul behaviour, silencing women's legitimate concerns because activists told them to take leave on their sense.

The trust’s guidance also makes claims “some cisgender people have unlawful discriminatory views of trans people using single-sex spaces such as using gendered toilets”.

The United Kingdom is not Orwell's Airstrip One. No individual's views are unlawful. It is only actions that may be unlawful. Beliefs are not legally mandated. Anybody may think or believe what they like, regardless of whether it is a belief worthy of respect in a democratic society.

It’s absolutely unbelievable, these people are being paid with NHS money to write this shit.

It totally destroys trust in the NHS. How can any woman receive equal treatment when this attitude is displayed. I had to visit Simeon in hospital recently and the rainbow displays and lanyards and badges made me fell this was a hostile environment for women

Expressing such contempt and naked disregard is certainly a breach of the NMC and HCPC codes of professional conduct; similar professional standards regulation and registration is needed at non-clinician management layers too. How dare they.

I’ve said it before but there needs to be a National Inquiry examine how and why gender ideology was so widely invited in to the state-funded public realm and what impacts it has had.

Another hugely influential organisation is NICE

Their guidance is right here https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs18

But later on they say
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs18/chapter/Quality-statements

Adults or people with ovarian cancer

So disappointing as such an influential HTA body

Within this document it refers to “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”, also known by the acronym “terf”, stating that this group “may feel that trans inclusion is an infringement on their beliefs or values”.

Never mind ‘TERF’. The lack of understanding of the relevant issues, including the law is offensive. Did they pay for this?

It is not ‘woriads’ to believe that trans people should be excluded. It is ‘woriads’ to believe that sex is relevant and that sometimes services should or must be sex specific. It is also the law.

The executives should be obtaining correct legal advice and not outsourcing their thinking to activist groups.

Hello! Thanks for posting this. The data for this article came from some of us mumsnetters who are auditing (or attempting to) all NHS single sex policies across the UK.

if you feel like channeling your rage into something productive then please do pop over to the NHS audit thread.

We’d love to have more hands to the pumps. And have managed to generate 9 articles in 2 months out of only two NHS Regions. So helping with gathering concrete evidence will help with mass peaking events!

It’s something you can do anonymously from home and each trust takes about an hour of googling. If you’re not daunted by paperwork, enjoy ferreting out facts and you’ve got a good eye for detail we are your people!

Find us here:
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5322494-nhs-policy-audit-working-party-thread-2?page=1

This is so bad.

The sign of the bleeding obvious: that 'policy' has been written by political activists with a very specific agenda, which includes the destruction of women's sex based rights.

This might as well be their BAME policy written by UKIP.

If written by employed staff (who wrote it themselves as opposed to cutting and pasting from a political lobby's guidance) then the staff are political activists whose training has been in political indoctrination and not in actual law, and questions have to be asked about whether being an activist can be compatible with holding a job that involves responsibility, ethics, impartiality and actually focusing on the job rather than how it furthers the Glorious Day, Brothers.

And the advice is now not only illegal but actively offensive and derogatory of a large number of staff and patients. I'm sure Ben and Naomi would adore to get their teeth into it and any other trust that is still permitting this kind of nonsense. If staff cannot change gear then they are going to have to be removed via competency proceedures with a lot of questions asked about how they got through the recruitment process in the first place. The government is seriously going to have to roll out national training on women's rights, the law and basically deprogramming to undo the false information and indoctrination they allowed to happen through lobbies they were funding.

This might as well be their BAME policy written by UKIP.

If this is the standard, maybe it is?

[The trust] also has a “gold award” from the controversial charity Stonewall for its “commitment” to LGBTQ policies.

Well colour me surprised.

As an aside, good to see Stonewall picking up the tag “controversial”. Serves them right.

This might as well be their BAME policy written by UKIP.

This just nails it!
The NHS wouldn’t dream of doing something like that - yet thats exactly what they have done on women’s issues

I agree. The language in standards and reports for conditions that overwhelmingly affect 1 sex is a nonsense bewildering at times.

But their staff are overwhelmingly captured. I can think of 1 staff member who doesn’t have pronouns in the signature and I deal with a lot of them. It’s especially noticeable when people have signatures that they include their status as a union steward, MH first aider, or membership of staff lobby groups.

Even when committees lapse into using understandable terms in their public meetings, these disappear from the reports because they’re written by staff. (Committee members don’t work for NICE.)

Much more of their stance on denying the importance of sex while basing decisions on an already skewed scientific literature (plus decades of clinical trials that underrecruited women or treated them as if they should respond to treatments like men do) and they’ll be the National Ideologists for the Clinical Erasure (of women).

What a sad and yet so apt abbreviation.

I also know the org quite well... They could do so much more to promote women's rights both in their own org and results in trials from manufacturers.

Most likely posted by another of those random staffers in charge of the social media accounts...lots of them about.

This is going to be a game of 'whack - a - mole' for some time to come.

They are so handy tho aren't they - a temp who can cover the socials, be board a member, a DEI lead and a head nurse. Impressive range of skills 😅😉

Sick sick privileged fucking bastards.

I can't really even read this thread properly right now because I find the disdain shown towards traumatised women, well, retraumatising.

I wish I could make any of them feel what it's actually like to navigate this world as a woman with PTSD caused by male violence.