LGBT month - This is a weird event to have during work time...

[LGBTmonth]

Our work LGBT Network has invited us all to a talk during most people's working time (2-3pm on a Monday) that involves "A reflection on transgender and intersex inclusive anatomy education initiatives... including an EDI Biomedical Sciences project using 3D printing and wax modelling to represent transgender, intersex and cisgender perineal anatomy."

This is an event for a general audience. Most people where I work, do not work in anatomy or even in medicine, although a small minority of people do.

In fact, in the teams group where I saw it advertised, no one would be working in the medical field at all.

A web page with a list of events, this one included, has been linked to by our director in a regular email he sends to our department along with a recommendation to attend some of the events.

I know it's optional to attend but it just feels very odd to have this suggested as something I should be spending my working time on when it's completely unrelated to my work.

3D printing and wax modelling to represent transgender, intersex and cisgender perineal anatomy.
I call this work based sexual abuse.

"I know it's optional to attend"

The don't attend? Seemplez.

Right

Now how should HR manage the display of genitalia on work monitors in an open plan office?

JHC.

"Hello Madam, Sir, may I show your children these pictures of genetalia?"

No it's not innocent. Possibly quite fantastically limited in terms of social awareness and appropriacy, but that's the kindest view I can take. But there are always going to be parents stupid enough to buy into the whole 'I am a random adult with pictures of genetalia, hoping to get to show them to your child, with a whole lot of word salad and logos to make this look like it's totes normal and progressive and all the best parents are doing it....'

Jimmy Saville could have had a ball in this decade, he really could. He could have done it all openly and been cheered on for it.

It’s all very well being naive rather than malicious, but it’s seriously stupid about safeguarding. Reckless. Wrongheaded.

And it’s the whole ‘useful idiot’ stuff. He maybe a useful idiot, but someone somewhere has different motivations. It’s all a bit Overton Window.

Whilst I could just about see that preparing a presentation of this nature as part of a serious academic study would be OK, its presentation to a much wider adult audience comes across as highly manipulative/borderline abusive. As for showing anything of this nature to children, even with parental consent, is deeply concerning. I would be wondering what is on the hard drive of anyone who thinks this is acceptable.

They "got around this" by covering the illustrations with paper flaps and then asking parents for consent before showing them to children.

Thats the right message to send
Peek-a-boo secrets

they were not experts at sex education

He still has not got a fuckin clue if he cant work out that the parents opted to a peek-a-boo event may be a concern as its the adult bringing their a child to a public place to look at genitalia with strangers.....

If he is going to be educating HCP he should learn the basics of safeguarding children.

changes made to an anatomy textbook but was dismayed it was in a particular section rather than used throughout the book....
it came out that educators were less confident teaching female anatomy

I had seen this point on Twitter (2018ish?) woman who was harmed by a surgery found that medical text used had no proper diagrams of female anatomy re shapes or locations the way male anatomy had. That was both basic and detailed text so teaching tools they were basically crap. She was lobbying medical text book producers and major teaching hospitals and was trying to get doctors to co-author papers to create a knowledge bank.

Agree. I'd put in a serious complaint, majoring on safeguarding.

Jessica Ann Pin. She’s still researching and lobbying.

Thanks
She was caught up in the whole TRA attacks as she was advocating for women. As well as speaking out on the harm an uneducated medic can do during surgery.

That's interesting thank you. I hadn't heard of her. Depressing that its is still happening.

I read invisible women, so I'm aware of some of the gaps in terms of medical knowledge regarding female bodies but I didn't realise it went so far to even the really basic stuff like this.

This.

Especially:

'I am a random adult with pictures of genetalia, hoping to get to show them to your child'

Obviously, it does matter if it's intentional, or naivety, and frankly, I'd suspect the former. But either way, it's unacceptable due to being a massive safeguarding breach.

I am quietly boggling at the less confident about female anatomy bit. I seem to recall that one of the things that Womens Lib advocated for back in the 70s was for women to be educated about their own bodies. Heck, I was given a book and speculum in the early 80s and have seen my own cervix.

I may not be up to medical textbook standard but I bet I am not the only woman who could make a good start on the basics without using silly words and mumbling, I'd like a job giving stern looks to medical students while they got to grips with the details.

This needs bloody well sorting out. Humph.
Fucked up priorities abounding.

Why do children have any need anyway to be shown surgically adapted genetalia of adults that is going to be unique to the adult and the surgery involved? Do we show them pictures of amputated limbs and FGM?

This is all about meeting the varied needs of the adults involved.

The only positive thing about people being more confident about the anatomy of human genitalia is that those people who disparagingly refer to womens vaginas as a “front hole” will learn that we have THREE holes in our undercarriage. One for pee, one for sex and babies and one for poo. So a vagina is a middle hole thank you very much.

This talk sounds like a cluster of symptoms this academic is struggling with. It should not be indulged, I’d encourage a GP visit and occupational health review.

What sort of bloke sits down and gets a range of cartoonish drawings of genitalia to show to children that is so bad that it has to be put under peek a boo flaps?

One that is not naive that's for sure.

Or thinks I've got a a 3D printer and just had a great idea...

Hi, this person is an anatomist doing anatomy research, so they are not "looking at genitals" for the sake of it, it is related to their work.

It's not related to everyone in the company's work, though, is it.

Hi, the person giving this talk is qualified to teach anatomy. They are an anatomy teacher and researcher with years of experience, and this is a relevant topic to those in the medial sciences. Perhaps the issue is with the audience this was chosen to be advertised to, rather than the talk itself.

Hi, intersex and cis are medical terms.

'Hi'

'intersex' is considered offensive by many people with DSDs. As far as I understand (but there are more knowledgeable people on here, who can correct me), it's not a widely used term in the scientific/medical context.
'cis' is not a medical term.