WH Radio4 now! Sex matters

[Davros]

My ghast is flabbered. A serious discussion. So far…

When you are undressed and in a hospital gown, the issue of male clothing presentation disappears. Most trans identified women look very much female.

Thank-you for that information, I hadn't realised that.

What I would want to trial is male wards, female wards plus a small number of mixed sex wards for those who actively prefer it or don't mind.

In a mixed sex ward transmen and transwomen can have the reassurance that nobody will be alarmed or challenging them regardless of whether they are perceived as men or women.

Same approach as for someone with significant mental health issues meaning shared ward isn't appropriate, or someone with dementia/delirium/learning disability/brain injury who is loud overnight/liable to wander, or someone terminally ill or under arrest/from prison - side room.

But on a pure risk basis your friend's daughter won't be able to rape another female patient and won't have 160% the punch power, the power to overwhelm all the other patients. Just not a risk in the same way as the opposite sex. The same is not true of trans identified males.

We are so so far from women being 'happy' in the NHS whether as employees or as patients. Sexual assault and rape is rife. Sometimes women are abused, coerced and gaslit about their rape. Sometimes the NHS is denying it happened even when on CCTV because the bloke doing it says he's a woman.

If women KNEW for sure and trusted 100% that anyone that looked like a small bloke would in fact be female then I think it'd actually be ok and they'd be happy to 'expand the bandwith of being female' in most cases. It's about the risk and reality of sexual harassment, assault and rape in the NHS. That needs to be addressed FIRST, then we can talk about whether people are 'happy'.

Unhappy (which I really doubt, plenty of women have short hair and wear jeans, it's no biggie) is very different to in danger. A male cross-dresser posing as trans broke a nurses arm on a women's ward in Norwich. He was immediately moved.

Having males on a women's ward would be a safeguarding issue......and there would be very strong objections against such a trial from within the medical profession itself.

I am very against mixed sex wards.

Unfortuntely, I have direct experience of being in a very vulnerable state on a mixed sex ward.

Do you know how many sexual assults happen in hospitals?

There is a reason that before gender wang came along, there was a big push for all wards being single sex.

These reasons have not gone away.

I think there is a question to be asked as to whether a patient can request to be placed in an environment where their risk of assault is much higher. And whether staff should be expected to manage this as part of their jobs.

Well this was totally predictable | Mumsnet - thread about a woman identifying as a man put on a male ward in the NHS who was identified as female and raped within an hour of arriving.

I suspect in reality 'mixed sex wards' by choice would largely end up all blokes.

Hospitals don't have the surplus capacity to operate a system like that. In reality you would end up with women being coerced or forced onto the mixed ward because there were no single sex beds left for them. "Oh you don't mind, do you, you know the pressures the NHS is under?" Lots of people don't feel able to complain about anything the NHS does so wouldn't feel they had any choice. Nevermind the power differential that arises from needing to be in hospital in the first place.

I am also sceptical about how many women would make a free and informed choice for a mixed sex ward, especially given the decades of campaigning against that indignity. Let's not fuck that up for all women by trying to appease the men's right activists.

Responding to this with a 'transman' case I'd obviously disingenuous. It is an intentional distraction from the issue of sexual assault and rape being no less a danger from men who identify as women compared with those that don't (according to Home Office prison statistics).

very good points, given the abuse and coercion of women in the NHS we've already seen (Darlington nurses, Jennifer Melle to name but two examples).

Oh really? I didn't know that. I thought the NHS were still dragging their feet about providing single sex accommodation in the first place. If that situation has moved on I'm very pleased.
In that case and in light of previous posts perhaps more availability of single rooms is the answer.

NHS management ( and DEI advisors) and the medical profession are not necessarily the same thing.

BusyAzureTraybake

"watchful to the grave" - how right you are, the perfect phrase I have been looking for! I am worried about the future and needing hospital and home care in my old age. I think we are just now starting to move in the right direction, but vigilance is still needed. I don't think things will improve significantly in my lifetime. I hope the next generation of women can benefit from s complete return to sanity.

Thats never going to happen now theyve broken trust…. And after the Lambeth rape case it is clear that some TIFs are very vulnerable from all sides. I think they’ll end up in side rooms etc - until of course the numbers of them being treated allow for a whole bay.

After all we know what happened to the East German/Soviet Block athletes after their testosterone doping. They’re going to have heavy healthcare requirements aren’t they?

This.

Transmen might pass in photos, but in real life they're often even smaller than non trans identified women.

Explaining to the other women that this particular woman has taken testosterone, and that's why she might have some stubble would be the work of a moment.

And call me a cynic, but I don't think any of these politicians or activists give a fuck about transmen. They're using it as a smoke screen to get men into women's wards.

Just to add, that also it's bloody galling to hear Reddit level trans bollocks being played out in mainstream media and Parliament.

If I hear one more person claim that flat chested women look like men, my head will explode.

It's like there's been collective memory loss or blindness. Yes, some women have little to no discernible breasts at all. Not just post-operative women.

It varies a lot I think. The TIFs “pass” much more because of the facial hair. Im very sure theres a TIF actor on a prime time BBC show and I doubt most people have registered because they look like a male youth - despite being nearly 40

My partner was an unequivocally butch lesbian - jeans, leather jacket, Doc Martens and a flat top from the barbers every six weeks - who was habitually misgendered in her everyday life. This became more frequent over the last ten years of her life, not just because she aged out of her youthful beauty (I know I'm probably biased, but she really was gorgeous), but also because gender stereotypes seemed to narrow down over that time, with less and less social toleration of androgyny/anyone outside narrower and narrower modes of presentation. She died seven years ago, but before she died she had extended periods in hospital, always on main, not side wards. Not once during any of that awful time did any woman, either patient or medic, comment on her sex or gender, and she usually ended up becoming adopted as something of a ward favourite with the - usually older - other patients. The main point, however, is not only could those women tell, buzz cut or not, that she was female, but that when you took her out of her "men's clothes", removed the flattening sports bra and put her into a hospital gown she simply looked like what she was, a short haired woman.

stereotypes seemed to narrow down over that time, with less and less social toleration of androgyny/anyone outside narrower and narrower modes of presentation

This is a good observation. See 'flat chested women look like men'. Not to mention the entire concept of being 'non-binary'.

Yes, isn't it funny (not) how trans identified women only get mentioned when it's really about getting blokes into women's spaces.

The explosion of people pretending that the extreme regressive sex stereotypes used in transgender ideology mean that mammals (especially female ones) suddenly have lost the evolved ability to tell male from female in an instant is also premium grade abusive gaslighting.

Dogs and other mammals can tell male from female humans. In person on a hospital ward there is literally no adult who's gone through puberty where it's impossible to tell. Plus, as Datun says, it's a matter of moments to explain if that was ever true (it's not).

Men, males pose an unacceptable safeguarding risk to women so should never be on women's wards.

Or people who just want a private room.

Let's not fuck that up for all women by trying to appease the men's right activists.

I was thinking of the women. Of trying to find a way to give transmen (particularly the rare ones who pass as male) an opt out of female wards if they want it, so that vulnerable women aren't scared at thinking there's a man there. For most women patients you can just tell them the bearded person is female and they'll be fine with it, but for example dementia patients might not have the ability to hold onto that information and might get distressed. And the FWS SC judgement does say that in certain circumstances women who ID as trans could also be excluded. So I was trying to think of a way to make that work in this situation.

But message received. I guess we have to hope they design in more single room accommodation for everyone's privacy and comfort.

The other thing I have said before and will say again is that situations do not have to be symmetric. The first reason for single sex wards is safeguarding women. Letting TM opt out of female spaces is not the same as letting TW opt in.

If I thought I had half a chance of a Private room when I’m in for my next op I’d be cutting my hair abd identifying as a man so fast.

So you’d want a young girl on a male ward? Do you think they see men would be comfortable with that?