Women & Equalities Committee 2.30pm Today, 9th June, Mary-Ann Stephenson Chair at EHRC giving oral evidence

[TheNoWord]

Work of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) 20026-27 - Oral evidence, Mary-Ann Stephenson, Chair at Equality and Human Rights Commission and John Kirkpatrick, Chief Executive Officer at Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Considering the absolute balloons on this committee, it will be well worth a watch. Only Rosie Duffield and Rebecca Paul have any sense.

You can watch live on Parliament TV from 2.30pm

https://committees.parliament.uk/event/27280/formal-meeting-oral-evidence-session/

It’s not fine to ignore anyone’s dignity. No one should feel like they have to forgo care because they don’t feel accommodated.

Genuine question. What is distressing or undignified for male people to be on a ward with other male people? It is better from a nursing practicality point of view to have people grouped by sex and there are always curtains if you don’t want to chat.

If only everyone had been this concerned about the distress and dignity of women having creepy men on their wards gawping and exposing themselves or looking at images of child sexual abuse.

Trans woman, 54, who used public Wi-Fi to access child porn from hospital bed is jailed for nine months after police find hoard of 80,000 images on laptop - as authorities decide whether to send her to male or female prison

www.dailymail.com/news/article-8521787/amp/Paedophile-54-used-public-Wi-Fi-download-child-porn-hospital.html

As that's been happening to women for nearly a decade since unhinged transactivism took hold of the NHS and countless other institutions, you'll find little sympathy from women and girls. We've had to take endless court cases just to regain the right to undress in the workplace without random men watching.

Time to start lobbying Stonewall and the countless well funded trans lobby groups to get their act together and start planning for 3rd spaces/ additional provision, for men to be more welcoming to trans identified men etc etc.

Women have had enough of this bullying nonsense designed to remove our rights.

I'm so so tired of the 'what about the men' whining. Males, however they identify, can go on a male ward. They'll be fine, and it's a medical setting where sex can have an effect on treatment. They can have the curtains around them for privacy. It's a hospital for goodness sake. To treat sick people. Not to faff about stroking the egos of a bunch of males who haven't been told 'no' early enough in their navel-gazing lives, and need to start understanding that they are not special.

And this.
The amount of time, money, energy and white rich male privilege that's been wasted on this shit is ludicrous. The best time to stop that was about 10 years ago. The next best time is now. Start using all that privilege to get 3rd spaces.

Actually, yes there is an easy answer. Your option one. He's male, so he gets put in with the men. The staff deal with his tantrums by saying "no" repeatedly until he calms down once he realizes he's not going to get his way. Then if you are feeling generous, give him a biscuit for being such a good boy. The rest of the men can deal with whatever comes next. Not Women's Problem To Solve.

Yes, that is the solution. He's male. Goes in the male ward.

I'm sure if they are grownups, they will cope. They are there for medical treatment, after all, not validation. If they can't cope, then perhaps they can reframe their trauma or just stay home.

The cruelty in your response is absolutely staggering. And what does it have to do with validation? I’m not asking to be put on the women’s ward. I’m just asking not to be placed with men. For me, I would find that incredibly distressing because of how strongly I feel about not identifying with men.

Nope, not cruel, just the truth. Emotional blackmail does not work on me.

Reframe their trauma was said by a TiM about female rape victims who didn't want TiMs in group rape crisis centres. If he can say it about women victims with impunity, then you'll just have to take it being said about you.

It’s also the truth that I would feel distressed in a male ward. It’s not emotional blackmail, just how I feel. I’m not saying it to get access to female spaces, I’m just saying the male ward isn’t the solution here.

What about an individual room off the men's ward rather than the women's? It's an individual room, after all. If that wouldn't do, then I'm afraid I don't believe it's not about validation.

And again, this will be your problem to solve. You'll have to spend the next 15 years or so campaigning for something you will accept. I for one am done feeling any sympathy at all for a situation that men created.

Interesting watch, thanks OP

M-AS and JK were good and stood firm I think, in the face of some quite frankly, daft questions. And had to repeat themselves more than once!
If the chap with a nursing background is still working as a nurse... well. No comment.

I continue to be absolutely amazed and incredulous about the sheer number of mostly female MPs, arguing for men in womens' spaces.

I note "intersex" was used as a term. Glad M-AS put her right on that.

Well done Rosie D and Rebecca P.

In the instance of there being no alternative to the men’s ward, but the woman’s ward, I guess you’d be able to make the call about whether your need for treatment was greater than the distress you’d feel by being placed in the men’s ward @toyl9876 and either be treated, or not treated until such time as space away from the men’s ward was available.

When there are no beds available on the men’s ward or in any single rooms, you’ll have to be on a bed in the corridor until space is available, and there might be people around you of either sex waiting too. Let’s say there’s a bed on the children’s ward; you wouldn’t expect to be placed there in this case and it’s the same with the woman’s ward.

Hospital wards are segregated by sex not identity though.

I’m sure there are some very rich and powerful men that don’t identify with sleazy drug addicts or Man United supporters that hate to spend 5 minutes in the company of a Crystal Palace supporter but as they are all men, they need to find a way to work that out.

I’ve run out of patience with men who want access to women’s spaces. The answer is no. There’s been £millions spent and 20 years of hard campaigning on this - there is clearly no other solution.

Lets hope this thread can get back to the OP and not be yet another thread of whataboutery which if responded to actually helps all those who dont want us to share information and ideas of how to organise.

I have been on 3 threads today where this tactic is in action.

And I suspect many others.

Admittedly not sure FWR could get the currrent members of WEC ejected, but would be good to focus on how to support the EHRC and the few MPs who are prepared to stand up for women's sex based rights.

Or we could set up a thread and each post could be numbered answer No 1, then No 2 and each time those wanting to get us all to focus on their intentional negativity just go see No 1, see No 2.

That would be fine with me. I just wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing an open ward with men.

Fair enough.

I don't want anyone, woman or man, to be in a situation where they feel unsafe, where their privacy and dignity is removed.

New solutions are going to have to be found for this. Funding is going to have to be found for this. It's a new problem needing new solutions, when the easy answer has just been, dump the issues on women, dump the disadvantages on women, silence and punish those women to make protesting as difficult as possible, deride them for having those difficulties and wanting equality and consideration, and then when it turns out they can't be ill treated in law, moan and wail and try to destroy the law.

You could see the sexism from space.

Women are unstandably out of sympathy with this; they've been told for a decade, put up, shut up, no one cares, you're stupid and wrong for minding, NAMALT, if you're raped you can always tell the police aftewards (good luck with that) and you're free to go without care or resource if you don't want to submit to a situation you find untenable. It has been wicked. Appalling. And understandably they are now somewhat fed up when they hear people distressed at the mere possibility of this happening to a man with a trans identity and that such cruelty is unthinkable and impossible when it was fine to do to women.

No, that doesn't make it ok to do to men either. It shouldn't happen to anyone. But the endless 'what if, what if' does sound awfully like, to women after their experiences of illtreatment and oppression in this, as if the question really is, at what point do women's rights become conditional on and subordinated to the obvious greater priority of a man?

As if it's just a case of when things get bad enough that women's rights and equalities can be set aside. And then, as women know from bitter experience, that point of 'bad' will be moved and moved so there's no circumstances (again) in which their needs matter.

Women's equalities and rights in law cannot be conditional on the crumbs of what men leave after their needs have been met. This is a problem that needs answers, and the answer can never be 'oh well, someone has to lose, so do it to the women'.

Well said. It's the constant whining at women to solve this. People should head off to the message boards of Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence, Translucent, GIRES, the Proud Trust and the endless number of funded, queer theory activist groups who've relentlessly harangued and bullied women and girls out of having boundaries, safety and privacy from men when undressing. Even the language relating to women and women's health care has been eradicated by these people.

No women anywhere in the world EVER campaigned for men to be sleeping alongside them on hospital wards, undressing alongside them in swimming pool changing rooms or sharing women's changing rooms while teenage girls have their first bra fitting.

This is a solely male demand (even tho it's now often enabled by women) and for too long it's been expected that unconsenting women will budge up and solve the problem for these men.

Time to look to other men to provide the solution. They're online, funded and operating on broadcast mode.
Women have had enough.

Well said. And if you haven't seen it yet, you can join us over on another thread where we have been discussing and listing the new tactics that activists have been trying out lately, trying to persuade us to fix the situation in which they now find themselves. They realize that they are now running out of threats, excuses, and lies, and women are saying no:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5536989-be-kind-20-and-the-persuasive-tra?page=1

You might might find some of what we are talking about on the other thread familiar, now that you've spent a while on this thread.

https://x.com/jebadoo2/status/2064415765986427208?s=46

some good laughs in this…

You better start saving so you can go private then.