Women in British hospitals who complain about biological males in their space may be removed under new guidelines

Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has been a vocal and active advocate for trans affirmative medical care. Their latest foray into making sure male-bodied trans persons feel comfortable is to allow them access to medical care on women’s hospital wards. If a female patient has a problem with it, she will be removed.

“Women patients who complain about having a biological male in the next bed risk being kicked off the ward under new NHS transgender guidelines. Medical staff will be expected to deal with those who object to trans patients on single-sex wards as if the complainant is a racist or homophobe, the guidance states. Rather than relocate the trans patient, such as to a single room, it will be the person who makes the complaint who will be moved, according to the policy.”

Women’s groups complained about this change but were rebuffed. In fact, if a woman complains at being roomed with a male-bodied person, hospital staff is instructed to protect the trans person from the woman. The “…duty of care extends to protect patients from harassment and should the woman continue to make demands about the removal of the transgender patient and be vocal in the ward it would be appropriate to remind her of this… Ultimately it may be the complainant who is required to be removed.”

The NHS argument uses racism as a means to bolster the argument, claiming that “If a white woman complained to a nurse about sharing a ward with a black patient or a heterosexual male complained about being in a ward with a gay man, we would expect our staff to act in a manner that deals with the expressed behaviour immediately.” Of course, these are completely different things. Race has no bearing on gender, as both sexes exist within every race on earth. The same goes for sexual orientation, the fact of who a person is attracted to has nothing to do with their anatomy.

Under the guise of medical care, the NHS has encouraged hormone treatment, breast binding, and “packing” in minors. Before removing via surgery or chemical children’s reproductive capability, they may pay for the freezing of eggs and sperm, so that after the children undergo sterilization they will have access post-transition. At least one mother was threatened with the removal of her child by child services after she balked when NHS referred her 14-year-old daughter for gender reassignment hormones.

Grade school children are asked if they are comfortable in their own gender, while the NHS refers to children as young as 4 to gender reassignment doctors for assessment. There was even an NHS doctor who was fired for stating that gender is not assigned at birth, but is an innate condition. Women have pushed back against both the placing of male-bodied trans persons into women’s prisons and refuges. One woman was appalled to receive care from a trans nurse when a female nurse was requested.

Over and over, women’s spaces are being opened to male-bodied trans persons, children are being encouraged to assess their own bodies for correctness, young people are given life-altering drugs and surgeries before their brains are finished forming, and women are told to put up or shut up. It’s bad enough to house men in women’s prisons, or in battered women’s shelters, both of which see women at their most vulnerable. But allowing men into women’s hospital wards seems barbaric and cruel.

Anyone with a brain can agree that, despite gendery feelings, the difference between those with male bodies and those with female bodies are their bodies. Every time I write this it seems more and more absurd to say that men and women have different bodies or to try and justify just how bodies are relevant to medical care. But men and women have different bodies, the differences in those bodies are even more apparent when both take off their dresses and stand naked before medical professionals. The kind of medical care that men and women receive is different precisely because their bodies are different.

Rape victims should not arrive for hospital care only to be roomed with a male-bodied person. Male bodied persons need different care for their reproductive systems because they have different reproductive systems. It’s frankly insane that we have to keep saying this. Male bodied persons do not need gynecologists, no matter how much silicone they’ve been fitted with.

Gynecological patients should not have to undergo vaginal exams with a male-bodied person in the bed next to them, or be fitted with a catheter, or worry about their hospital gowns slipping, or showing too much skin when they carry themselves to the bathroom or fear intimate conversations about their anatomy being overheard.

This continued push against women having private spaces has so much to with men’s needs being put first. In medical circles, it has come to light that the understood symptoms for heart attack were male-centric, and that there have been biases against women’s pain. Women are less likely to be given CPR, to be properly treated for dementia, and often have their concerns overlooked. Now, even in women’s hospital wards, women will have a harder time getting noticed, having their concerns heard, or even finding privacy.

Trans advocacy that puts men in women’s spaces reflects the demand that women submit to men’s wishes, desires, and delusions. The NHS should recognize this as the gaslighting it is, and give women back their medical autonomy. Medical services should be more aware of women’s needs, not less. When women speak up for themselves, they should be heard, not silenced, shuttled off to some locale where they will get even worse medical care than that which they already access.

Most women who are housed with males on a women’s hospital ward will not speak up, they will instead suck it up, for fear that their lives will be put at even more risk. It’s up to the NHS, legislators, and women’s groups to stand for women’s rights, and not throw them under the proverbial gurney.