Tomorrow an NHS nurse faces a disciplinary hearing for talking to the media about what happened when she referred to a convicted male paedophile as “he” while treating him in an NHS hospital. We should all be talking about this.
The nurse received a written warning for not respecting his so-called “gender identity” – that is, his claim to be a woman.
Nevermind that he rained racial abuse on her while she was trying to insert a catheter in his penis.
For every nurse or midwife who has been disciplined for calling a male patient “he” or a female patient “she”, or told that she cannot object to a man in her changing room, there are hundreds more who dare not complain. Stopping health professionals from speaking honestly puts everyone at risk. Treating men as women is especially harmful to women’s privacy, safety and dignity.
This is how the madness of transgenderism has taken over at the NHS. Instead of focusing on healthcare priorities, many managers there have become obsessed with affirming false identities.
In a hospital, calling a man “she” isn’t a courtesy – it’s a lie that is harmful to everyone involved.
And none of the nurses or midwives taking these legal cases have had any support from the unions they have paid subscriptions to for years. Instead of protecting their members, unions have also become focused on promoting gender ideology.
Unison, for example, has campaigned and demonstrated in favour of policies that allow trans-identifying men to use women’s changing rooms.
Everybody needs the right healthcare: that is often different for men and women. Healthcare staff need to be able to think clearly; trying to remember wrong pronouns is a distraction from their important work.
Other patients are being lied to; everyone has to pretend they don’t see and hear the man in the female-only ward. And in this case not just any man, but a man with a strange belief about himself, a man who rages when people speak the truth about him.
This is not a marginal issue about a tiny number of people who feel they are transgender. This madness harms every woman and child in the UK, and every man, too. Sex matters across many areas of society.
Toilets and changing rooms provided for dignity and privacy, hospital wards, sport, prisons, rape counselling, domestic abuse refuges, your own healthcare – for all these it is reckless to ignore reality. Most men are not a risk to women, but some are. Violent and sexual crimes are almost all committed by men.
Ignoring reality is dangerous. We have to stop pretending people can change sex – for everyone’s sake.
Maya Forstater is Chief Executive of sex-based rights charity Sex Matters