Once in a while, we're happy to report a win for reality. A while back, the United Kingdom's Supreme Court ruled, in effect, something that humans have known for millennia, namely that men are men and women, women. Let's call that a win for not only reality but the staggeringly obvious.
The repercussions of that decision are also being felt. In the latest, the UK National Health Service (NHS), which previously ballyhooed its support of transgender patients, is now having to quietly tiptoe away from that support. Specifically, they have had to tear up their policies on patients using their "chosen" bathrooms and changing areas.
NHS chiefs have been forced to rip up their pro-trans guidance after it was rendered illegal by the Supreme Court ruling.
The NHS Confederation, which represents trusts, has quietly withdrawn guidance telling hospitals that they should allow trans people to use their chosen toilets and changing rooms.
The group told The Telegraph it had taken the guide down from its website because it had become “dated” since the Supreme Court judgment that the word sex in the Equality Act means biological sex.
OK, can we finally dispense with the unnecessary qualifier of "biological sex" at last? Sex is a matter of biology. There's no such thing as non-biological sex. I'm quibbling, sure, but my background in biology means that this bugs me more than it might some folks.
Anyway, there are those who aren't content to let the NHS tiptoe away from this, and they make a good point.
On Thursday night, women’s rights charities demanded that the confederation apologise for the guidance, which they claimed may have led to unfair decisions, such as the case of Darlington nurses who were disciplined for demanding single-sex facilities.
They said that rather than deleting the guidance, the confederation should actively inform all trusts that it was now null and void.
Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said: “Its guidance encouraged a hostile, humiliating and unsafe environment for NHS workers and patients. It was published with much fanfare but withdrawn by stealth.
“NHS Confederation should now apologise publicly for undermining women’s rights and the culture of care. It should also undertake to contact all NHS trusts, telling them that its guidance was flawed and that policies based on it should now be torn up.”
That seems like the least that the NHS Confederation could do, and I think that in this matter, we can count on them doing the least they can.
See Also: Horror: British National Health Service Treating 'Transgender' Toddlers
Crazy: British NHS Pushing 'Gender Construction Kit' on Trans Patients
Why? Because the United Kingdom is still heavily invested in this lunacy. The NHS Confederation was all in for allowing men to parade their junk in women's private areas, in defiance of all that's decent. And, yes, these are men; I'm willing to bet that a high proportion of them do not suffer from gender dysphoria or any genetic sexual syndrome; they are, like the boys claiming to be girls in sports, taking cynical advantage of a social contagion to gain some advantage. And, until this decision, the NHS Confederation was catering to them.
What's baffling is how this has invaded the delivery of medical care. Our oldest daughter, a nurse practitioner, has worked in emergency medicine for nearly 20 years now. In addition to running her small-town clinic, she also picks up shifts in some of the area hospitals' emergency rooms, because she likes the work and the money's good. She has related to us that about once a month, a "transgender" patient will screech at her for "deadnaming," to which she has to tiresomely explain that it's the law she use their legal name on their medical records; and about as often, she has to snap back at one of the, "I don't give a (insert invective) how you identify, I need to know what parts you have."
Consenting adults can play dress-up and claim to be whatever they want until the cows come home, and most of us won't give two hoots as long as we're not bothered and they stay away from our kids. But the delivery of medical care has to be based on fact, not fantasy. An emergency patient's insistence on being examined and treated as a man could be fatal, if there's something like an ectopic pregnancy or endometriosis that goes undetected, or if an insistent "transgender woman" has prostate cancer.
Men, no matter if they identify themselves as "transgender women," a ham sandwich, or the Crab Nebula, need to use men's bathrooms and changing rooms, not just in hospitals, but everywhere. The NHS Confederation has been dragged kicking and screaming to this, but at least, they're there now, so that's a win. This time.
Meanwhile, the fight for reality continues.
