Woman who suffered a stroke rejected an NHS trans woman nurse who came to wash her

NEWS AND COMMENT-UK: On the radio this morning, there was an interesting story which I would like to report on this website. It is not about cats but I'm allowed to talk about something else when the cat news dries up!

In this story, Nick Ferrari on LBC was discussing the NHS and transgender people. A woman suffered a stroke and she was being cared for at her home. Nurses were coming around to wash her.

On one occasion a transgender woman (trans woman) turned up to wash her. A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth and self-identifies as a woman and lives the life of a woman.

I mean no disrespect at all to the nurse by the way. I am totally open and supportive of transgender people. And I'm also very supportive of the way people self-identify with a wide spectrum of genders. This I think is totally normal but it is taking a while for the mainstream conservative population to accept it.

The woman who had suffered a stroke rejected the trans woman nurse. That's because she wanted a biological female as she saw it (assigned female at birth) to wash her because it's a very private procedure. And clearly, this woman who was in her 40s had difficulties in accepting the fact that a transgender female nurse who was originally a man was suited to the job.

She must have felt that the person was still a man and therefore she didn't want to expose her private parts to them.

The sting in the tale is this: the NHS thereafter barred her from treatment at home. Can you imagine that? The administrators at the NHS simply stopped providing a service to her because she exercised her right, it seems to me, to reject the nurse.

It seems to me also that the administrators appear to have decided that the woman is transphobic, meaning that she is intolerant of transgender people.

However, we don't know that. If they thought that they'd made a presumption which may well have been incorrect. In any case, is not a good enough reason to stop providing a service to the woman who has a right under British law as I understand it to receive NHS services.

It wouldn't surprise me if she had paid national insurance stamps when she was working. In short, she probably has paid for NHS services when she was working in paying national insurance as a tax. If that is the case then this is a breach of contract as well as I see it.

Toxic debate

It is a story which sheds light on this toxic debate about transphobia and about transgender people. It's a toxic debate about people who are described as "gender-critical". As I understand it, these are people who question whether there are more than two sexes i.e. male and female. Gender-critical people believe that there are just two sexes: male and female and if a person is transgender and transfers their gender from say male to female as this nurse did, they are still males.

This woman who suffered a stroke is probably a gender-critical person. People have a right to be gender-critical in a society where freedom of speech is protected under the British, unwritten constitution.

People on the opposite side of the fence describe these people as transphobic. They hate them. And they will often do whatever they can to upset them. This is been seen with JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. She's been described by campaigners for transgender people as being transphobic when, to be honest, I don't think that she is. 

But if you stick your head above the parapet and say something which is a little bit dodgy in this debate you can be branded as trans-phobic and it can quite severely affect your life if you are a high-profile person because you can be heavily criticised on social media which can undermine your work.

Another similar case

I have just discovered that this is not an isolated incident because the news media online today tell me that another woman, Teresa Steel, developed an abscess after delays to an operation following a request for only biological women to provide her with intimate care. Her surgery had been cancelled because she had demanded same-sex care she claimed.

Definition of 'gender-critical': critical of or opposed to the belief that gender identity is more important or significant than biological sex (typically used in contexts relating to the rights of transgender people).