Why feminists like me fought for single sex wards

Trans-identified males have NOT been 'banned' from female wards. Men have

With the startling announcement this week by NHS England that sex is a material reality, and that patients should be given the right to request treatment on single sex wards, Keir Starmer, a cowardly weasel that has allowed my friend Rosie Duffield to be bullied by those within her own party since she started speaking out against gender ideology, says what everybody knows to be the case: “There’s a distinction between sex and gender. The Labour Party has champion women’s rights for a very long time.“ First part; yes, we know, feminists told you so, the second part; you are a liar.

I campaigned for the introduction of single sex hospital wards back in the 1980s, when feminism hadn’t yet got through to the medical profession. Sexual assault and harassment of female nurses and patients was endemic. It was horrible being in a hospital ward shared by men, whether they were decent individuals or not. We won that battle, just for the transactivists to take it all away a few decades later.

I wrote the article below in 2021, as the NHS just announced that they had effectively put an end to female only hospital wards. Read it and weep: see how many of the rights we fought tooth and nail for have been eroded or smashed to smithereens due to the capture of so many institutions and individuals by the likes of Stonewall. Don’t ever tell me that gender ideology and trans madness hasn’t had a very real and lasting detrimental effect on the lives of women and girls. If you went along with it, or still are, shame on you.

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It's not an anti-trans crusade to be concerned about male sex offenders on female NHS wards

This has nothing to do with transgender people or the ideology around it. It's about dangerous sexual predators and women's vulnerability

JULIE BINDEL, 3 August 2021

In the latest backlash against women’s sex-based rights, NHS Trusts across the country have effectively put an end to single sex hospital wards.

The Trusts have issued guidance which states that patients should be admitted based on the ‘gender they identify with’ and therefore can choose which ward, toilet and shower facilities they use. Furthermore, some trusts have decided that patients who complain about sharing space with male-bodied trans women are deemed to be ‘transphobic’ and even been reported to police for hate crimes.

Back in the 1980s I was involved in a feminist campaign to make hospital wards single sex. It was routine in those days for men and women to share such facilities, and sexual harassment, assault and even rape routinely occurred in hospitals. I had a friend who was seriously sexually assaulted whilst in hospital, by a man in the bed next to her. She was asleep and the staff were absent when he crawled into her bed.

In 1979 the issue of the trend towards mixed sex wards was first raised the issue in parliament by the then MP for Bournemouth East, David Atkinson who said that women being forced to share accommodation and bathroom facilities with men, “constitute(s) an affront to human dignity”, and that, “A number of gruesome reports have appeared in the press …of violence and other disturbing behaviour in mixed wards, which would be intolerable by any standards.”

After more than three decades of campaigning, women were finally given our own wards, but the progress made from the blood, sweat and tears of feminists is now being rolled back. So why do single sex wards matter? After all, Oxford NHS Trust said that the “risk of sexual offending in a trans context is very rare”.

It is staggering that the Trust is looking at this as an issue of trans people as opposed to male pattern behaviour. The vast majority of sex offenders are natal males, however they identify, and the majority of victims women.

This issue has nothing to do with transgender people or the ideology surrounding it. This is about dangerous sexual predators and women's vulnerability. Most of the time a person is in hospital they are undressed and in bed. How many women would feel comfortable sharing a room with a male stranger when wearing nothing a nightgown, on sleeping or pain medication, and in pain or discomfort?

The reason we need single sex wards is not just about predatory men, but also because for many women, mixed toilet and shower facilities is not something they would choose. In recent months, a women who was placed in a mixed sex ward due to overcrowding of COVID patients told me a man in the next bed was openly masturbating but she was too uncomfortable to report this to staff.

Nurses will be afraid to report concerns about individual trans women patients lest they are accused of transphobia, and risk losing their livelihood. These are well founded fears, as we have seen women be kicked out of college courses, jobs and even reported to the police for hate crime for simply stating the truth about biological sex and its consequences.

Women's right are being rolled back, and the liberals that once supported feminists in campaigning to end sexual violence and protect women from it appear to no longer be on our side. Many have been influenced by lobby groups such as Stonewall which claims that gender identity should trump biological sex when it comes to the law and policy.

Male sexual predators have attacked women in the female prison estate, and prison officers have been known to capitulate to extreme transgender doctrine as opposed to protecting some of the most vulnerable women in society. The vast majority of male sex offenders are never reported, let alone convicted. How will overstretched hospital staff protect women?

When the Trust says that, 'Trans people should feel safe in hospital' they are absolutely right. But so should women. Why not ensure either that trans women have separate facilities, or place them in a men’s ward under strict supervision? Women face enough danger as it is. Single sex facilities exist for that reason.