No women or mothers in hospitals
The NHS has axed a programme backed by Stonewall which told hospitals to stop using the words ‘woman’ and ‘mother’. Health service bosses have ended funding for the NHS Rainbow Badge Scheme after the Mail revealed how it rewarded trusts for dropping ‘gendered language’.
As if it were a good idea for hospitals to drop gendered language. Sure, in hospitals, nobody knows what sex is.
As many as 77 NHS trusts across England had signed up to be graded by Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, which back trans rights, on how inclusive they were towards patients and staff. They gained points for referring to women in maternity wards as ‘clients’, renaming female health clinics ‘colposcopy clinics’ and asking patients what their pronouns are.
One briefing showed that staff were branded ‘transphobic’ if they questioned the NHS’s focus on gender identity.
And being “transphobic” is worse than, say, not knowing what sex a patient is.
UK papers sure do like calling people in positions of authority in an organization “bosses” don’t they? It’s an interesting cultural quirk…
Why does anyone give a shit what Stonewall thinks anymore? Why would any organization keep paying attention to them once it was revealed that their “guidance” is based on what Stonewall wants the law to be rather than on what the law is, thereby exposing anyone following their counsel to prosecution for breaches of the law as written? It’s like choosing to dine in a restaurant cited for health violations that has not yet cleaned up its act.
“Boss” and “bosses” use fewer letters/take up less space than wordier, more accurate job titles. “Boss” is punchier than “hospital director” or “vice-chair of human resorces.” This approach also fits in with the coarser, pithier, adversial ethos of “hit back,” “lashed out,” etc. (which also happen to take up less space than more accurate, measured, less inflammatory, less sensationalized, and less “violent” descriptions) on which Ophelia has commented numerous times. Shorter words make bigger headlines; dumbing down saves space; conflict sells. Win win win.
I’ve just filled in a survey from the UK’s Office for National Statistics (the official stats-gathering office in the UK) for their Shape Tomorrow survey about work, education and health. One of the questions asked about support you felt you had from “your immediate boss”, so it’s not just newspapers, but the government, too.
I was also pleased (and surprised) to see they asked me about my sex, with only two options, male or female, and no follow-up question on my gender identity. Wonders will never cease, especially given the gender nonsense confusion from ONS’s annual census in 2021.