Extra breaks to self-harm
An LGBTQ+ group within an NHS hospital trust drew up plans to give trans staff extra breaks if they wore chest binders or had to tuck their genitals away.
In draft guidance seen by The Telegraph, an LGBTQ+ staff network within the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust (UH Sussex) said trans colleagues “may require extra scheduled breaks in their shift in order to have breaks from binding and tucking”.
Well now wait a second. If they get extra breaks from binding and tucking, why shouldn’t women get extra breaks from/for wearing high heels or makeup or tampons? Why shouldn’t men have extra breaks from/for shaving or not shaving? If one group gets extra breaks then all groups should get extra breaks. Fair’s fair.
However, the trust said the new proposals, which also said women-only spaces should include trans women, had been dropped in February and would not be pursued following the Supreme Court ruling last month.
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But critics said the draft guidance raised concerns about the time spent by NHS staff on working up and consulting on these types of policies.
Well, that, plus the utter stupidity of the policies themselves.
Helen Joyce, the director of advocacy at Sex Matters, a human rights charity, said the proposals for “employees who are self-harming in pursuit of the impossible goal of sex change should never have made it onto paper, even as a draft”.
She added: “Tucking genitals and binding breasts are culturally motivated actions that cause permanent physical damage, just like breast ironing and the use of neck coils. The only difference is that self-harm in the name of trans identity is high status and fashionable.”
See also: female genital mutilation aka FGM. There are, of course, people who defend FGM because it’s a religious/cultural practice and therefore must be beyond criticism or prevention.
University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust is vehement in its disavowal of these proposed policies, which it rejected entirely.
Actually, we have a rather long history of extra breaks for self harm. Those who smoke have been permitted to go outside to have their fire stick ever since buildings became non-smoking. If you bring that up to smokers, they say ‘well, you have bathroom breaks.’ Yeah, and so do you. No one takes your bathroom breaks away if you take smoking breaks.
Those with more healthy habits or other fetishes are expected to keep them at home, away from the work place. Only these two get special space carved out…I wonder why that is? (I don’t, really. It’s all about lobbying. If the knitters of the world lobbied hard enough, they could probably find a way to get extra breaks, too.)
Yes I spent plenty of energy fuming about those cigarette breaks when I worked in the Parks Department.
When my sister was working in an office, she got fed up with the frequent smoke breaks that her colleagues were taking, leaving her to work extra time alone, so one morning she took an apple from her bag and left her desk at the same time as them. When the supervisor tried to stop her, she said she was going on a smoke break. When the supervisor said “But you don’t smoke” my sister pointed at the apple. The supervisor grinned in understanding and let her go.
I’d be tempted to come out as trans myself if such a policy appeared in my workplace. I hope the whole staff of this hospital get the same idea. Because you’re trans if you say you are and nobody can question it, right?
“… fuming about those cigarette breaks …” I see what you did there.