You’re Missing The Point, Zoe, It’s Glimpsing Men’s External Ones That’s the Issue

The relentless demonisation of trans people has led us straight to a place where every choice is impossible, using words that recall, or should recall, the darkest days of prejudice and hatred.

Come off it, Zoe! No-one's herding them into camps - they have just been told what they should always have been told, had the medical profession not lost their minds - they are men, they were born men, and they will stay men until their dying day. 

I’ve spent the best part of 2025 in and out of various hospitals in London, and I have some observations that in a sane world would give a little texture to this debate, but in the world we’re in are just waved away, because of course it’s more important to focus on harassing the small number of trans hospital admissions there are, and ignore a wider system that’s in crisis.

Oh, so the state of the NHS is more of a danger than a six foot docker in a dress on the women's ward?  

My mum spent some weeks admitted in south and west London, and, in any six-bed, single-sex ward, a minimum of four people had dementia or, at the very least, had been so discombobulated by infection and unfamiliarity that they lacked capacity. My son, meanwhile, was in a male-only admissions ward in central London, after a pneumothorax, next to a guy who needed a pretty urgent mental health intervention.

Welcome to the NHS! It's failing - nice of you to notice at last!

When my mum died, though, it was in A&E, which is the last sentence I ever wanted to write. It would not have occurred to you to worry about who identified as which gender, nor would it have been possible to separate anyone, because the place was like a war zone. There was a woman in handcuffs, a man who vomited for 11 hours straight, people lying face down on the floor … I swear I glimpsed a man’s internal organ.

Then imagine the shock and distress experienced by vulnerable patients forced to glimpse an external one being waved around by a person the nurses refuse to call 'Mr', Zoe... 

So I don’t want to hear Wes Streeting off in some fantasy world where trans people are treated in private rooms in NHS hospitals, or Stephen Kinnock tying himself in knots about all the things that shall be done after “careful consideration”. I want to see politicians dealing with real problems, and journalists asking real questions.

For some this unwanted presence is an added insult, the cherry on the top of a bad experience and it doesn't need to happen, Zoe. It's not caused by lack of resources or overloading or poor staff management, it's caused by dogma. Why is this so hard to understand and sympathise with?