A group of U.K. nurses is challenging the body that oversees the hospital where they work because they are being forced to share a changing room with a creepy, supposedly transgender woman (i.e., a man) and, when they complained, were told they needed to “be educated” and “more inclusive.”
Eight nurses who are employed by the National Health Service’s (NHS) Darlington Memorial Hospital, located in northeastern England, have “filed a claim for a full employment tribunal hearing against the” County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, according to the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), which is representing the nurses. The women “claim that they have experienced victimization, indirect discrimination and sexual harassment for which the Trust is liable” under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The nurses, who must change clothes both before and after their shifts, say that a male colleague who claims to be transgender but still has his male genitalia hangs around the women’s changing room, ogling them as they undress. The changing room is an open area with no cubicles that “clicks shut and has a lock system that makes it slow to get in and out of,” wrote the CLC.
The Daily Mail reported that the man, who goes by the name of “Rose,” “told fellow workers at Darlington Memorial Hospital [he] had stopped taking cross-sex hormones because [he was] trying to get [his] girlfriend pregnant.” Yet under NHS policy, which allows employees to use single-sex facilities corresponding to the gender with which they identify, the man called “Rose” has become a thorn in the side of his female colleagues.
Tracey Hooper, 45, one of the nurses filing the claim, told the Mail that having “Rose” in the changing room “makes me feel on edge.”
“You scan the changing room before you start to undress. It’s just very uncomfortable. I don’t want to get changed in front of a biological man, and I don’t want to see him getting changed either,” she added.
“For me it is about wanting to feel safe,” said claimant Annice Grundy, 54. “I don’t want to be panicking and looking over my shoulder while getting ready to work in a hospital caring for patients. We should not have to feel afraid.” She told the Mail she has started changing elsewhere, “which I don’t feel I should have to do.”
The nurses have been voicing their concerns about “Rose” to their superiors since last August, but those concerns fell on deaf ears at the woke NHS.
In March, 26 of them signed a letter to the Trust’s director of workforce stating that the changing-room policy “has created a situation that we consider inappropriate and that we have found intimidating and upsetting.”
They asked that “Rose” be given his own place to change — not with women but not necessarily with other men, either.
Although the director did not directly reply to their letter, the hospital’s human-resources head held an “impromptu meeting” to discuss the matter, penned the CLC. At the meeting, the nurses were allegedly told that “the hospital supports [the transgender colleague] ‘150%’ and that they “need to be educated,” “broaden their mindset,” “be more inclusive,” and “compromise.”
One senior hospital staff member was allegedly so clueless that he or she felt the need to ask the nurses why they didn’t “feel safe” changing around “Rose.”
Seeing that they were getting nowhere with their superiors, some of the nurses spoke anonymously with the Mail last month. One of them — “who,” according to the paper, “was sexually abused as a child, has post-traumatic stress disorder and struggles to be alone around men” — recounted:
I was rummaging in my bag trying to find my lanyard and keys for the locker when a man’s voice behind me said, “Are you not getting changed yet?” He stood there, two meters from me, with a scrub top on and with tight black boxer shorts with holes in them and asked [again] whether I was getting changed yet… I felt glued to my seat, I could not move. My hands started to sweat. I was petrified and felt sick and began hyperventilating.
Bethany Hutchison, 34, another claimant, told the Mail, “It’s disgraceful that nurses are ending up in tears prior to their shifts. We are there to be an emotional support for patients who are about to undergo surgery, and it’s very difficult to do that if you’re in a state of distress from having to change in front of a male.”
She also said it was “offensive” and “disgusting” to be told they need to be “educated” considering they all have one or more degrees.
“We’re not transphobic and we’re not fearful of trans people — we believe they need their own changing space that’s safe for them,” she explained.
Nurse Lisa Lockey, 51, told the Mail, “We get transgender patients through our unit and we look after them. We’re nurses, we care about people, that’s our job, so it is an insult that we’ve been made to feel like we’re bigots.”
The nurses are aware that they are likely to be pilloried by trans activists and the media for their stance, but they aren’t backing down.
“I think women need to stop being fearful about this and use their voice,” said Hutchison. “We have fought for so long to get women’s rights but it’s just gone backwards, and I’m not prepared to see that.”
