Why British politicians are defending women-only spaces

After a womancctvgrc) was raped in a British hospital in 2021, staff there claimed no such crime was possible because the alleged perpetrator was not male but transgender. “They forgot that there was , nurses and observers,” Lady Emma Nicholson told the House of Lords in March 2022. Lady Emma was calling for an end to a policy of allowing trans hospital patients to be placed with the gender with which they identify rather than their biological sex. The hospital later apologised to the woman, who did not pursue the case in court. And Lady Emma’s call is set to be heeded.In 2019 the National Health Service introduced guidance advising hospitals to accommodate trans patients “according to their presentation: the way they dress, and the name and pronouns they currently use”. They need not have had surgery or a gender recognition certificate (, which recognises that a person has transitioned. Anecdotal evidence suggests that while hospitals do accommodate trans women (biological men) on women’s wards, trans men tend not to ask to be placed with men.