From the Telegraph, some healthcare news:

Can you guess the offensive, verboten word?

One might think that the employees having babies and therefore on maternity leave are, in fact, by definition, mothers. One might even think that a hospital, and a maternity hospital in particular, is a place where physical realities of this kind would be difficult to avoid. And yet.

While none of the hospitals’ current staff classified themselves as confused about which of the two sexes they are, it is, I suppose, possible that at some point one of the mothers taking maternity leave may, potentially, be sexually dysmorphic – i.e., mentally ill. But mental illness, even fashionable mental illness, isn’t generally something that one should affirm. Nor should it be a basis for the coercion of others. Farce, after all, soon loses its charm.

And these grifting monomaniacs appear to have their feet firmly under the taxpayer-funded table. Such that, even in hospitals regarded as doing nowhere near enough, rainbow ‘Pride’ lanyards swing freely around countless employee necks, “painted rainbow walkways” already assail the eye, along with innumerable rainbow-adorned posters and rainbow staff badges, and at least one “LGBT+ progress flag” flutters gaily from a dedicated flagpole.

In the same hospitals, unused tampons are abundant in the men’s toilets, and the womanhood of expectant female patients is being dutifully downplayed – one might say marginalised – lest the pretentious and unhinged feel in some way anomalous. Hospital staff are expected to introduce themselves to patients by gratuitously announcing their pronouns. As if their sex might otherwise be difficult to fathom.

The “diversity” assessments also insist that gynaecology services must “take… additional action to support trans and non-binary patients.” Specifically, dysmorphic women – women who wish to be perceived as men – should be spared having to sit in “a busy, gendered waiting room,” where the presence of other women may induce psychological discomfort and feelings of “dysphoria.” Instead, such women should be provided with “an adjoining waiting room that matches their affirmed gender.” In short, a waiting room for men in need of gynaecological attention.

We’re also told that gynaecology departments should remove “gendered names (e.g. ‘Women’s Health’),” as this may also make transgender visitors feel unhappy. The words “mother” and “woman” should, we learn, be replaced with the word “client.” The feelings of other, non-dysmorphic female patients on this matter, or on any of the matters raised, are not explored and are seemingly of zero interest.

Regarding the demanded erasure of the words mother and woman, another complaint is aired by our “diversity” overlords:

A backlog of other “diversity” demands, that is. The ones being churned out at a boggling rate and with manic enthusiasm.

Among which, a demand that the term “heterosexual partnership” be replaced with “opposite-sex partnership,” on grounds that “bisexual people in opposite-sex partnerships” may “not classify themselves as being in a heterosexual partnership.”

Despite actually being in one.

At which point, readers may wish to imagine a bisexual chap, one in a relationship with a woman, arriving at a hospital with a fractured wrist and having the time to complain that his paperwork doesn’t allow him to stipulate that his heterosexual relationship with said woman is merely conditional and doesn’t preclude other, more manly entanglements at some future date.

Because when you’re fixing a chap’s fractured wrist, you obviously need to know about his bisexuality. And hey, priorities.

As part of the “diversity” assessment, feedback from hospital staff is solicited, presumably to determine the exact level of ideological conformity. However, much of this feedback has been denounced as “transphobic,” or “homophobic,” or insufficiently affirming of “pansexual” or “asexual” people. Examples of such inexcusable wickedness are included in the sixty-eight-page assessment report. For instance,

And,

For readers on the verge of hyperventilated gasping, paper bags can be found under your seats.

Other supposedly scandalising staff comments are offered:

And,

The feedback quoted above is of course deemed worthy of a “content warning” and is prominently flagged as both bigoted and a “cause for concern.” One warranting “further investigation” by the employee’s superiors. Apparently, for Stonewall and the LGBT Foundation, and by extension the NHS, these are questions that needn’t be answered – and indeed one mustn’t ask.

Behold the new unsayable.

Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell on “queered” health care:

Ah, but “highly gendered” and “offspring-focussed” health care – for pregnant women and their babies – makes it “challenging” for sexually dysmorphic women who wish to be perceived as men, even while heavily pregnant. In short, “Screw the wellbeing of the baby, the inhibited lactation, and the risk of serious birth defects. Just jack me up on testosterone and refer to me as Sir.”

I paraphrase, of course. But nowhere near as much as one might hope.

Somewhat related, Heather Mac Donald on fads, transgenderism, and defaults:

A phenomenon doubtless familiar to regular readers.

And Noah Carl on the unspeakable:

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.

Janice Fiamengo pokes through the outpourings of Sophie Lewis: 

Ms Lewis and her fever dreams have of course been mentioned here before: 

I am not interested in where a human life starts to exist.

In the video linked above, feminist “theorist” Sophie Lewis informs us that the foetus, a nascent human being, is “violent,” does violence to “gestators,” and that abortion is a corrective killing, an “unmaking,” a means of “going on strike against gestational work.” “We need to move away from… arguments around when human life begins,” says she.

So far as I can tell, and despite Ms Lewis’ theorising, mothers-to-be don’t generally feel a need to parse their pregnancy in terms of “abolishing the private nuclear household” and “global regimes of colonial and commodity exploitation.” Or indeed to champion abortion, via drugs or dismemberment, as a form of “anti-violence.” But that’s probably because – to borrow a phrase from Joan – they haven’t been tugging on the intersectional crack pipe.

Ms Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family. When not arguing for the destruction of the unborn, and the “abolition” of the family – which is to be replaced by comradeliness, apparently – she “participates in the Out Of The Woods anti-capitalist ecological writing collective.”

Update, via the comments:

In this laughably pretentious review of Ms Lewis’ laughably pretentious book, we learn that the author wishes us to embrace the disintegration of the family – our families, all families – “until they dissolve into a classless commune on the basis of the best available care for all.” As if the “best available care” would somehow be an obvious result of family disintegration, despite decades of real-world evidence to the contrary. Supposedly, we would learn to love the “plural womb,” “radical disinheritance,” and “a world beyond propertarian kinship and work alienation.” The children we have will no longer be ours, it seems, and this will apparently make us happy. It’s a “queer, communist, speculative future.” A narcissist’s experiment. And we are to be the guinea pigs.

Via Mr Muldoon. Somewhat related.

John Leo on standards versus appearances: 

The nation’s public schools are a mess. Only 37 percent of 12th graders tested proficient in reading and only 25 percent in maths. Yet the inability to read or do maths seems to be no barrier to college. Unprepared students are flooding into college in record numbers. The Bureau of Labour Statistics says 70 percent of white high-school graduates and 58 percent of black graduates in 2016 enrolled in college. In his syndicated column, Walter E. Williams asks, “If only 37 percent of white high school graduates test as college-ready, how come colleges are admitting 70 percent of them? And if roughly 17 percent of black high school graduates test as college-ready, how come colleges are admitting 58 percent of them? It’s inconceivable that college administrators are unaware that they are admitting students who are ill-prepared and cannot perform at the college level.”

From the Walter Williams article quoted above: 

College professors dumb down their courses so that ill-prepared students can get passing grades. Colleges also set up majors with little analytical demands so as to accommodate students with analytical deficits. Such majors often include the term “studies,” such as ethnic studies, cultural studies, gender studies… The major for the most ill-prepared students, sadly enough, is education. When students’ SAT scores are ranked by intended major, education majors place 26th on a list of 38.

With that in mind, readers may wish to revisit this tale of modern educational wonders. As I said at the time, a school that has no discernible standards, academic or behavioural, and which makes no distinction between those who study and those who don’t even turn up, is in no meaningful sense a school.

And speaking of analytical deficits: 

A member of the pro-abortion club at the University of Minnesota-Duluth compared pro-life students to white supremacists during an open mic event last week. Throughout his [poetry] performance at the “Speak Out for Justice” event on April 21, Student Advocates for Choice member Reilly Manzer condemned the “pale faces” of the pro-life movement for criticising abortion.

Bear in mind that Mr Manzer – whose woke poetry is the obligatory feat of teetering pretension and outright psychodrama, and therefore loudly applauded – is, for many educators, an exemplary product of modern academia.

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.