BMA attempts whitewash, fails badly

Thanks to Pink News I saw that the British Medical Association (BMA), the professional association and trade union for UK doctors, had released a “report which describes the experiences of LGBT doctors and medical students working in the NHS” to mark LGBT History Month.

I’m really not sure whether to just post the particular paragraphs from their press release or to mercilessly dissect it –

“Societal attitudes towards homosexuality have changed over the years. There was a time when homosexuals were imprisoned as criminals and treated with electroshock therapy to ‘cure them of their disease’. The 2004 Gender Recognition Act was a major step forward and at last offers legal protection to homosexuals.

“Like the UK, the NHS has come a long way in recognising sexual and gender equality since it was founded in 1948. Many of the stories in the report show that LGBT doctors are out and proud at work and this is brilliant news, however, there are still accounts of discrimination which shows we still have a long way to go.

“The doctors who have spoken out in this report have been incredibly honest and brave and I hope their accounts will inspire other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender doctors to be proud of their contributions to the NHS and to patients.”

- Dr Justin Varney, Co-chair of the BMA’s Equal Opportunities Committee (EOC) 

….

Fuck it, this one is just too failworthy to let go. 😛

1. LGBT =/= homosexuality
2. The whole thing seems rather …confused about itself. “Homosexual” one minute, then LGBT, then “sexual and gender equality” (i.e. Queer (+ Intersex) + Gender Variant + Kinksters + Ethical Non-Monogamy + Sexworking + ethical Sluts) and back again. Kinda different in scope, aren’t they.
3. Sure, there was a time when we imprisoned and enforced state-organised abuse on “homosexuals” to ‘cure them of their disease’, but now we just reserve that for perverts, trannies, and whores.
4. “The 2004 Gender Recognition Act was a major step forward and at last offers legal protection to homosexuals.” –
   1. ….
   2. lol!
   3. would this qualify for ‘epic’ fail?
   4. I’d also challenge that it was “a major step forward“. It might have been in 1997 or whenever, when it was first submitted to Parliament, but by the time it did get passed it was pretty much relegated to tokenism to shut up the normative fluffy tea-and-crumpets trannies.
   5. Legal protection. Only just. The tiniest ‘wafff-eh thin’ sliver of legal protection …and only for those trannies that are certified as ‘Twue Transexuals’, oh, and guess who has that job – Doctors.
5. Completely fails to acknowledge the role of the BMA itself, and many of it’s members in either actively supporting, or at least refusing to challenge the widespread Antisexualist, Anti-trans, Anti-Intersex, and Anti-Kink prejudices and *acts* of clinical (mal)practice endemic within the UK Medical industry/community, included of course;
   1. performing major surgery without consent,
   2. refusal of life-critical treatment,
   3. false pathologisation,
   4. pressurising patients to conform to stereotypes and have surgery, and
   5. misleading patients with regard to treatments.
6. Using a suspect term of reference favoured by attackers (“homosexual”) to reference tothe audience you are trying to schmoose.

So all in all I have just one message to the BMA and all doctors and other medics out there:

with regard to what we need and how to treat us – for fucks sake just listen to us, your patients  …ALL OF US (not just the normative types).

~jessikat