Trigger warning: this article discusses a case of rape which some readers may find distressing
I couple of days ago I heard about a trans woman who had been placed on a male ward in an NHS hospital and, for that reason, had discharged herself, untreated, fearing for her safety. I hope she is going to be OK. I have heard quite a few other reports like this.
Whether this is at the instigation of Health Secretary Wes Streeting or is the general policy of a government dogmatically implementing the Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the law, the government would do well to speak to the wife of Stephen Kinnock, its own minister of state for care. His wife is Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who was prime minister of Denmark in 2012 when the story broke of young trans woman Fernanda Milan.
Fernanda Milan’s story
About 18 months earlier Milan, through no fault of her own, needed to be housed in temporary accommodation near Copenhagen. For some reason, because she was transgender, the people who managed that temporary accommodation placed her in the male section, although in a single room instead of the dormitory. As a result she was raped and abused and eventually needed to escape. She was trafficked into sex work, which became her only option to keep body and soul together.
She was eventually discovered in a police raid and subsequently threatened with deportation to Guatemala. Guatemala is a very unsafe country for trans people, where violence, official corruption and indifference mean that the life expectancy of trans women is less than half that of the rest of the population, as is the case across the Americas.
Trans people organised a campaign to impress the gravity of her situation on Thorning-Schmidt, to allow her to stay. But no-one seemed to be able to get through the wall of civil servants that always filter communications with senior politicians. As a last-ditch attempt, a few days before Fernanda was to be put on a plane, I communicated, through contacts in the Labour Party, with Thorning-Schmidt’s mother-in-law, the late Glenys Kinnock, asking if she could get an urgent message to her daughter-in-law about Fernanda’s plight.
A few days later Fernanda’s deportation was halted and a few months after that Fernanda was given refugee status in Denmark. Whether it was the result of an intervention by Thorning-Schmidt or whether another member of her government or a civil servant found out and acted, I don’t know. Fernanda’s life had been saved.
The UK government putting trans women in danger
So, back to 2025. Why is the government now trying to force trans women into men’s spaces? A survey of more than half of the NHS hospital trusts published in 2022 found that there had been no complaints at all about trans women on women’s wards. Trans women avoid men-only spaces for a reason. Putting trans women in men’s wards in hospital is putting them in danger. Putting them in separate hospital rooms is also putting them in danger; being isolated puts them at even greater risk.
Even if it doesn’t want to listen to trans people, the government should listen to the wife of one of its own ministers about Fernanda Milan. Effectively the NHS is no longer an option if you are a trans woman, and sooner or later this transphobic political obsession with forcing trans women into male spaces will result in experiences like Fernanda’s – or worse – happening here in the UK. TransActual’s research detailing how some trans people have already been treated since the Supreme Court’s misjudgment suggests this is very likely.
