As details of multiple sex attacks in trans-inclusive hospital wards continue to emerge, the transgender Diversity Lead at the largest NHS Trust in the UK is pushing his colleagues to ignore the laws guaranteeing females single-sex spaces.
Tara Hewitt, a biological male who identifies as a woman, currently serves as the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group. Hewitt has requested that medical personnel ignore a recent guidance preserving single-sex spaces for women receiving health services.
Last Monday, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) issued a new guidance asserting that it is lawful to exclude men from women-only spaces, provided the reasoning is “legitimate and proportionate.” The statement is a reassertion of the current law, which has been called into question due to misrepresentation by trans activists and lobbying organizations, such as Stonewall.
Hewitt promptly condemned the ruling as ‘transphobic’ and urged his colleagues to ignore its guidance.
He said: “This guidance is highly likely to be found unlawful at Judicial review & is incredibly transphobic … When will attacks on trans people end in UK? I urge my equality professional colleagues to give this guidance the credibility it deserves by putting it in bin & continue as usual.”
Hewitt’s sentiment was repeated by the Trans NHS Staff Network, which shared the EHRC guidance with the following message:
“We urge all NHS Equality Teams to ignore this transphobic & hostile guidance from EHRC that is likely to be found unlawful at judicial review & continue to write & follow trans inclusive policies & guidance across your orgs … We need civic leaders to stand up for what’s right.”
Hewitt retweeted the statement and asked influential NHS colleagues to convey the message to their staff. Kathryn Thomson, the chief executive of Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust — the only specialist hospital for women in the UK — and Dr. Paul Gilluley, chief medical officer at the East London NHS Foundation Trust both replied, “Will do.”
Robbie Naylor, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, responded “absolutely,” while Asmina Chowdhury, Lead for Diversity, Inclusion, & Patient Public Engagement at South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust said: “No equality lead worth their salt should be advising exclusion of our #trans colleagues.”
Emily Wraw, the head of equality, diversity and inclusion at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, tweeted: “Quick reminder to NHS colleagues that the NHS England guidance on Delivering Same Sex accommodation (2019) remains in force, including Annexe B – single sex wards in the NHS are trans-inclusive.”
Annex B is a provision that recommends medical staff accommodate a patient’s self-declared sex upon hospital admission. Baroness Nicholson, speaking in the House of Lords on March 16, detailed how this provision had enabled a man to rape at least one woman in the women’s ward of an NHS hospital.
After she reported the assault, according to Nicholson, she was told by health service providers that her rape could not have happened as no males were present. CCTV and witness accounts later verified the woman’s testimony, after which police began an investigation.
Speaking on Twitter, Baroness Nicholson stated that she knew of at least “ten” such instances of sexual violations that had occurred as a result of Annex B.
Tara Hewitt advises NHS Trusts across the UK and lectures health care students. Hewitt has said in a March 2019 tweet that “trans women’s bodies are not male bodies”. He opposes abortion and is a self-professed BDSM fetishist with ties to a trans activist organization that has called for the release of all trans-identified prisoners.
Hewitt has been politically active in both Labour and, more recently, the Conservative Party, for whom he stood as a councilor. During that campaign it emerged that he had an interest in BDSM and dressing up as an animal for sex, euphemistically referred to as “furrydom.”
In a 2016 presentation for the LGBT Cancer Support Alliance, Hewitt revealed that he had worked with Action for Trans Health, an organization which published a manifesto demanding the immediate release of trans criminals from prison:
“We demand that trans people are immediately freed from police, military, and government contracts without repercussions. We reject the system of blackmail that corporations and governments engage in, whereby trans people who can work are “rewarded” with slightly less mistreatment in exchange for the exploitation of our labor. We will mot allow pink washing of the violence of capitalism, imperialism, and the state.”
The manifesto, which has since been deleted, was published on Tumblr in 2018 and also demanded tax-payer funded access to all forms of plastic surgery and body modification without any questions asked by medical professionals:
“We demand the freedom to alter our bodies without justification. We demand an end to all surgical prerequisites — nobody should have to prove life experience, health, or have to be taking hormones in order to exercise bodily autonomy. We demand that these surgeries can be highly customized to meet our individual and unique needs. We demand the right to multiple surgeries, including reversal of previous surgeries if desired, so that we do not have to fear regret…”
The manifesto goes on to list the types of ‘demanded’ procedures, including hysterectomies, liposuction, orchiectomies, breast augmentations, microdermabrasion and more.
Additionally, during the 2016 presentation, Hewitt spoke about men who cross-dress for sexual pleasure. He clarified that men who wear women’s underwear to satisfy a fetish are included under the trans umbrella.
Speaking to a room filled with women, Hewitt said, “You’ve got people that fetishistically cross-dress and wear clothing to get a sexual desire out of the clothing of the opposite gender. It generally tends to be associated with men wearing women’s underwear.”
Hewitt was shortlisted for the Excellence in Diversity awards for his work with the NHS in 2016 and has appeared in the Independent on a list of the 100 most influential LGBT people in the UK.
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