Ed Kiely is a Leverhulme early career fellow at Queen Mary University of London.
‘Any physical or psychiatric disorder can be exaggerated, faked or feigned,’ the psychologists Peter Halligan, Christopher Bass and David Oakley wrote in their introduction to a collection of essays from 2003 titled Malingering and Illness Deception. Medical professionals, researchers and even courts, they went on, were often reluctant ‘to entertain the label or to stigmatise...
On stage at the Conservative Party conference, the health secretary, Steve Barclay, kept fumbling his words. Promising to defend women’s voices in healthcare, he mangled a reference to ‘biological sex’. Announcing his flagship measure, a rewrite of the NHS constitution, he stumbled again: the plans will ‘recognise the importance of dialog- … different biological needs and protect the rights of women’. His garbled remarks were translated in a briefing to the Telegraph: the government is planning to ban trans people from ‘single sex’ hospital wards.
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