NHS workers being asked if they’re ‘endosex’ would be satire – if it were funny

When I discovered NHS workers were being asked to wade through a bizarre LGBTQIA survey asking if they identified as “greyromantic”, “abrosexual” or “endosex”, my first thought was “Aha! So that’s why no one can get a ruddy GP appointment”.

For those tapping away on your Enigma machines trying to crack the LGBTQIA code, I’ve already had a go. I reckon the Q stands for Quarrelsome, the I is Irrelevant and the A for As if it Matters.

Because it doesn’t. Not in the real world. And most certainly not on a hospital ward. At one point in the survey, the respondents were asked to say what their “current sex” was, with multiple-choice answers including “in between male and female”, “both male and female” or “leaning” toward male or female.

Suddenly the 7.58-million-long waiting list makes sense. What orthopaedic surgeon has the headspace to sort grandma’s hip when he’s wrestling with such pressing existential, indeed sexistential, issues? The list of possible answers includes abroromantic, aromantic and alloromantic. The survey helpfully explains that “greysexual” means “rarely or only under certain conditions do they experience romantic attraction”, while “demi” means it only occurs when “an emotional bond” is formed. “Abro” means attraction “changes over time”. I believe that used to be known as “marriage”.

Little wonder that Kate Barker, chief executive of LGB Alliance, dismissed the survey as “infantile, meaningless, and insulting to gay and lesbian people”. “Sex and sexuality are protected characteristics – these made-up identities and non-existent sexualities are not,” she said. “They are a poor substitute for what we used to call ‘personalities’.”

Drop the (allosexual) mic! Here – in a nutshell – is the inescapable truth; what we have here isn’t a legitimate movement, it’s a load of nobodies Gendering Themselves Interesting. It’s sad. It’s a fad. And pandering to their “look at me”, “no, no, look at me” single-issue activism is utterly mad.

The survey was never signed off by NHS bosses, but such a crackpot questionnaire seems scarily plausible given our health service’s pusillanimous insistence on kowtowing to a small minority of tub-thumping activists fighting a war of words.

Language is crucially important in human interaction; it’s how authoritarian regimes remove or bestow status, vilify the opposition, oppress and eliminate minorities. Here in 21st-century Britain, women are already being erased by the inexcusable introduction of wholly bogus terms such as “chestfeeding” and “birthing person” into NHS vocabulary.

Earlier this month, NHS England published a draft of a booklet online, titled the “National menopause people policy framework”, which contained the crassly idiotic claim that “not everyone who experiences menopause is a woman”. This was followed by the crazy assertion: “Transgender, non-binary, and intersex colleagues may also experience menopause and will have specific needs.”

Said document was hastily withdrawn after a media outcry, but I think we all know it won’t be long before the next certifiably stupid pronouncement. I don’t know about you, but I resent the fact that this manipulation of language is turning us all into vigilantes, although admittedly it fills in the time while many millions of us wait for appointments.

Just over six months ago, England’s top emergency doctor warned hospitals were “making people sicker” as patients became delirious on A&E trolleys. Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that patients over 80 spent an average of 15 hours waiting for a bed and accused health leaders of “taking their eye off the ball”. He stated: “These long delays are making people sicker.”

We know, first hand, how hard doctors, nurses and other frontline workers strive to care for those languishing in corridors. Everything else is an unwelcome distraction; it’s insulting to think senseless surveys are being peddled by extremists while terrified patients battle with life or death conditions. If people feel the need to Gender Themselves Interesting, they should do it after hours, in their own time. If I’m rushed into A&E, the medical staff ’s niche proclivities are none of my business. And not the business of the NHS either. Frankly, anyone who thinks differently is off their trolley.