A screen confronting users
New outrage – healthcare systems asking what sex you are.
It’s medical. It’s about physical bodies. The medical people need to know some basic facts about the bodies in order to treat them. It’s not about “outing” and it’s not something to stir up Twitterfury about.
Sex at birth may cause misdiagnosis, while giving fictional sex…won’t?
My doctor uses a computer program that asks for “sex assigned at birth”. I hate it, but at least they are asking the right question for medical purposes.
Any objections to questions about height, age, and weight?
All three of those questions, along with that for sex, would be problematic for Stefonee Wolscht.
The dentist says it’s not “irrelevant” for some of the medical conditions they treat, and medical records are confidential. Which leaves me wondering how a doctor knowing someone’s sex would lead to a “misdiagnosis.” Not all transgender people take hormones, and those that do have the same responsibility we all have for informing physicians about medications. In an emergency, when would knowing a patient’s actual sex be woefully inferior to knowing only the sex they identify as? The only thing I can think of is equating misgendering with giving the wrong kind of drug, or missing an ectopic pregnancy.
Sastra, I assume that statement makes sense to them because they somehow believe they magically are women, and therefore any diseases they have would be diseases of women. They do not believe there is any trace of a male body in their…..in their…well, in their male body.
And I think it is more likely they would miss an ectopic pregnancy if they went by gender instead of sex at birth. I mean, transwomen aren’t going to have an ectopic pregnancy, so telling the doctor they are men would not cause that to be missed. And a transman would make it more likely to spot a pregnancy of any kind, ectopic or otherwise, if they ignore gender identity and focus in on actual, real, material, physical sex of the body, no matter how inconvenient for the trans individual.
It says, right there on the fucking screen, that there is the option of phoning if the patient has a problem with giving the requested information.
Nothing is ever good enough for the precious ones, is it? Ask their sex as registered at birth (or ‘their sex’) and it’s just the worst thing ever. Don’t ask and, as we saw in a post here last year, a miscarriage is missed because nobody thought to ask a patient who presented as a man with stomach pains his sex as registered at birth, which was the worst thing ever.
It’s almost fetishising victimhood.
Of course it is. That’s what Twitter is for. Or is that Tumblr?
How’s this for a solution?
Patients objecting to answering questions regarding their sex have to sign a disclaimer stating that they, and they alone, will be responsible for any and all harms caused through being treated as their perceived or claimed sex if said harm would likely have been avoided if treated as their actual sex, and if they did not disclose that their birth sex and claimed sex differ. Not signing such a waiver would be classed as refusing treatment.
I’m sure a competent lawyer could word that better, and in a way that makes it absolutely clear that the aim is not to force transgender people to out themselves but rather to provide the safest and most relevant treatment.
Clearly, nothing but 100% validation will be acceptable to the precious ones, but at least the medical staff might have some legal protection.
They seem to be under the impression that no-one can tell what sex most of them really are. Bless!
Actually, it is all about controlling other people. If you need to know their actual sex for medical purposes, you are ‘outing’ them. But if you fail to acknowledge their special status as ‘trans’ people, then you are denying their existence. It is always impossible for anyone to avoid upsetting these people because literally any and every action, thought, or word from anyone, in any context, regardless of how any two may be mutually contradictory, is ‘transphobic’ when they want to say it is.
tigger:
Even asking what the rules are is transphobic. Unless not asking for the rules is transphobic, in which case it isn’t.
@ tigger #8:
I know, right? They “out” themselves at every freaking possible opportunity, and then some. Why are there so many “day(s) of trans visibility” and why are they in-your-face everywhere and everywhen, if they don’t want to be “outed”? What is “coming out” for, if you’re not “out”? Ridiculous.
I woke with another thought –
It’s OK for other people to notice a man’s awesomely-brave-and-stunning ‘transness’, as long as those other people also profess to believe that he is – and always has been, forever and ever, Amen – a full member of the sex he is claiming to be.
Cognitive dissonance in other people is a feature, not a bug.
The one person he most definitely never wishes to be ‘outed’ to is himself.
Let’s run with this. If being “irrelevant to most medical conditions” is taken as a reason to not ask a a person for a certain item of information, then wouldn’t that be an argument against any question at all? Age is only relevant in some diagnoses, and irrelevant in many, probably most. Therefore no doctor should ever ask for a person’s age.
…Same goes for weight, blood pressure, prescriptions, drug use, medical history, allergies, overseas travel, family history, pregnancy, sexual activity… and gender identity. Virtually every question in fact is going to be irrelevant in a huge number of cases, possibly the majority. Gender identity stands out as being especially rarely useful, being that it is a persona evaluation of an internal mental state. However, they are asked in case they are relevant, and to save time they are asked once by the office and stored for reference.
God, these people are ninnies.
tigger: “The one person he most definitely never wishes to be ‘outed’ to is himself.”
Yes! Now, repeat this seven times in a tweet. It becomes law if you do that, I think.
Re outing, I’ll hazard a guess:
It’s one thing for a man to reveal he claims to be a woman. It’s another thing for that man, presenting as and hoping to be seen as a woman, to reveal he’s actually a man. I think the emphasis on “coming out” only covers the first case.
I’m just imagining what Gregory House, M.D. would have to say to a trans patient who refused to provide an accurate medical history….
Holms @12, exactly. When I present with a set of symptoms that could be one thing or another, one of those diagnoses may depend on age, weight, sex, medical history, or lifestyle (how much do I smoke? [none] how much do I drink? [occasionally] how much do I drive? [less than most, but enough to be a risk]). None of those things are relevant in many diagnoses, but since symptoms can relate to more than one possible disease, they may need that information to rule out those which don’t fit. For instance, if I claimed to be a woman when I am a man, and I present with abdominal pain, it helps to know I am not, in fact, a woman if the symptoms are similar to pregnancy. In my case, my age but not my sex rules out pregnancy; my medical history also rules that out, since I do not have a uterus anymore (making me not a uterus-haver, and therefore without any gender to call lmy own). So my doctor begins to look at what is possible, and doesn’t waste time on irrelevant testing or diagnoses.
Almost as rarely useful or consequential as one’s favourite colour : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D7hFHfLEyk