Treat all patients as gender-neutral
The usual apologies for the Mail, but it reports that medical people are being told to talk in Gender Neutral unless told otherwise. 1% of people claim to be Gender Interesting so everyone has to be confused by doctors and nurses carefully avoiding calling them women or men.
Steve Barclay last night ordered an urgent investigation into new guidelines that tell NHS staff to treat all patients as gender-neutral.
Nobody is gender-neutral, so it’s bonkers to treat patients as gender-neutral because a few wannabe originals pretend they’re neither women nor men.
It instructs doctors and nurses not to use phrases such as ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ or ‘he’ and ‘she’ until a patient has confirmed their gender identity.
Mind you, “Mrs” is the wrong word to use in the absence of information, while “Mr” isn’t. Surely the Mail understands that after what’s it been now? Half a century? “Mr” works for all adult males and assumes nothing; “Mrs” of course is specific and assumes marital status. The implications of that discrepancy are indeed insulting (they go back to coverture), so yeah, don’t call a woman Mrs unless she tells you to.
The 16-page document features a foreword by Dr Michael Brady, national adviser for LGBT health at NHS England, who describes it as a ‘must read’ for all health and social care professionals.
Oh stop. Call L Ms; call G Mr; problem solved; no need to read boring guidelines for something so basic.
It doesn’t though. It doesn’t ensure that people feel respected. On the contrary. I would feel enraged if a medical person did that to me.
Brings to mind: https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins-dictatorship-small-minority
But look on the bright side. Hospitals could save truckloads of money by assuming that all patients are food-neutral and biochemicals-neutral; just for starters
Oh I soooo want someone to try this with me XD
“Hello, how are we doing today?.” *checks notes* “What is your title?”
“Doctor.” (Side note: yes I am, er, well, entitled to that title.)
“Er, no I mean how do you want to be addressed? What would you like me to call you?”
“Doctor J is fine, thanks.”
“Ok, um… well, my pronouns are XXXXXX. What are your pronouns?”
“Well I like to use the usual suspects: I, you, he, she, we, and they. I also know the possessive pronouns and some others, plus French pronouns if necessary, and a couple Spanish ones but admittedly not all of those…. Why do you ask?”
“No, I mean what pronouns do you want me to use for you?”
“‘You’ will do nicely in a pinch, thanks.”
*exasperated noises* “No I mean…” *pinches nose* ”Are you a man or a woman?”
*gasp* “Wait, you can’t tell?!? Or were you instructed to ask that inane question?”
Followed by either…
“Ok well you don’t need to worry about that sort of idiocy with me, thanks. What do you actually need me to tell you?P to fill out that form of yours?”
Or
“Apologies for my bluntness, but I need you to find me a competent provider, stat!”
Ibbica, there’s a hilarious account by a public defender of watching the general public attempting to wrap their heads around Luxury Pronoun Etiquette in the criminal court system: https://ymeskhout.substack.com/p/three-little-pronouns-go-to-court
While you should not automatically use Mrs. I have found that a lot of people do when they encounter a woman of my age. I do not use that title; I am not Mrs. Him, I am Dr. Me. My students default to either Mrs. or my first name, even after being told neither of them are my preferred form of address. Having, like Ibbica, the credentials to be referred to as Dr. I do not have to resort to being addressed based on my marital status. I don’t like Ms. and I never have, though I use it with women who haven’t informed me otherwise.
By the way, students who call me by my first name (after having been told not to) default to Mr. for male instructors, even if told to call them by their first name. Why? Because a title is sign that a person is an adult, and using a first name is a sign that a person regards you as less mature, less educated, or just plain…less. (I learned that from a sportswriter who wrote about the habit of sports writers using last names for white players and first names for black players with the intent, deliberate or otherwise, of infantilizing them. I refuse to be infantilized at the age of 62 when I do not act in an immature manner unless it is appropriate – like when I’m playing with my dog).
My wife kept her name when we married (for three reasons: 1. Chilean people cannot change their names without an expensive legal action; 2. She saw no reason to, and I didn’t ask her to; 3. After publishing under one name it’s crazy to change to a different name). However, it doesn’t bother her when people refer to her by my name (and except in circumstances where it matters she doesn’t correct them); there are more important things to worry about.
I had a Ph.D. student once who had already changed her name twice as an undergraduate. I told her that she should choose a name for her first publication and stick it through thick and thin afterwards, regardless of any changes in her life (marriage, divorce, raised to the peerage …). She later went into the business sector and became the head of a company, with a salary at least ten times (probably more like 50 times) mine.
On the other hand I know several women who didn’t follow this scheme and for practical purposes their early publications are lost, because search engines can’t find them.
Having said that, the Israeli Nobel prizewinner Aaron Ciechanover’s name was misspelt (as Ciehanover) in the paper that the Nobel committee cited for the Prize, but that didn’t stop them from identifying him correctly. If I remember rightly he was in the USA when the paper was submitted and the corresponding author didn’t know how his name should be transliterated from Hebrew.
One other point. It works the other way as well. I get my hair cut (infrequently!) at a coiffeur where I’m called M. Maria. My wife went there years before I started to go there.
Hmm
I noticed that a few people who are from some parts of Africa (eg: Ghana, Nigeria) referred to me as “Mr. Jim”.
I was tutoring their child at the time.
I think the gender neutral proposal is a great start, but doesn’t go far enough. Given the admitted difficulty and uncertainty of knowing the identity of anyone through presentation and performance, the presumption that the patient in front of you is either a man or woman is problematic at best. But things are even more complicated than that. Consequently, you must take all possible care that you do not act on the assumption that the being in front of you is human. I therefore suggest that the manner of address be species neutral, so as to not exclude, marginalize, or oppress any furries who might be seaking treatment. In fact, the practitioner’s initial greeting and introduction should be by way of wagging, licking, and sniffing, until such time as the acceptability of the utterance of human speech is deemed to be suitably respectful of, and compliant with, the patient’s wishes and identity.
lol
I sincerely hope that there’s a backlash against the idealogues in the pen-pushing departments, and doctors refuse to go along with the nonsense and instead tell their more deluded patients that they’re welcome to consider themselves to be anything they like in the privacy of their own imaginations, but when they arrive in a hospital they’re going to be treated according to reality, and just treat everyone else as if the gender cult never happened.
I’ve managed to find this document on the web. I haven’t read much of it so far. It’s late here in England, and it is making me too damned angry already.
So here at the start you have one of the most troubling problems with the whole LGBT+ bullshit. What, in the context of this passage, is lurking behind the phrase ‘minority sexual orientation … that is not covered by these terms’? Sado-masochism? Bestiality? Fetishism? Those are not my people. Include them and I exclude myself.
Nor do I feel any solidarity or fraternity whatsoever with het males in women’s clothing who harass young lesbians into having sex with them because they imagine this ‘validates’ their claim to be actual women.
Indeed – that plus – it can mean anything. Might as well be LGBTQetc. TELL US WHAT THE ETC MEANS.
The absurdity of it. Imagine a union for miners adding a + – what does that mean? The bosses? The owner? Scabs? Spies? What? Spell it out or get outa here.
The etc. means, succinctly, everything I want it to mean and nothing you want it to mean.
YNNB #9
So the examination should start with a PET scan?