Gender not sex on medical consent form - UPDATE

Sorry - tired typing corrections:

Not anything to do with being asked to identify as a gender.

I do NOT see how any part of the guidance is an instruction to record gender identity rather than sex.

(we need a sleepy emoji)

[tired]

I had to laugh at the absurdity today. I was filling out a quote for some pet insurance and had to state the gender of my dog. I had no idea my dog had a gender! I haven’t actually asked her if she identifies as a female...hope she doesn’t get upset with me if I accidentally misgender her!

Thanks for fighting the fight!

I'm quite tired but have been thinking this over and think NHS England have misread the guidance from WHO.

Isn't the guidance saying facilities should be provided in the knowledge that gender stereotyping (which can lead to women being treated less favourably etc., not being in as good a place to access services) could lead to a second tier service for women.

Not anything to do with asking being to identify as a gender.

I do see how any part of the guidance is an instruction to record gender identity rather than sex.

Okay - so this is the link I was referring to. I was told:

"We are asked by the NHS to note what the patient wants noted about themselves. In particular we are required by the NHS to do so as part of modern record keeping international standards www.hl7.org/fhir/patient.html"

But more worryingly (which I didn't digest at the time) this seems to have come about because of pressure from WHO to "mainstream" gender. Their directive is really worrying:

“Mainstreaming gender is both a technical and a political process which requires shifts in organizational cultures and ways of thinking, as well as in the goals, structures and resource allocations.... Mainstreaming requires changes at different levels within institutions, in agenda setting, policy-making, planning, implementation and evaluation. Instruments for the mainstreaming effort include new staffing and budgeting practices, training programmes, policy procedures and guidelines.” www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-determinants/gender/gender-definitions

I had to complete a form to access online patient bookings etc..

It too asked for my gender. I complained and said it was inappropriate in terms of correct medical assessment.

And initially I got a good response and wanted to hear more from me and the person responding said they would raise it with their manager.

After that I got a one line response saying it was in line with accepted practice agreed by NHS England. They gave me the link to the document and I am sure I posted in on another thread here. I will try and dig it out.

And as others have said in the past no one had any problem with filling in forms where you were asked your sex.

The movement to blur the lines of the difference between sex and gender is part of the result of queer politics taking a foot hold in universities in the 80s, which led to women's studies being closed and gender studies being set up.

It is part of what is now obviously a long term campaign to change language to suit the desired outcome of denying the reality of biological sex.

This is why the NUJ was pressurised into stop using the word sex in news reports and replace it with gender (in the same way as they stopped papers from saying prostitute and say sex worker instead).

So the graduates from 80s universities who were taught (brain washed) into the gender choice concept went on to be researchers, journalists, MPs, teachers.

what we are experiencing now is the long term consequence of a movement that took hold in elitist but influential organisations so that they can then impose it on the wider population without revealing what their intentions were.

At least religious fundamentalists make clear that they are out to convert you.

Gender choice fundamentalists work behind peoples backs to gain positions where they can then impose their view of the world on everyone else.

Speaking to a GP today about a menopause issue - it was over the phone so I couldn't high five her - she said "cos we have wombs, right"?

@Goosefoot

I think you are right - initially used as a synonym for sex. I remember filling out a form at secondary school (early 90s) asking for my gender and I didn’t know what it was. I asked my friend and she didn’t know either.

Not taught about gender or that we were in the wrong body.

How lucky were we at school!!

Do you think this is done for a) fun because medics haven’t anything better to do, or b) because sex is relevant to incidence, treatments and outcomes of disease?

Agreed. Too many clinical trials have ended up with a dosage recommendation that largely suits men. When it is implemented, women show 'Adverse Events' at a rate that didn't show up in the trials. And then there is data gathering etc. until such time as there may be a clinical need for a guideline that recommends a reduced dosage for women.

And there is an interesting area of what is known as an "academic diagnosis." That's essentially where a disorder exists but there's no treatment for it - so it's academic whether you spend the money on a niche diagnosis because there's no treatment beyond best supportive care.

So, for some current "academic diagnoses" there's a sex disparity. It's thought that the profile is 9 men for every 1 woman - but who knows and it's not worth the money to find out.

Now, a treatment is available. You will suddenly move into needing a verifiable diagnosis. Now you're looking for it, you're finding far more women have this condition. You're still sticking with it being a disorder that's more prevalent in men, but now you're proposing a 7:3 - tho' there's nothing to base that on. Yet, given the nature of the disorder, there's no biological/physiological reason to suspect that it's anything other than 50:50 - yet, guess who moves into the diagnostic pathway faster and stands more chance of being treated at an earlier stage that might delay the disease progress and improve quality of life.

Sex matters enormously. And there isn't always sufficient acknowledgement of that in clinical practice.

but then I have no idea why sex was ever changed to gender in the first place on forms and suspect E&I departments probably influenced that decision.

Not necessarily. Gender started appearing as a replacement for sex in many instances at a time when most people were using them interchangeably. Often gender was chosen because that was the word the person making the form used in their everyday speech, or sometimes because people thought it sounded more polite. In some cases also because then you wouldn't get teenagers and such filling out the forms with things like "lots" in the sex field.

Such a non issue that TRAs have gone all out to replace sex with gender. Strangely it only becomes a ‘non issue’ when someone points out sex is relevant.

@KapteenKrusty

When patients are handed over from one medic to another they state the patient’s sex - male or female.

Do you think this is done for a) fun because medics haven’t anything better to do, or b) because sex is relevant to incidence, treatments and outcomes of disease?

Quick hint - answer is b

I assume when you or your family are treated you want medical staff to know the difference between male and female anatomy, physiology and path physiology etc and why this is relevant.

The Nature article is behind a paywall, but the second one quite neatly says what I was trying to!

'Although males are more likely to receive vaccines, following vaccination, females typically develop higher antibody responses and report more adverse effects of vaccination than do males'.

Invisible Women - great book by Caroline Criado Perez - sets out the importance of sex disaggregated data in developing & testing drugs. In pharmacology, sex matters.

Thank you & well done.

Deck, I believe there can be some situations where sex does make a difference. Medical situations, I mean, in terms of reaction to vaccines, immunity, etc

www.nature.com/articles/s41590-018-0310-0

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28992436

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6373179/

' Specifically, females typically develop higher antibody responses and experience more adverse events following vaccination than males. This enhanced immune reactogenicity among females is thought to render females more resistant to infectious diseases, but conversely also contribute to higher incidence of autoimmunity among women.'

• so yes, I think it matters.

The person I emailed last autumn accepted the points I raised and said that perhaps using 'gender' was not appropriate in this day and age

That's good - because it suggests that this person has realised that the use of 'gender' on forms may have started merely as a polite euphemism for sex, but that now its meaning has changed and politeness has been subverted into tacit approval of genderism.

I can think of a couple of reasons.

They may want to monitor whether uptake varies between groups of people.

Or they may need to look for patterns in different reactions to the vaccine for the two sexes.

Why do they even need to know someone's sex to give them a flu shot? Surely boys and girls get the same shot?