I’m aware that sex chromosomes determine your genetic sex (’genetic sex’ is the term used for which chromosomes you have). This is distinct to phenotypic sex, which is mostly your genitalia. Most of the time your genetic sex is XX or XY and you become either phenotypically female or male. However, neither of those is a given. There are several variations to XX and XY, chromosomally, and a whole range of development phenotypically.
So saying there is just male and female sexes isn’t medically correct - I mean, you should really ensure the HCP treating you is very aware if you are an ‘other’ as any of those variations can lead to very different clinical advice.
However, this is the exact problem. When you dig into the intricacies just around sex alone, and then try to come up with a form of words that everyone understands and leads to the best health outcomes, it’s way more complex than ‘are you male or female’? We’ve not even added self-identified gender into there yet.
So the question that relly needs answering is ‘what exactly is it that HCPs need to know to give the right clinical advice?’ Is it your genetic sex? Is it your phenotypic sex when you were born? Given most people’s phenotypic sex at birth matches their genetic sex, probs that one, especially as that’s the one that is observed and noted. But you’d still need an option that allows you to flag if you’re one of the few where that doesn’t apply. What does the differing ranges in blood test results for the majority of those born phenotypically male and female, for example, rely on? Because that is the information that the HCP needs to know.
This is where I lost the will to live when this all came up at my old workplace. I was not involved in determining the phrase, it was set long before, but when questioning it and trying to see if there was a different way of putting it that would protect the most people…it’s not as easy or clear cut as anyone might want to believe.