My Husband Visited the GP Today

[PersonA]

And he was asked what GENDER he IDENTIFIES as.

He had already declared his sex (male) on the form.

This was his first GP visit since we have moved area.

My husband is a “stereotypical male” he has short hair, a beard, shirt and tie etc etc.

He is not massively aware of the whole gender debate and just mentioned this in passing as he thought it a weird question.

On pressing him the GP said “yes, sorry, I have to ask, the world seems to be going mad”

My issue here is this: what if he said he identifies as female? What fucking difference would that make? Would he be given smear tests?

I really feel for doctors in this day and age and the fact they have to ask this.

What is going on?? Will people wake up to how absurd this is at some point?

Wear a dress. Wear lipstick. Be a “stereotypical” female if it makes you happy. I really don’t care. When it enters the medical profession/ NHS/ Doctor’s have to ask if a man (who has already said he is male) self identifies as a woman?? It’s going too far.

Terfragette I know. It’s going that way though.

There was a documentary on bbc about a lesbian couple who both identified as male. One of them was pregnant. She didn’t breast feed (although she did) she called it “chest feeding”

Unreal.

It does do harm to ask the question. It assumes 'gender' has a fixed meaning which it doesn't. It assumes the majority of people subscribe to notions of gender when many don't.

Gender is a social construct. If you grow up in a matriarchal society in Asia or Africa, the gender expectations are completely different from the 'feminine stereotypes' of the West. Gender has no place on a health questionnaire.

Did they refer to themselves as a lesbian couple, Person A? If so, not male, are they.

I've now completely peaked on the top of Everest.

TaliZorahVasNormandy not relevant to this thread but love the username, and mass effect! 😁

Such a waste of time for GP and patient!

Thanks, Amy I wanted to be CommanderShepard but somebody already had it.

No wonder the NHS is in such a mess with healthcare professinals having to ask this rubbish.
I would have said I identify as a horse and I would like that put on my records.

Hmm, I think am a 'whatever-the-fuck-you-likeist' and my gender is 'whatever-the-fuck-I-like'. That is, I shall do, wear, snog, marry and avoid whatever (and whomever) the fuck I like (having obtained relevant consent).

My sex is female. That seems the medically relevant thing.

Does seem to
Have tipped balance with forms and such like. Yes sure is a tiny %of people who are trans who’s medical records and ID may be in different sex and they prefer to be called Mrs but need male sex to be on records as well for medical reason. The tiny minority shouldn’t mean asking everybody.

Well I’m a GP nurse practitioner and I defenately don’t have to ask this during new patient checks.
If you have a transgender patient you would know as your probably giving them their regular hormone injections or you have a record of their surgery.
Transgender patients male to female can give you problems on the smear audit BTW because you keep getting reminders to bring them in for a smear and it can affect the amount of money the practice gets if you don’t achieve a certain %. Cant use the “had a hysterectomy” exception button so I requested a “No Cervix” category but then started to think maybe we should sample the penis as can detect HPV ( sorry this is turning technical). That would also work for those men who identify as female but then shouldn’t we be doing it for all men as HPV can also cause head and neck cancers?
I’ve decided it’s all too modern for me and I’ll leave it for NICE to decide.

TaliZorahVasNormandy Not sure if you've played Andromeda, but oh i miss Shepard and the Quarians 🙂

On pressing him the GP said “yes, sorry, I have to ask, the world seems to be going mad”

That poor bloody GP. Presumably they were having to have the exact same exchange every 10 minutes

I have played it Amy. But BioWare are dead to me after they left the Quarians stranded

Tallulah it was just because it was his first time there, but yes, I presume they now ask this to every new patient. What a waste of time.

virtual I hear you, it's amazing how fast a mountain can be climbed.. Only a few weeks ago I was oblivious to the reality of all of this.

So, mum, on the off chance that any given new patient might be there to talk about wanting gender reassignment, GPs should ask everyone who walks in the door what gender they identify as?

I have much larger than average breasts. Some women with similarly sized breasts opt for breast reduction because of back pain etc. Should GPs ask anyone over an F cup who walks in the door if she's concerned about the size of her breasts? Because there are probably more women in the F cup and over category in the UK than there are people seeking gender reassignment. And I personally would not appreciate automatically being asked that question.

Again, is this a satire thread or am I going crazy?

biologically assigned sex

Sex isn’t “assigned” by human decision. It’s observed as a biological fact.

Of course the healthcare doesn't change, he's still going to medically treat your husband as a biological male regardless of what gender he identifies with. However knowing what gender yhr patient identifies as a) allows the doctor to know that if conflicting with their biological sex that they need to ask about any hormone medications they may be on that may affect current medical treatment, b) when registering it allows them to inform the patient that there may be transgender exclusive services (sexual health, gender counselling, support groups etc ) available specific to that GP clinic and c) allows the doctor to be polite as a common courtesy e.g you would be a little annoyed if the doctor called you by the wrong name and the same goes for pronouns - I'm a woman and if someone called me a man I'd be a little hurt that they thought I looked like a man as I don't have the most feminine face in the world (square jaw, large forehead and short hair) and have been mistaken as a boy when I was younger. Asking is becoming common protocol and takes two seconds, it allows doctors to remain professional regardless of their own viewpoints. But here's Mumsnet being old fashioned again about things that really don't affect them in anyway - bet it annoyed your parents that they had to start stating if they were heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual on survey forms twenty years ago too. "It just seems silly as I'm clearly not gay with my husband sitting next to me". Society changes, you can sit and grumble on Mumsnet or just get on with it, more important things in the world to worry about.

"On pressing him the GP said “yes, sorry, I have to ask, the world seems to be going mad”

GP took a chance, especially with a new patient. It would have likely been off to the social retaining camp for him had your husband reported what he said.

But there’s so many other questions that the doctor could have asked, why is the gender question top of the list?

He wasn’t asked his sexual orientation. Neither was I when I registered.

Surely that would be more useful in terms of healthcare?

But here's Mumsnet being old fashioned again about things that really don't affect them in anyway

But it will affect everyone. As nursy1 pointed out above this could skew data collection and funding for things like smear test. So yes it very much will affect the MN demographic.

Not had chance to read the full thread but what Unicorn said sums it up for me.