Biology matters in medicine - medicine failing trans individuals

[KittyKlaws]

I was reading a feminist group I'm a member of and someone posted this article which comes from lascapigliata which some of you may be familiar with. lascapigliata is a feminist and a doctor and often comes at this with a medical perspective. In this case a trans man (TIF) was given inappropriate treatment due to gender identity rather than biological reality which led to further issues resulting in needing a transplant.

I found it interesting and demonstrative of why biology still matters very much. If you are interested you can read more here:

lascapigliata8.wordpress.com/2018/04/29/transgenderism-and-unethical-medicine/

Oh my goodness me. The world has gone mad.

If medics fear being labled as 'transphobic' are they likely to ask for clarification if they're unsure? Dr's and nurses are so risk averse so might avoid offending the patient for fear of complaints?

So if a trans man turns up at a UK hospital legally a man, at what point - and how - do doctors determine they are actually a woman?

If the medical record says male, and the patient claims to be male, then the medical staff will believe them to be male and not ask. Why would they ask?
Blood tests, scans etc etc can mostly be done without any need for a person's biological sex to be revealed / physically seen.
(Ditto if the claim is that they are female).

I think that even with a fully transitioned person for medical records they should always be recorded as biological sex. Also, records of their transition because the absence of a womb or testes could be medically relevant.

It might hurt somebodies 'feelings' if they get 'mis-gendered' but prostate cancer hurts more.

Apparently you can ask to have a marker on your medical records to state your biological sex, that avoid problems like this. Quite relieved to find some common sense prevailing!

One of the speeches at the WPUK Cardiff meeting was about this issue - the importance of recognising and researching differences between the sexes when it comes to symptoms and medical treatment.

Obviously according the the TRAs the fantastic speaker was just a TERF for feeling this was an important issue, even though it's just as important for trans people

This TED talk by a leading geneticist was recently linked on a thread and I found it fascinating

Men, regardless of race, share 99.9% of their genome with other men.
Women, regardless of race, share 99.9% of their genome with other women.

But men and women share only 98.5% of their genome. AND THIS AFFECTS EVERY CELL IN THEIR BODIES.

The implications are huge for the study and treatment of disease.

Thismmakes a huge

So many people seem to think that the difference between a man and woman is simply that one has a dangly bit between their legs and the other has two dangly bits on their chest. Rather than practically everything about them being subtly different in a myriad different ways

See all the threads about "penis portions" (aka people don't understand that men need more calories per day than women). See the speculation about womb transplants (it's not just some bag that can be popped into a male body and hey presto).

I had rather hoped that the medical profession was a bit smarter than to get gender and sex mixed up