The NHS is still asking for "gender" on medical forms

[AmazingTerf]

www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision/register-your-details/?

On the organ donation registration form, it asks for your "gender".

There are five options: "male", "female", "transgender", "other", and "prefer not to say".

I don't know much about biology, but I presume that this is downright dangerous?!?

Either it's necessary to know, in which case, the truth is important. Or it's not, in which case, why ask?

I suppose sex will be observed upon death so its largely irrelevant anyway.

I agree that it’s irrelevant. I cannot for the life of me imagine why the NHS is even interested in the gender (ie fashion sense) of a corpse. The sex, however, is vital.

It will be for monitoring purposes, so the NHS can do an annual report on the Organ Donation Scheme with a breakdown of organ donors by "Gender".

@MoleSmokes you're missing the point entirely, it should record sex, not gender. Healthwatch surveys don't even record gender, all they ask for is gender identity 🤦🏻‍♀️

Asking for sex and gender is the obvious thing to do.

They are different things that they want to know for different reasons.

Its for monitoring as a pp said. All organs are thoroughly tested prior to transplantation. Where the sex the organ came from is important to match physiologically it'll be tested to make sure it's the right sex.

But titchy your gender is unrelated to your sex.

It may be useful to minitor whether teams people are donating ( although feels less important than whether other groups are donating, and also less important than whether trans people are accessing services). But it won't tell them what sex the donors are.

But this is one form of many.

My point isn’t even about organ donation. It was about the NHS generally.

How many other NHS forms ask for “gender”?

Most of them I think.

There were some nhs docs shared recently about all this.

They are supposed to capture sex and gender,

Many are only capturing gender and using it as a sort of mish mash.

A few women got their records, sex was blank or not there, gender Female.

In medicine they really need to know peoples sex, to treat them aopropriately.

Gender is useful for equalities monitoring and for hcps to know so they can treat the patient sensitively.

This conflation of sex and gender is a big old mess.

What would the vast majority of trans people enter anyway though?
Would ppl like Munroe, Fat Tony, Lily etc put male? I doubt it.

Not sure what your point is?

I only know one of the people you mention.

It is not dangerous.

Finding a match at all is the key thing. It's seriously important that people will donate (bone marrow and blood too).

Trust me, if you needed a donation, and it was a 75% match or nothing (=death) you'd go with the 75%. And it doesn't matter if the 'missing'' 35% is because of sex/gender or for sonme other reason. There is a crying need for donors (especially bone marrow of non-white groups)

Please encourage people to register, however they identify

So why bother with the info at all?

Gender is how you id so nothing to do with physiology.

Sex you say is irrelevant with blood or organ donation.

So what's the info for?

If you google does sex matter organ transplants you get about a squillion things saying yes.

Fraggling
I agree with you, sex matters, I just wonder whether most trans people actually acknowledge their biological reality for medical/NHS forms or not.
Perhaps the question should be phrased differently - what is your birth/biological sex, this is necessary for medical information etc

(Munroe Bergdorf, Lily Madigan and Fat Tony is Stephanie Hayden.)

I just wonder whether most trans people actually acknowledge their biological reality for medical/NHS forms or not

If they don't acknowledge their biological sex at the point of care, then they are are foolhardy at best.

If they are being deliberately obtuse then instead of a data entry as M or F then a 'U' is used which will draw attention to their records, whether they like it or not.

It's all a bit muddled. I have recently had to renew my driving licence because I'm coming up to 70. I did it online.

There was a question related to organ donation, and I selected no to that. But it also asked for my gender, and the dropdown list only gave male or female.

However, on the paper form they had sent me, there is no mention of either gender or sex.

So whatever data they are collecting, it seems a bit random.

Hold on a sec.

You tend to give organs once you're dead, right?

They will know your sex.

They will know your sex
Not just when your dead

Xray
MRI
Blood test
Body examination
Verucca removal on your size 11 feet.

You can try to hide your biological sex but
you can't outsmart it.
.

I mean, seriously, what do they think the NHS is there for?