What if it's your JOB to recognise sex exists?

[WomanBornNotWorn]

I wonder how people whose jobs, careers and professions are all entirely based around sex specifics will deal with this?

Then I started listing them ...

obstetricians
gynaecologists
endometriosis specialists
foetal ultrasound techs
mammographers
IUD specialists
midwives
prostate, testicular, penile, breast, cervical, uterine and vulval cancer specialists
IVF specialists
blood, urine and semen sample testers
sperm bank staff
surrogacy specislists
designers and manufacturers of contraceptives, sanpro, incontinence care products
designers and manufacturers of sex aids
sex ed teachers
geneticists
menopause consultants
HRT makers
designers and manufacturers of mastectomy care products
forensic examiners who need to be able to sex human remains
surgeons who do genital surgery for any reason
and chicken sexers (yes, it's a thing)

What if anything they are all being told about policing themselves?

Or out in the real world, is there a collective 'FFS ….' and eyerolling - but getting on with business as usual?

Please feel free to add everything I've forgotten - could be useful to have a list all in one place.

Anyone working in those or similar fields like to comment?

And even for the wokian HR department, how will they recognise sex discrimination?

Biology teachers. Is it even allowed to teach human biology any more?

Sex exists. So does gender. So all those medical specialists are aware a few of their patients may have different honorifics to most (say some Mr and Mx in gynaecology) and get on with treating them politely and professionally.

I have occasionally wondered how transwomen like Yaniv expect their gynecologists to actually treat them? If you don't physically have the genitals to check, what do you expect them to do?

Another one is the influx of women's health specialists that have popped up recently. Generally physios but sometimes PT's like Jenny Burrell and The Holistic Core Restore programme. These people are doing great work for women and highlighting some important issues post natally and menopause etc but I am yet to see any comment on these issues. If a man presents to them for treatment on his "female" body I wonder how that will go down?

Also these people are aggressively marketing at females so I wonder when someone will challenge that? I mean I hope they don't but it seems likely.

Sex exists. So does gender

Not on an NHS medical record.
Only 'gender' exists

So when an analyst is looking at the data of millions of, say heart attacks and comparing reported symptoms in males vs females, the data they are analysing is not about sexed bodies. It's about that old chestnut, 'how you see yourself'.

The sex field on our medical records held in the national 'spine' which holds our data - is blank. We all have a gender which is easily changeable to ensure both sexes are irrevocably indistinguishable in the data.

But if you can be sacked for believing in biological sex, presumably all those people are on shaky ground?

Palaeontologists
Dog rehoming staff
Asthma nurses

Police officers ( searching etc).

Rambling thought journey continues:

Everyone who's ever had to talk about embarrassing stuff, regardless of how they identify, knows the doctor's attitude & behaviour hugely influences how you feel!

The most practical route for practitioners dealing direct with patients must be to establish an atmos where the patient feels that how they identify is acknowledged, getting the mind relaxed so the doc etc can then get on with discussing and treating the body. Clear divide between immutable sex, and 'gender', so a trans or nb patient with endometriosis, prostate cancer etc feels they can go and comfortably have a conversation about it.

A few years back I'd never have imagined some of the jaw dropping things now could happen. I've seen obese patient discussions where they will refuse to allow any mention of their weight as likely to be contributing to their conditions.

So I wonder if we will get to a place where patients can instruct practitioners they are not allowed to refer to anything related to the patient 's sex!

As I said - rambling on, here.

I saw this tweet yesterday which I think is relevant. Must be very difficult for medics.

I'm a midwifery lecturer and have to say I'm keeping quiet at work.

Universities are woke city with lots of colleagues signing themselves off as Mx and wearing Ally badges and having Ally email signatures.

I obviously teach the students biologically correct facts.

It is my job. It's has never been more difficult to get the information ACTUALLY necessary rather than how someone identifies. Sometimes I'd rather throw away all of medical school and be a shelf stacker.

@VivaLeBeaver

Have you found you’ve had to adjust your language when teaching? Or have you even been given new official or unofficial guidance on you’re language when teaching? Are you still allowed/happy/comfortable referring to women (as in the patient) in your lectures? Has anyone challenged your language?

Teachers/youth leaders etc taking youth on overnight trips.

Doesn't matter on the gender, the biological sex will create different care needs (trans boys will need access to sanitary bins for example... Or should we ignore that?)

Although my job isn't sex specific, I consciously say 'sex' now, when before all this kicked off I might have taken the twee get-out-of-giggles route of saying 'gender'. I also don't and won't suggest doing pronouns for personal introductions.

I had a conversation with a business analyst the other week (initiated by him) about how difficult it had been to persuade a healthcare organisation that they couldn’t just change the “sex” field on their databases to “gender” and still expect to be able to give effective care to patients. He said it was an uphill battle to get them to have two fields.

I've never adjusted my language when teaching and never been challenged either. I use the term "woman" all the time when talking about scenarios, etc. I would refuse to use "patient" as pregnant women aren't sick.

Obviously as a midwife if I was caring for someone who wanted to be referred to as he/they/whatever I would be kind and respectful to that individual and call them what they wanted.

But when talking about groups of women/women in general I say woman.

I've mentioned this before, but one of the reasons that the USSR produced so many bloody brilliant mathematicians was that maths was an ideologically safe career - it couldn't be politicised.

So you were very intelligent... did you go into genetics research, for instance, knowing you'd have to pay lip service to Lysenkoism rather than Darwinism? Or did you go off and do abstract algebra or some obscure corner of set theory, safe in the knowledge that the political commissars couldn't find some sort of "wrong think" to pin on you based on your beliefs about the axiom of choice?

I fear we're headed the same way.

I have occasionally wondered how transwomen like Yaniv expect their gynecologists to actually treat them? If you don't physically have the genitals to check, what do you expect them to do?

Confirm that they have a type of vagina (an 'outie' in Y's case) and it's nice and healthy?
I'm not joking. If female patients in the NHS are already being forced to validate a HCP's gender identity, it's only a matter of time before gynaecologists have to start providing a service purely for validation purposes.

I had to work with some midwives on some web content. They wrote it. I pointed out that they should be aware that all of the copy refers to women / she / her etc, and this may cause some issues / blowback. Not a single one of them understood what I meant and scoffed audibly when I explained. So far as far as I’m aware there have been no complaints... yet.

About 3 years ago I remember some TRAs approaching the local maternity wing and saying we should change all our info leaflets, etc to "person" rather than "woman". We said no.

I was at a midwifery staff update lecture recently where the speaker pronounced that a man had recently given birth at a local hospital.

Some of the midwives were confused and thought there had been some amazing scientific breakthrough and a biological man had had an embryo transplanted into them...

DH works in hospital theatres and reports that all staff think it is absolute nonsense. They are all incredibly professional and wouldn’t dream of making anyone uncomfortable or upset, but they really do need to know your sex, so they can stop you dying on the table.

Thanks beaver. My mum was a midwife, now retired, before she did, she had a transman in with her giving birth. They were on eggshells making sure not to say mother or mum or her etc.

I used to know someone who artificially inseminated cattle (for a living, not for a laugh). Good job she could tell male from female there, I presume it was freelance so she'd have been a bit skint if she couldn't.