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?

WireBrush it’s so mad that they don’t see that could be harming them. If a midwife/doctor/surgeon is spending so much time/mental energy trying not to misgender someone they could miss something which could be harming or fatal to the patient or baby.

OP you are making the mistake of thinking rationally, of believing that 2+2=4. TRAs believe that sex is irrelevant because men can have a vagina or a penis and women can have a penis or a vagina. To us that sentence is the equivalent of 2+2=5.

Cannot believe the Thought Police have been allowed to get away with so much nonsense. XY = it's a guy.

I used to know someone who artificially inseminated cattle (for a living, not for a laugh)

Vets and farmers -- although I think you're still allowed to believe that non-human animals can be sexed according to biology.

I think you're still allowed to believe that non-human animals can be sexed according to biology.

You'd think so.

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 don't know about anyone else but when I gave birth I wanted medical staff who were not distracted by having to walk on eggshells about anything. I'm sure they did their best but it can't be a route to getting the best or safest care.

Care workers, teaching assistants, nurses, therapists.

Care workers need to be able to read support plans that say woman 1, 2 & 4 requested/require a female carer to help with bathing, toileting and changing and respect that. They need to read support plans that say man 2 &4 can be inappropriate with female staff (maybe through no fault of their own, dementia, learning disabilities etc) and that only male staff should be responsible for bathing, toileting, changing etc.

My daughters have ehcp’s that state that their primary ta should be female and/or any toileting needs should be aided by a woman.

White coat sydrome in women is commonly mitigated by having bp taken by a female nurse. This gives me a normal reading, if it’s done by a man it shoots up, no matter how much I think I like him or trust him.

Often women seeking truama therapy prefer female therapists, often men prefer male ones. Sometimes the opposite is true- I sought out a male therapist because although my abusers were men it was my mother who facilitated this and who fucked with my head so I felt safer with a male therapist. Either way they need to be honest about their actual sex rather than advertising claiming to be a woman and the patient turns up to find a man in a dress.

This is a slight side point as authors don’t ‘have’ to know sex, but while I love his books I resent ‘Riley Sager’ pretending to be a female author to sell books to women. It’s very different from women who had to pretend to be men to get their books published in a time where women were not allowed to write and I find it somewhat insensitive (at best) to this reality.

I don't know about anyone else but when I gave birth I wanted medical staff who were not distracted by having to walk on eggshells about anything. I'm sure they did their best but it can't be a route to getting the best or safest care.

Agreed.

Oh and breastfeeding councillors and lactation consultants. The former literally have to be women as they must have first breastfed for a minimum of 6 months to apply to train.

Doulas would be another also.

Residential social workers. We had to ensure certain ratios of male staff in boys units and certain number of female in girls units. In situations where restraints occurred or we ended up with a few staff alone in a quiet room with a young person we had to do our best to ensure we at least tried to make sure that same sex staff were present. Almost all our young people had histories of sexual abuse. I expect the same would be true for social workers working in other settings- prisons, police stations, hospitals etc. Same will be true for advocates of any type for similar and other reasons.

Biochemists. I was recently working on a drug with foetal toxicity. Obviously this was more of an issue for the women in our labs than for men.

Pharmacists who need to warn patients if drugs aren't suitable during pregnancy (like my one above and most famously thalidomide which is still used as a cancer and leprosy treatment, but also things like asprin).

I think in the real world, they eyeroll, but have to follow instructions. Like the Prostate Cancer twitter account. Sorry I can't link at the mo.

biology teachers will be asked to teach about how many genders there are, not how many sexes there are.

Turns out random man completely off his head and asking for money also needs to know who is male and who is female. During a 10 minute wait for a bus he touched me 4 times and I also saw him touch a couple of other women who were passing by. I noticed whilst he repeatedly asked everybody individually for money, he didn't touch any of the 5 men also waiting for the bus and he didn't touch any of the men passing by. Because he'd probably have been decked if so.

Also to add to the OP.. I know various people who are working in sectors or companies where woke corporate policies have already been put in place by well meaning idiots, which are (at best) causing confusion. At worst individual risk and long term loss of corporate diversity.

This leaves the GC people to try to rectify or manage the situation or head off future harms. But who will want to do that if you can get sacked for pointing out the obvious potential problems? Everything is stacked against undoing regulatory capture- especially in the public sector. No management wants to lose face by admitting what they’ve rubberstamped is wrong, there’s no budget or time to work all this out and they all fucking love their rainbow lanyards.
It will take years to undo this and Maya’s case was an essential safeguard needed for people to start to tackle it.

Science teachers. There is not much of a legally mandated national curriculum left but teaching sex education correctly remains mandatory for all schools.

If Maya's judgement were to be upheld I could be sacked for teaching kids about sex and sacked for not doing.

I'm organising a health related conference next year. I had to do the registration forms and asked for sex rather than gender so we have idea of how many women are likely to attend the seminar on pregnancy complications. People living with life limiting conditions couldn't give a shit about the niceties of gender politics if a pregnancy, planned or not, means either toxic drugs for a developing foetus or stopping life prolonging medication while pregnant.

Any one who works with animals (from vets to groomers to breeders to trainers to farmers ... etc etc etc) will have a keen interest in knowing the sex of the animals. I suppose they'll be the next focus of attention ... or are humans the only animals for whom their sex is all in their head and not in chromosomes or sex organs?

You can add hairdressers to your list too. Not all barbers are qualified or insured to cut women's hair. Sounds mad but there was a court case here (Ireland) based on just that.

I would add any job that looks at lung function as an objective marker. There are differences in capacity/vol etc between the sexes. Essentially respiratory services

Normal values of lung function are measured/calulated by an average of the population by sex. There are already adjustments/different scales for people of ethnic minorities as again there are differences with the Caucasian poplutation and this is considered important to recognise this.

There are many conditions where lung function is used to indicate progressing disease - CF is the one that immediately springs to mind. There may also be implications for ventilation too.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5980468/

3times animals are really important, horses specifically. When a stallion gets his bollocks chopped off he becomes a gelding, no matter how much pink sparkly hoof polish he wears. He would also still get put out into the boys field, unless he is in a recognised pair bond with a mare, so sex is still recognised even once he is no longer a stallion. Geldings are also, well, stupid. Snip off their testosterone before puberty and they tend towards being more docile and easily controlled, more predictable, but less able to think on their feet. Hence the reason top show jumpers and race horses tend to be stallions, and to a lesser degree mares (going into season can effect how easy they are to train and obviously breeding a mare takes her out of work for a couple of years at a time, between pregnancy and nursing/weaning the foal and then regaining fitness). When a stallion is gelded after hitting puberty, especially if put to stud then bred from, they tend towards being violent dangerous fuckers who are way more work to train and handle than they are worth.

I see a fair few parallels with the behaviours of the trans activists here.

When a stallion gets his bollocks chopped off he becomes a gelding, no matter how much pink sparkly hoof polish he wears

That's an image that made me laugh ... I needed that!

Oh I’ve seen that image lots at my kids riding stables. They dress up the ponies regularly - there’s the good white unicorn with pink and purple sparkly hooves, love hearts on his butt, ribbons in his mane and tail plaits and a unicorn horn (he also goes to weddings- apparently this is a thing these days too). There’s the ‘bad’ black unicorn who really is a teddy bear who lives for food, hates grown ups and secretly adores little kids, she gets gold sparkles not pink. There’s batman outfit for a grumpy pony, and a reindeer one for another who looks like a real life thellwell pony for when it’s Santa visits- he has light up antlers and gets red nose paint.

Totally off track I know but it’s all super cute and utterly horrifying at the same time.

Geneticists
Genetic counsellors (especially when you're advising about the inheritance of sex-linked conditions!)
Archaeologists
Clinical researchers (where males and females may respond differently to interventions)
Epidemiologists (ditto)
Pharmacologists (ditto)
Abortion providers
Contraception providers

I currently work in reproductive research and there's a weird double-think in my university where researchers are simultaneously woker-than-woke and yet also miraculously able to recognise and utilise sex differences when it has an impact on their research

I've seen someone on Twitter having a whine about a famous (sex unknown) dinosaur skeleton being gendered. Not because that is making unfounded assumptions about behaviour and anatomy but because it wasn't kind! A non-gc friend sent me a screenshot sniggering about it!

I breed various small animals and I must say, I made a mistake once and the poor dear quickly let me know how he really identified via 8 unwanted litters.
It's also important to know if you buy a gelding you will have to wash his willy for him! Not my favourite task...

*VivaLeBeaver WireBrushAndDettolMaam

Now that it has been decided that O POS blood can be used in an emergency for ADULT MALES but definitely not for FEMALES (of child bearing age or younger) due to the risk of antibodies and rhesus disease in future pregnancies it is important that trans men, especially those who may yet want to have a baby, are identified as female in an emergency.

Our hospital policy is that the emergency blood fridge in A&E has both O pos and O neg blood. The fridge in the maternity wing only has O neg.

For those wondering O neg is the universal donor but only about 7% of the population are O neg so a compromise has been made to allow use of O pos in some circumstances.