Stop mixing up sex and gender GPs told

[flyingbuttress43]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/02/doctors-must-stop-mixing-sex-gender-patients-undergoing-wrong/

Doctors have been told to stop mixing up sex and gender because it can end up with people getting the wrong treatment.

Senior medical researchers led by the University of St Andrews said there was clear evidence that biological sex and gender were both powerful risk factors for "virtually every disease and affect every organ."

The article is behind a pay wall, so here are some salient points...

Sex differences in drug metabolism were well recognised;
Gender significantly affected how a person engaged with treatment;
One GP, commenting on the article on the BMJ website said she spent hours a week ensuring the right people were called for cervical smears;
NHS systems do not allow for sex and gender to be recorded separately;
Sex and gender are not synonymous.

"Dr Margaret McCartney of the School of Medicine at St Andrews, said: "There are many instances of sex and gender being confused by the research community and society more broadly. Unless we identify and count categories correctly, we will end up with errors which serves all populations poorly."

All so obvious to us on Feminism Chat, but good to see push back
on this sex/gender mixup from the research community.

Is it beyond the wit of the health service to introduce specific flags for the very few routine screening tests available? Do women who've had double mastectomies still get called for mammograms?

I think part of the problem is the absolutely fucking unbelievably labyrinthine and unnecessary bureaucracy the NHS seems to revel in. I think it could be sunk by that alone, to be honest.

Where I am the contraceptive services are dealt with by a separate sexual health clinic rather than your GP.
I was surprised when I filled out the initial forms there to find that the only option was gender. Surely for something like sexual health you need to know what sex organ you have, not how you feel.

Where I am the contraceptive services are dealt with by a separate sexual health clinic rather than your GP.

When I lived in the US, the norm seemed to be to go to an obgyn for contraception and smears so it was automatically a single sex service which seemed pretty sensible.

If anyone would like to answer me this, I'd really love an answer:

Why does the transwoman's desire to use women's spaces
override the woman's desire to have spaces free from males?

Why does the transwoman's desire
override the woman's desire?

@ErrolTheDragon

Where I am the contraceptive services are dealt with by a separate sexual health clinic rather than your GP.

When I lived in the US, the norm seemed to be to go to an obgyn for contraception and smears so it was automatically a single sex service which seemed pretty sensible.

This is a sexual health clinic though so they treat STDs and the like as well as contraception. That means it is used by men and women.

Yes, I realised that's what you meant, East. A 'sexual health' clinic definitely needs to know your sex and might also need to know sexuality and gender I suppose. Having services provided by a specific ObGyn is one of the few instances (maybe the only one?) where the sex question would be redundant.

@ArabellaScott

If anyone would like to answer me this, I'd really love an answer:

Why does the transwoman's desire to use women's spaces
override the woman's desire to have spaces free from males?

Why does the transwoman's desire
override the woman's desire?

Agree with you totally.

@ArabellaScott

If anyone would like to answer me this, I'd really love an answer:

Why does the transwoman's desire to use women's spaces
override the woman's desire to have spaces free from males?

Why does the transwoman's desire
override the woman's desire?

excellent question @ArabellaScott

and we know the reality, they are biological males, who actually believe they are entitled to become biological women.
it is a form a narcissism. Many are self obsessed, women's rights are secondary. They do show full signs of authgynephilia,

No one knows what it feels like to be anything, BUT we all know what it is like to be in our own bodies, and we adapt.

I do not know what it is like to be female, no more than any woman does, I do not "feel" like a woman, nor do i feel like a "man"... i can only feel like me.

I have lived as both, and coped. Sadly I sense trans women have created an fixation, which could be helped, with help. It becomes an all absorbing fixation, and being "accepted" as a woman, is their goal, many have a fetish, they remain biologically male.

Women have a basic right to have private spaces away from men, be it changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, refuges sports,.. this is nothing new, has been part of civil society for over 3,000 years.

Biology has not changed, sadly the liberal left is appeasing this. George Soros is more than happy to fund trans ideology, he wants to undermine western culture. We have to be aware.

@ArabellaScott

If anyone would like to answer me this, I'd really love an answer:

Why does the transwoman's desire to use women's spaces
override the woman's desire to have spaces free from males?

Why does the transwoman's desire
override the woman's desire?

If you ever get an answer to this I will eat a whole milliner's shop worth of hats.

I have lots if hard here waiting patiently to be eaten.

It's the crux of the matter, I feel. But nobody who says TWAW ever answers it.

According to a BMJ editorial of March this year,

"The Royal College of General Practitioners already recommends that sex and gender are recorded separately in medical records, but standard NHS systems do not allow for this. The NHS number—a lifelong identifier given at birth—codes people by biological sex in Scotland (odd numbers for male, even numbers for female). This drives sex specific automated screening invitations (cervical, breast, and aortic aneurysm) and laboratory reference ranges. The administrative process of changing NHS numbers, which many trans and non-binary people choose, effectively makes the NHS number a gender marker, not a sex marker. This may result in relevant information about biological sex being unavailable to healthcare practitioners, researchers, and administrators."

www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735

So the 2009 guidance referred to in Anne Harper-Wright's article on Medium isn't being followed. A letter from Maya Forstater in response to the editorial points this out, & also calls for controls on disclosure of sex to protect the privacy of transgender patients:

"Accurate information on everybody's sex should be held in their NHS record but it should only be disclosed or displayed when it is needed."

"Greater clarity about definitions, privacy, confidentiality and data protection would allow people to keep their sex private in situations where it is no one else's business but maintain the integrity of medical records."

www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735/rr-0

One of my friends is a medical student and he was doing a training round on the maternity ward. He met a pregnant patient who was in pain and had some other worrying symptoms. When he met with his supervisor she asked him to give a history and he started by saying “she was a pregnant female patient...” The supervisor snapped and interrupted him and said that he was wrong to assume the patients gender - did he ask? The patient might have been a trans man. So he just said “ok” and continued his report. But when he told me I was really shocked and I told him he did the right thing in correctly sexing the patient. And then it further occurred to me that in a maternity ward it’s even more important to correctly sex patients because abdominal pain in a woman means something very different from pain in a man. The doctor also didn’t seem to grasp that “female” was a sex term, not a gendered term. My friend pointed out that in his report he only sexed the patient and didn’t use gender. Also can you imagine being a heavily pregnant woman, worried and in pain and the doctor asks you what gender you are ?

It was interesting to read the BMJ article because when I politely queried the process of changing name, nhs number with the practice manager where I work, I was basically accused of being a dreadful transphobic bigot!
I'd asked, in all innocence if patient xx would still be called for smears and if the blood result parameters would still be correct once this has been done, because I'd noticed that the system didn't appear to facilitate a way of allowing their sex to be correctly recorded. One a person's title is changed from 'Miss' to 'Mr' or vice versa, it sets off a whole process of change.
I got snapped at and told that this is how it works and that's that.
Fair enough in a small gp practice where the longstanding clinicians know most of the patients (certainly who is transgender), but if they or the patient move on, it could certainly lead to adverse clinical outcomes for the transgender patient.
I actually found it really quite concerning but then I'm not clinical so what do I know?🙄

I honesttly see no need for 'gender' to be mentioned at all on medical records. Especially given its known many conflate the two (often purpsely) despite knowing they are different things. I don't really see what benefits 'genderqueer demigirl' being added to some males records would do in reality.

I think for transsexual people, their medical records would..well show they are transsexual, so no gender needed there

And those who are trans but want to change pronouns for whatever reason, an addition could surely be made, somewhere, simply stating 'X prefers to be referred to as she/he/them'

Adding gender as an option on the system would surely require 1000+ options to be there, with more added daily.