"my brother died of ovarian cancer"

[SCMocha]

attention-grabbing headline for this article from the independent:

inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ian-duncan-deputy-speaker-house-lords-interview-brother-died-ovarian-cancer-1125221

ovarian cancer apparently "predominantly affects females" (!)

the article talks about the fault of health care providers for not understanding the needs of trans people, rather than focusing on the confusion that might arise from someone registering with a GP as 'male' who then doesn't get smear test notifications.

yes I mentioned smear tests as well, not in connection to this particular case, but because the article mentioned it as one of the difficulties when someone registers as 'male' with their GP. I know that they don't do anything to help diagnose ovarian cancer.

Cancer (and all other diseases) do not give a fuck about your pronouns.

This should be on every notice board in every nhs setting. It is each person's responsibility to be aware of what diseases you could suffer from. I do not concern myself with prostate information but if I was a TW I would!

You know your body. You know what bits and on there and what bits aren’t. If you have woman bits you know to have regular checks, and what to look out for. You can’t imagine that these won’t affect you because you ‘aren’t a woman’. That’s not how nature works.

A very sad story emphasising the need for proper counselling for psychological issues connected to gender dysphoria; issues which appear ,as in this case, to prevent trans people addressing their own health issues relating to their actual sex.

I agree. I think that is the takeaway here and would address so many issues. Before getting hormones people should be required to sign a disclaimer that they understand that they are not actually the opposite biological sex, and many female (or male) health issues still apply. But the gaslighting language used doesn't say this, the differences are because they are "trans" as opposed to "cis". Rather than because they are the opposite biological sex. I'm not sure why this is so difficult, as many transactivists are quick to say sex and gender are different things.

So basically-

If you are genetically a man you will get the cancers that men get.
If you are genetically a woman you will get the cancers a woman gets.
If you put hormones into your body then you may be more susceptible to cancers that are connected to hormones.
If you have bits of you cut off then you are less likely to get cancer in those bits but it is not impossible as the surgery would be designed to give an optimal cosmetic result not an optimal “cancer protecting” result.

And that if you go and live in a country that does not have an NHS, are unlucky enough to have a type of cancer that is hard to detect and do not give health care professionals important diagnostic information then outcomes are likely to be poor.

Quick a campaign costing millions of pounds needs to be set up to highlight that men can also get ovarian cancer. Or just remind all people born as females to have regular check ups?

There is no check up for ovarian cancer. Raising awareness of symptoms is vital alongside dispelling the myth that it is a "silent killer"

What are the symptoms?
Persistent bloating – not bloating that comes and goes
Feeling full quickly and/or loss of appetite
Pelvic or abdominal pain (that's your tummy and below)
Urinary symptoms (needing to wee more urgently or more often than usual)
Occasionally there can be other symptoms:

Changes in bowel habit (eg diarrhoea or constipation)
Extreme fatigue (feeling very tired)
Unexplained weight loss
Any bleeding after the menopause should always be investigated by a GP
Symptoms will be:

Frequent – they usually happen more than 12 times a month
Persistent – they don't go away
New – they're not normal for you

Worried about your symptoms?
If you regularly experience any one or more of these symptoms, which aren't normal for you, it's important that you book an appointment with your GP. It's unlikely that your symptoms are caused by a serious problem, but it's important to get checked out. Take a look at our top tips for speaking to your GP.

Ovarian cysts in pre-menopausal women can produce symptoms similar to those for ovarian cancer but they aren't known to increase the risk of ovarian cancer.

Other conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) have symptoms similar to ovarian cancer but if your symptoms don't clear up, go back to your GP or seek a second opinion, even if you've had tests. "
targetovariancancer.org.uk/about-ovarian-cancer/symptoms

Ovarian cancer is an absolute awful disease. My friend was diagnosed two weeks before she died. She'd had backache, pain for months but it was missed by everyone, when they operated for a cyst they found it.
Two weeks.
And the most depressing thing about that article is when you look at the quote tweets, people on both sides think it's awful, one side accusing the other of 'transphobia' the other pointing out the importance of recording sex in medical records. It's all so depressing that we cannot discuss this rationally.

Cancer is a shitty thing, no doubt. It doesn’t care about your class, race or age, and it certainly doesn’t give two hoots about your gender.

If you genuinely believe that you are exempt from certain cancers because you do not ‘feel’ a certain sex (and not because, say you have had part of your body removed) then you are naive and your doctors have not made it clear enough to you what your sex-based health risks are (like the rest of us).

I also find it very hard to believe that trans people do not think a lot about their bodies and the organs that are still originally 'male' and 'female' parts. The idea that a trans man can 'forget' they have ovaries is rather far fetched. Unless they are in denial that they have any female body parts at all, in which case they have mental health issues. Again, these are failures of trans healthcare. The record keeping of many of these clinics and practices has been shown to be very poor - they do not even have accurate stats on detransition. General practice is general practice and very overstretched, family doctors can not be expected to pick up the slack.

Unless they are in denial that they have any female body parts at all, in which case they have mental health issues.

I think this is the point isn't it? Gender dysphoria is a mental health issue and may very well result in exactly that kind of denial, so raising awareness may be useful.

@SCMocha , the smear test is to detect cancer of the cervix.

So what does the gender ideology lobby want? We hear the demands for self-ID and changing sex markers on official records and not being misgendered and being recognised as the “real” gender and so on, but when someone dies as a result it’s as if everyone, medical staff and authorities included, should have magically known it was all a charade and magically known to provide the “right” healthcare.

So which is it? Someone has the medical competence to transition, but not to then inform healthcare providers that they have done so, or take any responsibility in a healthcare situation for the fact they have transitioned?

Agree with the pp who said that priorities are askew if someone cares more about being misgendered at the doctor’s than about their health.

@Jackgrealishscurtains

I just saw this - I was at the 'ovarian cancer predominately affects females' - WTF?

Surely the easiest way to solve this is to ensure that all people, regardless of their gender identity, are registered as their biological sex in all medical paperwork?

Yes exactly, someone can have their pronouns respected (whatever that means in a medical sense) whilst being invited for screening surely. Although some people (including biological women for various reasons) choose to opt out of invites, that's surely a level of personal responsibility?

'Personal responsibility' is due a comeback, @Noterook.

It should be a requirement of GICs to ensure that their patients are all fully aware of sex-specific healthcare. In order to best care for their patients, NHS health records should retain accurate sex information. In respect of ovarian and other gynaecological cancers, I would hope there are studies underway to determine if there are increased risk profiles for those women who have suppressed ovarian function using hormones etc so as to inform evidence-based interventions.

Ovarian cancer outcomes will not be improved by pretending that it is not female sex specific disease. I do not have the sense that Lord Ian Duncan and Patrick Strudwick are particularly well informed about women's health.
Cancer campaigns and treatments should never be used for political gain.

Sex, Gender & the NHS part 2
Anne Harper-Wright
Nov 13, 2018
Part 2: Your Medical Record and your Ladybrain
medium.com/@anneharperwright/sex-gender-the-nhs-bb86b0c3ebb

Dr Sara Dahlen
Sydney Selwyn lectures 2020 (winner)
Lecture title: An examination of sex versus gender identity in the GMC's Trans Healthcare Ethical Advice

'De-sexing the Medical Record? An Examination of Sex Versus Gender Identity in the General Medical Council’s Trans Healthcare Ethical Advice'
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20502877.2020.1720429

A response to the Women and Equalities Committee Call for Evidence on “Reform of the Gender Recognition Act”
committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/17464/pdf/

‘Breastbone’ no? Or is that going to be redefined? Obsession with boobs...

I had a smear test today. The NHS leaflet said 'Transwomen do not need smear tests'. Need.

This is a very sad story but as others have said Ian Duncan clearly doesn't understand women's health sufficiently to know that there is no screening programme for ovarian cancer. It is sadly very unlikely that his sibling's cancer could have been picked up at an early stage even if they had had health insurance, engaged with healthcare providers, etc etc.

However. What this does usefully illustrate is that in failing to stand up to aggressive activism, the medical profession's leadership has totally failed both trans people AND individual clinicians who are having to deal with the consequences of this on the ground. Medics should never have allowed people to erase or falsify information about one of the most important human biological variables in their health records.

The profession has colluded in (and arguably created in the first place) a lie, one of the numerous real world consequences of which is that it pushes the burden of responsibility for information-sharing about sex onto trans people. Who, in the nicest possible way, seem to have above average rates of mental health co-morbidities, high levels of denial/reluctance to acknowledge their sexed bodies and above-average difficulty in seeking care. This is not in their interests, and its also unfair on individual clinicians, who may be providing inappropriate care because they are being kept in the dark about their patient's real sex.

It doesn't really matter that this is what the representatives of trans people lobbied for. Medics should have been the grown-ups in the room who were tough enough to say 'no, because this will create real harms', or to insist on an appropriate workaround (such as retaining sex information but adding information about transgender status, or having specialist registers of transgender patients).

I get that medics are in an difficult position because they created/fuelled the idea that administratively erasing all trace of the past is part of the therapy for gender dysphoria. But they have only magnified trans people's problems by caving to the activism where health records are concerned.

Of you truly don’t understand the body mechanics and genuinely believe that you are not at risk, then you are surely not competent to go through the process? You have to be a grown up about it. Be realistic.

I’m sure we all have things we want to change - my granny didn’t want to be deaf, mum didn’t want cancer/arthritis etc, dad sure as hell didn’t want leukaemia, and my sister doesn’t want Alzheimer’s. The body is what the body is.

Excellent post HerewardTheWoke

Meanwhile the silly new trend for asking EVERYONE if they could be pregnant for fear of offending or missing a pregnant "man" is being interpreted as the ultimate validation by some....

The problem is if someone transitions they get a new nhs number and new records which are not allowed to state anything about their actual biological sex. So how are GPs supposed to ‘keep a register’ when there is no way of searching for which male patients are actually female etc. It’s hugely dangerous and lots of us have been pointing this out for years but being ignored because gender identity seems to trump everything else.
In addition can you imagine as a GP who is not allowed to mention trans status to a patient or convey this information in any referrals how difficult this whole thing is. That’s assuming they don’t pass. If they do pass then we simply won’t be looking for things like ovarian or cervical cancer in a male patient so it will clearly potentially delay a critical diagnosis to the huge detriment of that patient.
A very basic example would be that if someone has a female marker on their record we can’t order electronically the blood test relating to prostate size/ prostate cancer. Allowing people to change the sex marker on medical records is completely unethical imo (first do no harm) and should never had been allowed.

Hereward yes Royal college of General practice and GMC have been utterly spineless in all of this

NeilWilson & SCMocha: apologies, I obvs wasn't reading your posts right.

Well, asking TW if they could be pregnant is the ultimate validation isn't it? Having seen videos of 'Hannah' Mouncy, I can't say I'd be asking that question of that individual, but there we are.

If this question becomes necessary in all settings, pity the hapless nurse, clerk, junior doctor in A&E on a Friday night asking all those pissed blokes if they could be pregnant. Doesn't bear thinking about.

Nancy Kelley of Stonewall has said today that this highlights 'the need for trans inclusive healthcare.' Which is just jaw-dropping as most of these problems have been created or exacerbated by orgs like Stonewall insisting that the process of transition is personal, requires minimal state intervention, and ought to be based upon the understanding that 'people are who they say they are.' It is Stonewall and Mermaids who want boys and girls to have their puberty blocked, powerful cross sex hormones prescribed from a very young age, while (presumably) trans men are encouraged to retain their reproductive organs so they can be 'birthing fathers.' I wonder if these people and their supporters can actually hear themselves? They are fully deranged.