Health study categorising by self identified gender rather than sex!

[WifeOfTiresias]

Just entered my details on the ZOE app to take part in the much trumpeted nationwide studies of wider health issues following on from their COVID symptom study.

Lots of details to fill in regarding age, weight, prior health history etc. All as expected from a rigorous study. However, the only question to categorise us as either female or male, a pretty crucial characteristic in medical terms, was "what gender do you most identify with?" With options including non binary. No mention of biological sex whatsoever!

I'm deeply disappointed. I had great respect for the ZOE team regarding their work on COVID, but this ridiculous trans ally type approach has just rendered any data they collect pretty much useless!

I despair for the future of scientific research if this is the accepted approach now.

@mudgetastic

But that's what I thought I was doing ! All sorts of additional questions about health including some sex specific ones

@mudgetastic It might be different if you are signing up for the main app and also for the wider health studies at the same time. I've been signed up to the app for some time was just signing up for the wider health studies today.

H found that when visiting the GP they simply had a female sex marker leading to GP asking questions about periods etc and being really confused by the situation.

I expect this sort of thing is going to happen more and more, especially with so many twenty somethings being so keen to take on a trans identity.

And with more and more telephone/virtual consultations.

Pointless
Meaningless

Phenotypic sex is used by trans activists because it's a bit 50s to talk about passing, and it sounds sciencey. They basically mean people with visible beards or people with visible breasts. Not that they would count my first husband, who was left with unwanted breast tissue after starting medical transition and then desisting.

I started to join this new research and once I saw all these questions I just withdrew. I have a close friend who works in primary care and she says that this gender type based data is really causing them problems

They basically mean people with visible beards

Do they mean post-menopausal women, then?

Beards & breasts are just secondary sex characteristics, and don't tell us an awful lot.

I've no idea if I'm helping here but I have been using the Zoe app for months and months now and I can't remember what the initial set up questions were. However, when I signed up for the wider health study this afternoon I was asked about sex and gender. I am unhappy about the wording but at least it is clear what sex I have been recorded as.

@Melroses

H found that when visiting the GP they simply had a female sex marker leading to GP asking questions about periods etc and being really confused by the situation.

I expect this sort of thing is going to happen more and more, especially with so many twenty somethings being so keen to take on a trans identity.

What's worrying me is the report that I'm sure was submitted to Parliament on how children can get their records and nhs numbers changed. And the life long implications of that.

I really can't remember what that was but it described this happening to children.

Yes I remember that. It dissociates them from their full medical records, birth and therefore safeguarding against trafficking. That is really worrying.

@WifeOfTiresias

As a transwidow I have first hand knowledge of how trans status changes the sex marker.

H found that when visiting the GP they simply had a female sex marker leading to GP asking questions about periods etc and being really confused by the situation. As far as they were concerned the records were telling them that this was a biological female sitting in front of them. Even when H said they were trans the GP thought they meant female to male so there is clearly confusion on this point amongst health professionals which must impact on the care of trans patients.

GP confirmed there is no such thing as a trans status marker so once that marker is changed all treatment, screening programmes etc go with the acquired gender. As this marker is changed as soon as the patient identifies as the opposite gender and well before any physical changes have taken place the patient gets none of the relevant screening for them. A lot of trans patients are being put at risk in this way.

Horrific. And will cause huge problems when the young women who have decided aged 16 that they are male turn up at the gp aged 26 and pregnant.

@NecessaryScene

Wtf they're going to do with the non binary responses, though. Bin them?

That does actually seem to be a fairly common approach.

They know they really want sex, but they feel that for political reasons they have to ask for gender, so they just bin all the "other" responses and use the "male" and "female" ones.

Wasn't that in the guidance for pay gap monitoring? Just don't include non-binaries in the figures?

But this only works as long as "non-binary" doesn't predominantly skew either male or female. Are there any data to be had on that?

Yes I also signed up for the health study thing yesterday but was very cross that it asked about sex "assigned at birth" and "what gender you identify with" (or similar wording) but with no option to say you don't "identify with" any nor indeed believe in the concept of gender identity. It pisses me off because I think they have done/are planning some really good research (e.g. the breakthroughs about different Covid symptoms), so why be so deliberately dense and unscientific/inaccurate about this? I was trying to find a contact option to complain, but couldn't find one as yet - has anyone else done so?

I no longer have any sympathy over transgender people maybe missing out on important sex based tests. They made their bed, they can lie on it.

I no longer have any sympathy over transgender people maybe missing out on important sex based tests. They made their bed, they can lie on it

I believe this is another problem.made on purpose.

As long as the mix up/mistakes Happen there will be cause still for all these trans advocacy groups/charaties/organisations to keep campaigning and keep the money coming in. Who will refuse to want to improve healthcare for trans people after all.

This is all about keeping themselves in a job. If any of them actually cared abiut trans people they'd not want them to die of undetected prostate/cervical cancer.

@Whatwouldscullydo

I no longer have any sympathy over transgender people maybe missing out on important sex based tests. They made their bed, they can lie on it

I believe this is another problem.made on purpose.

As long as the mix up/mistakes Happen there will be cause still for all these trans advocacy groups/charaties/organisations to keep campaigning and keep the money coming in. Who will refuse to want to improve healthcare for trans people after all.

This is all about keeping themselves in a job. If any of them actually cared abiut trans people they'd not want them to die of undetected prostate/cervical cancer.

Yes I think you are spot on @Whatwouldscullydo .

None of the trans people I know are happy with this situation. They want both a biological sex marker and an identified gender marker on their records as they aren't deluded enough to think they have magically changed sex and recognise that their healthcare needs are dictated by their biology. However the TRAs have ensured that their agenda has been prioritised to further their own ends.

Though it has to be said that any trans person objecting to this situation gets at most a mild finger wag, but a woman saying the same gets sacked from her job and death threats. Making the mysogynistic agenda very clear.

I think the refusal to acknowledge reality should be seen as the intention to self harm it is.

The right for bodily autonomy usually comes into play in individual situations. So some one is diagnosed given options and then decides. It's not a blanket refusal for all medical tests amd interventions for their rest of their lives without the opportunity to ever find out anything ever.

In.order to refuse treatment a patient must first know what that treatment is.

After all, there's such a strong Tory strand in UK trans activists (Christine Burns, Sue Pascoe) perhaps that's why 'privacy' above all is the drive over here, along with the basis for the Goodwin case win. Why would they care about mass healthcare issues or young females losing out on cervical cancer screening. Having said that, at least sex-based mass vaccination is likely to eliminate the need for smears completely. It will mean that primary care is going to have to be incredibly alert to the very rare cases of cervical cancer that will still come up, particularly in those who the NHS has incorrectly labelled as men.

Agreed, if I was a healthcare professional I would be very unhappy to treat patients in these circumstances due to vital information necessary for correct diagnoses being withheld. At the moment they have no way of knowing if the patient sitting in front of them with a female marker is actually biologically female or not.

You can bet the TRAs will be screaming transphobia from the rooftops when the resulting wrong diagnosis causes harm to a transwoman though. However they don't seem at all bothered about the cases of death is transmen by ectopic pregnancy due to the fact their doctors thought they were biological men. Funny that.

I always thought "identify with" meant you empathise with someone. So I identify with lots of people of all genders but couldn't say I 'identify with' a whole gender class of people because some of them won't be people I identify with at all?

E.g. "I identify with your situation; I've experienced the same". The child identified with the character in the book.

Have they completely mis-worded this question? Doesn't bode well...

Is "gender identity", broadly speaking, the belief that your mind/ personality/soul has something that is akin to the physical sex a human body has, but isn't quite that?

Or is it the belief that your mind/ personality/soul is somewhere on some sort of masculine->-->feminine spectrum? I'm never quite sure.

If it's "the feeling that you are a man/woman/ neither" I can't understand it without a definition of man or woman.

I genuinely don't know if I have one or not, and, if I do or don't, whether I'm an exception compared to most people by feeling that way.

I had this with the uk health security agency who are doing follow up research on people who agreed to be in covid studies. They asked if you had any protected characteristics and then listed the wrong characteristics (gender not sex). I've contacted them to ask them to change it

They asked if you had any protected characteristics and then listed the wrong characteristics (gender not sex).

Eh what?
Are they anticipating people who don't have an age, race, sex or sexual orientation?
That can't be a real question?

They wanted to know specifically which ones were of relevance but the list was wrong so they were not going to get useful data