Response from health care service providers "assigned at birth"

[FernlovingNodosaur]

Can you please give your thoughts on this matter and if your smart wording/thinking could add anything to my response letter.

I complained via email because I very recently received an unsolicited advert from my major health care provider see below for company. About a serious sex based disease yet the advert used assigned at birth manta.

Their response email below:

Dear Ms

I'm emailing you in response to your complain on Wednesday 2nd November regarding your unhappiness that we make reference to the term "assigned at birth" rather than classifying a specific gender.
I apologise if it has caused you any offence - it is not the service that Babylon aim to deliver.
Our marketing team are using the term "assigned at birth" to cause minimal offence to our many patients and we will be continuing to use this term. Unfortunately, we can't adapt marketing emails individually to each person's gender and have to use a neutral term.
If you have any further queries, please let me know.
Cheers,
Clinical Operations Team Leader.
**

Using ‘assigned at birth’ means that any person who has English language difficulties may not understand an important medical message.
There is no need to use this ambiguous term. It is dangerous to do so.

OMG “assigned” is sooooo vague compared to “observed” or “identified”
How will people ever learn this mysterious word if English isn’t their first language? They could actually die from this! They don’t have a chance in hell of comprehending that “sex — ?— at birth” is asking for what sex they are! The verb we use is absolutely essential?

Seriously though it’s really dishonest to wrap your anti-trans conspiracy theory in a strawman of claiming that “assigned” isn’t a common word and is too vague for foreigners to understand a simple question…which could be understood by just being able to comprehend: sex at birth.

The verb is completely superfluous to comprehension in this context.

And strangely the words for male or female cover the most people on the planet.

And you are assuming I was taking about ‘foreigners’ only? By the way, I am also a foreigner.

Anyway, a choice of two words, easily understood by the largest % of the population without obfuscation. Or, use additive language.

Cant beat that for inclusive!

And you cannot beat that for communication targeting.

Sometimes that zeal to appear inclusive by removing the words needed to achieve the highest level of communication is dangerous.

The verb can be confusing and disrupt the message being communicated. That is probably one of the first things a communications student should learn.

Yes. It’s obvious you’re being asked to tick off M or F, with or without the verb.

I didn’t assume, you said “English language difficulties” so that can’t include people with cognitive difficulties with language in general because they would have these difficulties with any/all language. Ergo, you were talking about non-native English speakers. If you had meant “language difficulties”, then you would not have tacked on the specifier “English”.

The verb can be confusing and disrupt the message being communicated.
Not likely that keeping an original verb that has been used in this context for decades when every alternate verb suggested for use is a synonym of the original verb but also has the disadvantage of being new and unfamiliar in this context, which will create confusion and a learning curve. Change causes confusion.

But hey, it’s up to OP if she wants to spin her wheels harassing NHS staff over a superfluous verb in a stock question on a stock form that they have no control over and pretty much anyone reading it would realise oh, this is where I check off my sex at birth.

To me, it’s a waste of NHS resources to pursue this. Much rather they be using the time to call patients about cancer test results than doing the formal complaints process over something that is a mole hill of an issue.

It might help you to make a more informed contribution to this thread if you first gained a better understanding of sex development.

We would not call this particular patient a man, because sex chromosomes are not the endpoint of sex development.

Sex chromosomes are the starting point of human sex development.

Along the path towards male and female bodies, a number of things may go wrong, such as genes being present or switched on that would not normally be or genes not present or switched on that should be. Or the body not reacting to hormones as it should.

The end point of human sex development is a male or female body.

The patient in question has a female body, ergo she is a woman. She was born with a female body, so her female sex was not assigned, it was observed.

As she has a DSD called Swyer syndrome however, her female reproductive system did not form properly. Because she has no ovaries, she did not get a period by herself. But she does have a womb and did get periods after receiving HRT. Which is why she could get pregnant and carry a baby to term using a donor egg.

No man has a womb. Not all women can get pregnant, but everyone who does is a woman.

HTH

Please note the use of the term DSD in your linked article btw. The word intersex is not used at all.

OP, I suggest you delete your entire snarky, rambling, confusing intended email and simply write the above instead.

So the nephew was fake and bevan s distraction technique... quelle surprise...

And now, it's just a bunch of words, don't get your knickers in a twist. Well, if it was just a bunch of words, put them back to what they were and you don't get your knickers in a twist about it.

Bevan s? Became...

The intersex community have a biological condition and want nothing to do with the fluffy self ID stuff that’s doing the rounds..

The neutral term is 'sex' this does not change if someone decides to assign themselves to a 'gender' which has no scientific meaning. How can I trust a health care provider that doesn't understand basic science?

It’s not ‘Intersex Inclusive’ at all.

the information that this question intends to elicit is the patient’s biological sex are they male (ie ejaculators/prostateowners/penispeople/spermshooters) or are they female (ovulators/ovaryowners/vulvapeople/cervixhavers).

In plain, boring, non genderidentitarians without a DSD diagnosis you might get a correct M/F answer (or you might get a WTF email, as is the case with OP).

A transgender person will understand that this question is asking for physical sex, but many of them will refuse to answer with the information that the health provider is asking for, because they believe it is unnecessary and/or offensive.

A person with a DSD may well have been erroneously observed to be a sex at birth that they later turned out to be (eg Caster Semenya). The factual answer to the questioned ‘sex assigned at birth’ for Caster is ‘female’ but the question is actually asking for Caster’s physical sex (because they want to know what blood test markers to use and what screening programs to sign you up for).
Recording ‘female’ for Caster would actually be dangerous to Caster’s physical health (and Caster is on record stating how unhappy and unhealthy Caster felt when Caster took female HRT for a short time).

Caster’s condition is the one that the children known as ‘guevedoces’ have - they look more like girls at birth due to DHT deficiency but they have testicles and produce their own testosterone so once they reach pubertal age their testicles descend and their previously ambiguous penis grows and (often becomes unmistakably obvious! Lots of these boys grow up to father children, although male fertility medical assistance may be required).

www.livescience.com/52247-guevedoces-girls-boys.html

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34290981

A GP who recorded ‘assigned sex at birth’ would be behaving negligently towards people with DSDs whose sex recorded at birth is now known to be incorrect - people with 5 ARD, like Caster, have a prostate, testicles and a penis and are at risk for those cancers. Even a child with 5ARD who had been surgically altered to make their genitals appear female (which we all agree is wrong and thankfully no longer happens in the UK) would still have a prostate (and perhaps internal, undescended testes too).

Anyone who actually gives a shit about people born with DSDs (aka VSDs) should want medical admin systems that accurately record their biological sex - anything else puts their health in danger.

In short, Babylon have phrased this question this way to minimise offence to transgender people who may still be offended enough that they deliberately give false information (see all the recent complaints about the recent census question and the phrasing of the M/F question on the NHS covid vaccination system). They have prioritised the feelings of transgender people over the physical reality of people with DSDs.

It’s the absolute opposite of ‘intersex inclusion’!

Truth is, it’s not a neutral term. It is the language of an aggressive minority. Hardly inclusive.

Happy to keep trading posts with you discovereads. As long as you can keep them civil and not give in to the ableist insults of the past.

I think your interpretation of my use of ‘English’ language was rather clearly in bad faith. But hey, if you want to parse that to mean only people who have no other language difficulties, fill your boots.

It’s obvious you’re being asked to tick off M or F, with or without the verb

Where ?

”I complained via email because I very recently received an unsolicited advert from my major health care provider see below for company. About a serious sex based disease yet the advert used assigned at birth manta.” is the OP.

This OP is not about ticking off a box, this is about a marketing communication that has missed the mark and failed at communicating to the widest possible audience within a selected targeted market segment.

You seem confused about what the OP was and have just created a straw man.

Let’s cut the crap about the verb.

Pulling is into an argument about which ‘verb’ to use is meaningless. It is sparple.

The issue is the entire phrase, the term used, not just the verb. Using a phrase such as ‘assigned at birth’ is not well known, despite what people wish to think.

”Not likely that keeping an original verb that has been used in this context for decades”

No. It has not been used as a substitute for the word female or woman for decades. Yes, for a very narrow purpose of medical writing and maybe for communications specifically targeted to 0.018% of the population.

You have just used a sleight of hand to make out that it has been used in communications to the whole population of the UK for decades. As I have lived in the UK for two decades and through that been a marketing manager so I can tell you this is bollocks.

I have been also a female receiving communications from the NHS for two decades. And never once have I received anything using that phrase. Not even recently. Because my NHS trust still sends clear English language letters to females for communicating invitations for medical check ups. They use ‘female’.

You picked up my own laziness in simply parroting back your own word ‘verb’ when I should have been clearer.

So, I repeat, it is the term “assigned at birth” that is the issue. It has not been used in communications to the general population ‘for decades’.

It is gaslighting anyone reading your post to try to portray the use of a very specific term ‘assigned at birth’ has been in general marketing communications for decades. And even for communication from the NHS meant for the general population.

Thereby this is interesting:

”Not likely that keeping an original verb that has been used in this context for decades when every alternate verb suggested for use is a synonym of the original verb but also has the disadvantage of being new and unfamiliar in this context, which will create confusion and a learning curve. Change causes confusion.”

So take out the sparple, the distraction of ‘verbs’, it seems you now agree.

“being new and unfamiliar in this context, which will create confusion and a learning curve. Change causes confusion”

Yes. Changing the commonly used language in communicating does create confusion.

That is what I said.

And then finally, you ended with a nice undermining of the OP, and vanquished a straw man argument you created.

This is not what the OP initially complained about, which was in the second paragraph of the OP. Had you cared to read it before contributing this.

’But hey, it’s up to OP if she wants to spin her wheels harassing NHS staff over a superfluous verb in a stock question on a stock form that they have no control over and pretty much anyone reading it would realise oh, this is where I check off my sex at birth.’

Nice to burn a strawman though. It is the season for it, for sure.

Babylon is a private healthcare provider who are contracted by the NHS to provide some NHS services.

We have no idea if the admin answering the question is working for the NHS division or the private division, but accurate information regarding sex benefits ALL patients (even the ones who deny there is such a thing as biological sex)

Babylon Health: www.babylonhealth.com/en-gb

the NHS bit is actually called ‘GP at Hand’ :

www.gpathand.nhs.uk

One of the Gendercare doctors (private transition service owned by Dr Stuart Lorimer) has a part time day job with Babylon, as well as being clinical lead of the NHS pilot, CMAGIC (where Adrian Harrop works part time).

So the ’Champion’ for ‘Gender Identity Healthcare’ at Babylon is Harrop’s boss

gendercare.co.uk/christine-mimnagh.shtml

Dr Christine Minmagh is a member of WPATH and a member of TPATH (WPATH but all the Ps are Transgender themselves).

Dr Christine Minmagh is developing training materials for GPs on the subject of ‘Gender Identity Health’ - this is a phrase I have not come across before today (eg WPATH stands for ‘World Professional Association for Transgender Health’ and while the NHS used to use ‘Gender Identity Clinic’ for adults and ‘Gender Identity Development Service’ for paediatrics they have recently moved over to ‘Gender Dysphoria Service’ (presumably to infer that the NHS inbred to provide treatment only for those who are diagnosed with gender Dysphoria (gender related distress) and not those who experience ‘Gender incongruence’ without distress or who those who identify as trans/nb/the opposite sex as a social category (ie the NHS intends to provide treatment for those with the psychological disorder known as ‘gender Dysphoria’ )

www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/how-to-find-an-nhs-gender-identity-clinic/

The NHS is currently moving AWAY from ‘gender identity’ while trans lobby groups are still pushing towards ‘everyone has a gender identity and some have one that is incongruent with whatever it is that you boring old people assumed via looking at baby genitals’.

The cry of the activists is ‘Yoiu Don’t Need Gender Dysphoria to be Trans’ and the NHS is seemingly pushing back by saying ‘OK, but we are only funding transition services for those people who do have Gender Dysphoria’.

TLDR: Babylon have a transgender staff member who appears to be an active and committed trans activist who Babylon describe as a ‘Champion’. so that’s likely the influence driving the absurd and useless question ‘sex assigned at birth’ when the information actually sought is ‘which of the two categories of mammalian reproduction does your body belong to’?’

Interesting that autocorrect thinks ‘inbred’ is more appropriate than ‘intend’!

Also, thanks to HelleofaBore’s excellent post I now see that I responded to Discoveread’s strawman by taking the ‘it’s just a question on a form’ argument in good faith.

Regardless of how/when Babylon is using the ‘assigned at birth’ phrase, it’s still activist language used to normalise the transgender narrative at the expense of people who have language difficulties (either due to ESL or SEN) and those with DSD who were actually incorrectly sexed at birth.

eg a person with CAIS will be erroneously recorded as female at birth and will only discover they are genetically male when normal female puberty fails to occur (no menses).

So targeting Ovarian Cancer awareness info at ‘AFAB’ people is correct for transmen but incorrect for people with CAIS, who were ‘assigned female at birth’ but don’t actually have ovaries but don’t know this until late adolescence/young adulthood.
it would also be incorrect for someone with Caster Semenya’s condition, 5ARD, they are ‘AFAB’ but then go on to have a fairly standard male puberty, no ovaries = no risk of Ovarian Cancer.

So once again, ‘AFAB’ is the opposite of ‘intersex inclusive’!

Maybe this will clarify the very muddied waters.

If you wrote the following sentence:

“Those assigned male at birth may have a life threatening reaction to receiving a transfusion of blood from a female who had previously been pregnant. “

The use of the term at the beginning of the sentence signals who this message is for. Anyone not recognising the term being used (for ANY reason) will ignore the message, they will filter it out. They have designated it as not relevant to them. Call this group B.

Those who are up on the terminology will read it.

Those who are male or ‘assigned male at birth’ will read it and process the massage. Good in this case.

Those who are male, not necessarily ‘assigned’, but those who know they have a body formed around the production of small gametes, regardless of whether those gametes will, have been or are produced, will have received message. They are group C.

Those who were erroneously assigned male but are female, ie. Those with a body formed around the production of large gametes, regardless of whether those gametes will, have been or are produced, will also get the message. They are group D.

There is a group A. A group that is the group of ‘assigned female at birth’ that was incorrectly assigned that sex. They are male. They too may have reacted the same way as Group B. They have designated that this message is not meant for them.

There are plenty of reasons that A filters out the communication even knowing they are male.

Either way. Ignoring the message could be life threatening for group A, C and some of group B.

The group D would have read it and it is not relevant for them, but they could then be distressed about this. In the strictest framing of this sentence, it is a message using the specific terminology used for them. Their language.

Group B will contain a % of males who don’t believe the term refers to them. They have not received the message.

Group C has received the message and that is great.

But what about A?
What about the % of B?

The D group didn’t get clear messaging either.

There are solutions if this is not what I suspect. that being a virtue signalling exercise and an organisation using the term for the purposes of trans people, a much larger group than the estimated half of the 0.018% of the population. (0.009%) of those with a DSD who may be male.

Two solutions are:

1. specific message for them using very clear language so they know it is for them.

2. additive language. Using ‘Males and …’

There are potentially others.

I suspect the marketing team here is missing their objectives because they have adopted the absolutist approach that Stonewall’s Nancy Kelley has denied was their guidance and not thought further than that.

You did go the strawman route clog but I figured you might work that out for yourself.

WPATH of the eunuch fame!

@Helleofabore
As long as you can keep them civil and not give in to the ableist insults of the past. I think your interpretation of my use of ‘English’ language was rather clearly in bad faith. But hey, if you want to parse that to mean only people who have no other language difficulties, fill your boots.

I think you have me confused with someone else on “ableist insults” as I am totally and permanently disabled so that’s just not something I do.

Its quite clear to me that saying “English language difficulties” refers to difficulties with only the English language. If you’d meant “language difficulties” in the sense of cognitive difficulties with any/all languages, you would not have tacked on “English” to that clause.

As someone with cognitive language difficulties due to traumatic brain injury and post-concussion syndrome, I can assure you they do affect every language I speak/read/write and not just English. The same is true for everyone else with this sort of disability, as my Nuerorehabilitation consultant often told me as I relearned how to speak/read/write over the first year following my accident.

I don’t think my reading is in bad faith. I rather suspect you had a slip of the tongue and instead of going “oops” you’re instead doing reverse accusations that I “assumed” you meant only English when you literally wrote only English!

Id be happy to discuss matters on threads with you without insults, but as you can see you’ve asked for no insults while simultaneously insulting me twice! So that’s something to reflect on. Is that a promise that can be kept?

I think you have me confused with someone else on “ableist insults” as I am totally and permanently disabled so that’s just not something I do.

Did you or didn’t you refer to my posts on another thread as ‘demented’?

@TheClogLady
responded to Discoveread’s strawman by taking the ‘it’s just a question on a form’ argument in good faith.

You don’t know what a strawman is. It is a weak or sham argument that is easily refuted.

The “Sex —— at birth” and tick off M or F is quite literally just a question on a form. The OP saw “Sex assigned at birth” on an advert. There it is quite literally a well known ang long used phrase with the meaning of sex. That’s not an argument, but a statement of fact.

The idea that anyone reading the form or the advert will not understand “sex assigned at birth” but would understand “sex identified/observed at birth” such that the use of the word “assigned” is “dangerous” and would lead to people “not getting healthcare for a serious sex based disease” is the only strawman in the room.

Especially since it is the act of changing long used & well established phrases that causes confusion, not the continued use of them.

I honestly cannot recall. Again TBI/PCS also means most of my short term memories never get processed into long term memories. Just putting that there in case you feel like accusing me of “bad faith” again.

If I did ever say “posts of yours were demented” that’s not a personal insult directed at you, but rather at the content of your posts. You seem quite comfortable on this thread of saying actual posters are in an alternate reality.

You’ve heard of private rooms haven’t you 😉

i had a private room with my first c section….

It’s terrible language in both question and awareness communication scenarios.

it has the potential to harm far more people than it helps.

The ‘at birth’ bit is harmful for people with DSDs.

The ‘assigned’ bit is just inaccurate

(in the UK most of us know the sex of a baby by half way through the pregnancy)

but I do agree that replacing ‘assigned’ with ‘observed’ won’t do much to clear up communication issues.

Male (including transgender people recorded as male at birth, aka transwomen)

Female (including transgender people recorded as female at birth, aka transmen)

(People with DSDs are already included in male and female depending on what type of DSD they have)

I actually favour specifically targeted health comms for transgender people and plain English comms for the other 99% of the population, but that would require transgender people accurately completing forms, which lots refuse to do.

If sex and gender reassignment status are recorded accurately, transmen could theoretically be sent specific leaflets regarding smears etc. At the moment they either get no info at all or info they don’t want to read due to the sex based language used. That’s not acceptable.

Oh I see. I think I really do.

Maybe you could point to the post where I have called you living in an 'alternate reality'?

And maybe you could point to the post where I have said actual posters are in an alternate reality?