Smear appointment reminder with a Mx

[catin8oots]

Have a routine smear booked at my local surgery and just received a reminder text saying it will be with Mx Firstname Surname.

I have no idea if this person is a biological woman or a biological man.

Can I call and ask?

If a woman doesn't want to be miss or mrs then that's what Ms is for. Ms is the Mr equivalent. Mx is when you don't want to reveal your sex

Jesus! Imagine being so lacking in empathy and so unaware of the world around you, you actually typed this out and put a laughing emoji along with it!

Good for you if you don’t care. Other women do care. They’re also allowed to care and allowed to ask for single sex care, particularly for something like a smear. Ditto @Est1990

Can I ask - if you're non-binary, if a woman asks for a female nurse or doctor, do you exclude yourself?

"Do you really expect women from conservative communities to have a speculum shoved up them by a man? As it is, most women don;t go for smears or mammos, because they find them intrusive and humiliating.
Let's not deter them further by having men doing them."

Maybe I have to spell it out for you? In my scenario Keri is a W-O-M-A-N.

And yes doctors on 14 hr shifts dealing with members of the public with all kinds of ideological complaints (left wing, right wing, upside down wing, pro-Mars faction, anti polar bears faction), while being deeply passionate about improving current systems and patient wellbeing in the long run, also tend to use humour to cope day-to-day. You or @RedToothBrush getting upset about that doesn't really change anything.

We'd never laugh to our patients' faces (or at our patients even behind their back) but yes Kemi incurring such wrath and being hauled up and having a ton of apologising and paperwork to do based on her perfectly innocuous decision (common among female doctors) might indeed call for the coping mechanism of humour. That's how we stay alive, literally 😂

Please come back @catin8oots and let us know

Why wouldn’t the nhs make women aware of whether a Ms or Mr was going to do an intimidate examination on a women.
I find it very unfair putting women in a situation where they have to ask.

I think this is our future though

Don't complain because trusts have enough to worry about rather than being bothered by silly complaints from women.

Women are constantly encouraged not to complain and just suck up poor health care because 'well just be grateful you are alive'.

That's part of the reason women's health care isn't taken seriously and we've ended up with a bunch of scandals relating to women's health care.

But yep you crack on with the silencing.

Why do women have to accept this shit? It's fucking awful that on the feminist section of MN women are being discouraged from establishing issues and feedback around an intimate examination which the NHS tries to encourage all women to have and spends a fortune on trying to work out how to get women to engage.

It's almost as if there is wilful blindness to connect the dots here and spend time listening on a woman's terms rather than as part of a paid formal feedback system.

God forbid we actually value women's concerns over dignity and seek to reduce their fears in healthcare.

There's quite a number on this thread laughing at women who have concerns about smears.

Yep I'm definitely in the feminist section on MN (yes I've made a point of checking cos I had a moment of self doubt given replies).

Utterly appalling.

@RedToothBrush Bit of an overreaction, @babadumm is clearly chuckling at a hypothetical situation where a female nurse isn't fully aware of the political nature of the Mx title and has inadvertently caused chaos. Nothing to do with silencing women etc, think you've misunderstood.

Thank you :)

I mean obviously I hate my fellow women and think they're silly feeble creatures who dare to have an opinion though and couldn't care less if they die in a ditch... That's why I frequently work unpaid overtime hours and sacrifice my family and personal time to ensure maximum patient comfort and safety.

Why is this common among female doctors? Surely female doctors know that many women will want to know if the person giving them intimate medical care is female? Why add confusion, risk deterring some women completely, and cause time to be wasted as women have to check? None of the extra time taken up is the fault of women like catin8oots.

Yep, and women like me learnt centuries ago that concealing your sex behind a pseudonym or even male clothing, meant you were more likely to be taken seriously, equally, and that you could speak with authority

Interestingly I once had a long 3 year “battle” with a number of national organisations and just signed letters with no title and just “initial.Intital.surname.”
Every single organisation wrote back to Mr Surname. Without fail.

what does that tell us.?

Hell will burn over before I reveal my sex to someone I don’t know if I don’t have to. Pronouns be damned. Mx, until I meet or talk with someone then Ms

i used to play nice and was once a miss and then a Mrs. Fuck that now

Is that a reason to laugh and tell everyone not to complain because of the staff reaction?

Perhaps it's something that could be, I dunno, listened to and taken seriously as a potential problem. And then maybe ditch the titles and say that staff are single sex unless otherwise stated in correspondence.

I mean the NHS have spent a fucking fortune on bloody pronoun badges to avoid upsetting the staff.

Seems concerns and worries of patients - no matter how trivial they seem to staff - aren't worthy of respect and should be just laughed at and women told to shut the fuck up.

Sorry just no.

And yet you still have time for contempt of women on MN by laughing at them.

Mx is a gender-neutral title used in the same way as gendered titles like 'Miss' and 'Mr' Like the singular 'they', it's used for people who identify as neither male nor female, or people who simply don't want to be identified based on their gender. Just googled it x

Your situation is different and I agree wholeheartedly the default is to assume we are all men if we don’t say otherwise. I’ve had it myself working in a male orientated Industry with a shortened first name that could be either male or female.
However

When you are providing intimate care I believe it is important that the patient is made fully aware and without any doubt who will be providing that.

Prize for first idiot to compare a man to a lesbian. Clueless.

Can you quote where @babadumm told people not to complain? Because I can't see it

Are you implying sexual assaults are motivated by attraction?

They are motivated by power and the desire to harm the victim.

More than 90% of sexual assaults on women are carried out by males (gender id is irrelevant to these stats).

So a HCP being lesbian is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

If you "genuinely can't understand" I suggest you read this board. Women have explained countless times.

Yeah, why aren't the doctors working 168 hour work weeks? Why the fuck are they allowed phones and a few hours of personal downtime a week? How very fucking dare they not work themselves dead. I PAY YOUR TAXES, I TELL YOU! I AM YOUR BOSS! GROVEL!

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@RedToothBrush "But yep you crack on with the silencing" -> Btw, I also just want to say that silencing takes energy. We don't have the energy for that mate. We smile, nod, grovel in person, write written apologies, defend ourselves before panels, grovel some more.

I think, at the risk of being condescending, my fellow female colleagues and I have probably done more for female patient safety and comfort than you have ever in your entire life, and ever will in your entire life.

We've stuck our necks out with journal articles, proposals, verbal negos/showdowns, and sacrificed countless hours of personal and family time to make sure every single patient gets the maximum care they deserve.

We will take every single civil suggestion with great earnestness, but give Keri's colleagues a pass if they dare to let a little chuckle slip out from between their lips at the notion that Keri is a raging trans activist simply because she thought "oh what a nice useful title".

They're not laughing at you. That's a very egotistic viewpoint. They're laughing at the fact that shit happens and Keri is that unlucky again. They're laughing at the fact that Keri had plans to see her daughter's school play for once but now has to write out reams of paperwork and perhaps attend meetings, all because she didn't realise Mx was such a politically charged term. They may well see and share your viewpoint, and still find Keri's situation painfully funny.

What does it matter if they identify as NB?? They are still male or female!

What has a doctor or nurses work / life balance got to do with OPs dilemma

But it does matter to OP. Which is the point.

Because a smear test involves undressing, lying down and spreading my legs in front of a stranger who then inserts tools into my vagina.

And since a man once forced his penis inside me, I’d rather not have to relive this trauma every three years.

Is this clear enough for you now?

Do you understand the difference between a smear test and a C-section?

Also, for females who belong to a sizeable religious minority in the UK it is simply unimaginable that a male carries out an intimate procedure on a female. While you might want to dismiss their religious beliefs as a fantasy, why should they forgo their fantasy to validate another?

For many women it’s simply a question of comfort and modesty. Not all women feel comfortable stripping in front of a stranger who is a male, religious or not.