NHS update on recording patient sex and gender identity

[Whatchamacallitt]

For a long time sex has been erased and replaced with gender identity. Trans-identified people actually lose out the most with this. There have been cases of trans-identified women having heart attacks, pregnancy emergencies, and kidney failure missed due to clinicians relying on normal male test ranges or presumed male sex. There have been issues for trans-identified men too but unsurprisingly it is the women who have suffered the most due to these policies.

Fortunately the NHS Core Information Standard has been updated to make 'sex at birth' a mandatory data item, with the option to record gender identity separately for patients who feel they have one.

(I don't personally believe in gender identity but recognise it is a genuinely held belief for many trans-identified people and also that it could be helpful information in the context of an altered body due to medicalisation.)

It affects other people too, not just them. They are going to have to stop placing men in women’s wards etc eventually, so they can’t be facilitated to pretend they are the opposite sex, can they? Like it or not your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins.

As Alice Sullivan says in her review “The analysis shows that many NHS systems have
appropriated data fields and variables intended for use
as sex markers as gender identity markers. As shown in part 8.2, this loss of data on sex can also be seen
in statutory reporting and monitoring by healthcare
services using administrative data.”

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67d98b8a4ba412c67701ed92/review-of-data-statistics-research-on-sex-and-gender.pdf

It's fascinating to see the "sex is a special category data" demand being played out on this thread.
Tbh, if transactivists want to self harm by concealing their sex, crack on. Self determination and all that.But as their demands always include causing harm to others (in this case by influencing essential healthcare data capture) the rest of us have to speak out. I also feel for all the mentally vulnerable young people who've been caught up in all this and know that society shouldn't stand back and watch the self harm. We've been doing that for too long.

If the only objection is that people don’t want their sensitive data recorded, that objection can be ignored when making policy?
Is this a principle you apply generally? For example, would you also say that objections to mandatory recording of someone’s religion, HIV status, sexual orientation or mental health history can be ‘safely discarded’ if the only objection is that the individual doesn’t want that information recorded? Or is this reasoning specific to trans people’s privacy?

Well let's face it trans people do make some bloody silly decisions.Whoever thought getting their healthy boobs or willies cut off, or cutting flesh from their thigh rolling it into a tube and attaching it to their groin, was a sensible thing to do?

Even the transwomen I knew back in the day admitted surgery made no sense. They just wanted it anyway.

And how paternalistic would you have to be to agree to do that to someone else? Leaving aside any financial motivations, you're either playing God and doing something you wouldn't ever want done to yourself, or using someone else's body to validate your own irrational decision. Very paternalistic either way.

All those more sensitive things re health status, beliefs, sexual orientation are special category data, and have a higher protection in law than simply what sex a person is. The Supreme Court has ruled on the definition of sex as an equality legislation protected characteristic, and “trans women” have been clarified as men and vice versa. It’s important that PC monitoring data is accurate. And it’s important that biological males are not mistakenly placed in female only spaces and vice versa.

Guess what? Our health records are filled the brim with personal, sensitive and confidential information that we don't have personal control over. Patients can't get diagnoses and notes erased, though if they have objections they can be put on file. Why should sex be any different?

Well let's face it trans people do make some bloody silly decisions

I suppose that answers my question then? In your view, yes it applies specifically only to trans people's privacy because, in your view, "trans people do make some bloody silly decisions".

The fact is, the NHS needs to know patients sex to function.

ideology has to meet reality at some point.

I wasn't commenting on privacy in that post, only paternalism.

Sex is not sensitive data. So your comparisons don't stand.

Also: it's not about trans people. It's about everyone and anyone needing to have their sex recorded in their medical files. If trans people choose to make this a problem for themselves, well, it's on them, isn't it?

I’m guessing you’re not very bright and don’t understand what paternalism means.

I remember a story on the BBC news in the 90's about a girl who at birth was not thought to survive and had a DSD so which made it hard to tell and so boy was put on the birth certificate. Later, more testing showed she was a girl. I'm sure the story was highlighting the new change on birth certificates from observed to assigned to accommodate her and others like her.

Nobody could have thought back then that it would be abused so ridiculously nearly 30 years later.