Male patients asked if they are pregnant at NHS Trust

[Emily Lake]

Respect for their personhood and basic civility trumps any interest I have in the sex or gender issues of my neighbor.

Does their personhood and basic civility also trump your interest in their sex when it's a transman insisting that you're a bigoted transphobe because you refuse to stick your penis in "his" vagina? Is there a pragmatic limit to how far their personal identity should extend?

 

[Emily Lake]

View attachment 37945

That's all well and good... but it is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. CCSDs have nothing at all to do with transgender stuff. Don't use the deleterious medical conditions of an unrelated group of people as a pawn for your political ideology. It's incredibly disrespectful.

 

[Toni]

Is it? Or is it a reflection of the reality that trans men may not identify themselves as trans at medical appointments abs may indeed be pregnant or plan to get pregnant?

You know what, you're right. You are absolultey correct.

TRANSMEN DO NOT IDENTIFY THEMSELVES AS FEMALE IN SITUATIONS WHERE THEIR SEX IS RELEVANT.

And as a result... a bunch of people who are NOT trans, are now being subjected to inane questions just so that the few transmen who aren't smart enough to say "oh by the way, I've got a fully functional uterus, and that might be important for you to know" don't have be reminded that they're actually females. And also so that the few transwomen who really need the entire rest of the world to validate their view of themselves don't get upset that the doctor accurately and appropriately views them as males who cannot get fucking pregnant.

So yeah - you're right. Everyone else has to drop common sense off of a cliff because of a handful of people who aren't smart enough to provide necessary information to their doctors.

FFS, not every doctor is going to ask if I'm epileptic. Guess what I tell every single fucking doctor I deal with, even if I think it's probably irrelevant? "Hey doc, I'm epileptic, thought you ought to know, just in case it makes a difference". I, as a rational and intelligent and caring person, think it would be wildly presumptuous and arrogant of me to expect the entire medical field to start asking every single patient whether or not they're epileptic, just so I don't have to be burdened with taking responsibility for myself.

I've known and even been related to a number of medically unsophisticated individuals who withhold information from medical professionals because they don't think about it as important, because they forget (which chance increases dramatically if one is seriously ill!!!) and in a couple of cases because they thought it was the doctor's job to figure it out!!!!! I went to a number of my husband's medical appointments when he was unwell because he was unwell enough that he was not necessarily answering important questions correctly: Do you have a history of asthma? No. YES YOU DO! YOU ALMOST DIED WHEN YOU WERE A KID BECAUSE OF AN ASTHMA ATTACK!!!!

I get asked questions all the time that are not relevant to me, were never relevant, could never be relevant. So what?

Change is really really really hard sometimes. I sometimes struggle with some of this myself. But my discomfort with change does not trump other people's medical needs. And neither does yours.

 

[Tigers!]

Males and men aren't the same thing.

I totally understand that for most of human history they were. And now, they nearly always are.

But males and men aren't the same thing, in the here and now.
Tom

What is the term for an adult male of the bovine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the equine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the human species?

What is your point in this thread, discussing humans?

FWIW, with regards to the the first two, are you talking castrated males or unaltered males?

So glad you mentioned about the horses Emily. It is a good question - does the removal of certain parts change the creature's essence? Some on these fora would have to conclude that that castrated male horse is now a female.

 

[Emily Lake]

There was a case of a six year old mother. And Wikipedia lists two more than gave birth at age six.

All with precocious puberty, which a doctor would have noticed.

A normal six year would not be pregnant, and it's actually quite silly to assume that one needs to ask a normal six year old girl. Let alone a normal six year old *boy*

 

[Emily Lake]

Males and men aren't the same thing.

I totally understand that for most of human history they were. And now, they nearly always are.

But males and men aren't the same thing, in the here and now.
Tom

What is the term for an adult male of the bovine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the equine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the human species?

What is your point in this thread, discussing humans?

FWIW, with regards to the the first two, are you talking castrated males or unaltered males?

Come on now. Are you genuinely going to pretend that you don't get the point?

With regards to the first two, take your pick. But please also respond to the third question.

 

[Emily Lake]

How often do you think that in radiology, they will draw blood on an unconscious patient in order to determine male/female?

How often do you think that in radiology they will ask a person whether they might be pregnant if they're unconscious?

BTW, male/female is NOT always accurate by blood test. It's not on/off, black/white 100% of the time. I know it's a really long pair of posts but upthread, I posted some variations on so called biological sex.

Yeah, no, you posted a twitter screed by someone who *claims* to be a biology teacher, who is busy conflating a whole bunch of things that ACTUAL biologists would reject as entirely fallacious and unscientific reasoning.

Sex is defined based on the type of gamete around which your reproductive anatomy is arranged. That does not require you to actually produce those gametes, nor does it require that every single element of that anatomy be present, nor does it require that your phenotype is typical for your sex, nor does it require that your karyotype is typical for your sex.

This holds true for the human species, as well as for EVERY OTHER mammal on the entire planet. It holds true for the overwhelming majority of vertebrates. It EVEN holds true for those very few species that actually CAN change sex, such as clownfish. When a clownfish's anatomy is arranged around the production of small mobile gametes, they are male. When they change and their anatomy is arranged around the production of large sessile gametes, they are female.

Furthermore, you are appealing to the existence of people with deleterious medical conditions related to their sexual development... as if it has anything at all to do with transgender identities. It has NOTHING to do with transgender identities. It is entirely and completely irrelevant to this topic.

 

[Emily Lake]

Why must those who do not fit into neat little categories be compelled to be ignored and rendered invisible in order to make the rest of us feel more comfortable when their health and life are at stake?

This is an absurdity and a strawman. You're trying to leverage an emotional appeal to "OMG they'll DIE" even though not a single person is being asked to be "invisible" or to be "ignored".

 

[Emily Lake]

Protecting the health and well being of those who are not gender conforming is 'no good reason?'

Do you think that people who are gender nonconforming are stupid, or mentally disabled? Are they incapable of speaking up when it is relevant and telling a doctor what their SEX is, knowing that it's not apparent and is relevant?

 

[Emily Lake]

Beatie is female.

Beatie is nonetheless a man.

Uh huh. And a sexually mature female equine who is aggressive is a stallion too. You're redefining "man" to mean something completely different from what it has historically meant... and then you're forcibly applying your definition retroactively to supplant sex.

Seriously, there is not a single human on the planet that actually, genuinely, truly believes that men can get pregnant and give birth. Because men are males, and males cannot get pregnant.

There are, however, some people who are so invested in the religion of gender identity that they are willing to *pretend* that humans are seahorses, and that some males have cervixes, and that cutting off one's breasts and taking exogenous hormones turns a female human being into a stallion.

 

[Emily Lake]

Man, every thread "expose their penises" is brought up by you. Makes it sound like you are saying transgender are perverts when you use the word "expose". Conservatives seem to have this issue with not understanding an individual's rights aren't an affront to their individual rights.

Emily Lake wants a world where people have to abide by what she wants, regardless how prude it might be.

As opposed to the one you want, in which Darren Menager and Lia Thomas are ENTITLED to walk around sex-separated nude spaces with their dicks a-dangling, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes all of the women there.

Because it's much more important to you that some males get to have their feelings validated than for women to actually have reasonable boundaries and dignity.

 

[TomC]

Males and men aren't the same thing.

I totally understand that for most of human history they were. And now, they nearly always are.

But males and men aren't the same thing, in the here and now.
Tom

What is the term for an adult male of the bovine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the equine species?
What is the term for an adult male of the human species?

What is your point in this thread, discussing humans?

FWIW, with regards to the the first two, are you talking castrated males or unaltered males?

So glad you mentioned about the horses Emily. It is a good question - does the removal of certain parts change the creature's essence? Some on these fora would have to conclude that that castrated male horse is now a female.

Can you name someone on these fora you believe incapable of distinguishing between humans and livestock?
Either of you?

Because I cannot.
Frankly, I don't think y'all can either. I know my dogs don't care. I can misgender them all I want. They don't care as long as they get their share of a slice of cheese. It's only humans who care about social niceties like gendered pronouns and such.
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

In your opinion, what is the best, most reasonable solution for young trans girls and women, say, in a school locker room? I'm talking about pre-surgical trans people, those who have not and may never decide to have their male genitalia replaced by female genitalia.

In the boy's locker room, many would face a great deal of stress and perhaps even physical and emotional violence. In the girls' locker room, they may (or may not!) make some or all of the girls uncomfortable.

Right here, you demonstrate the problem. You are placing the emotional comfort and potential physical safety of one young male ABOVE the emotional comfort and potential physical safety of several young females. In your quest to be kind, your solution results in many people being kind to one young male, by being unkind to a great many young females.

Why do you value the emotions of this young male more than the dignity and safety of the several young females?

Furthermore... What the holy hell is wrong with allowing this one young male to use a staff room or make some other arrangement so they can change in privacy? Why is the only allowable solution to force all of the girls to be uncomfortable for his sake?

I realize you are concerned about the passingly tiny portion of trans individuals who intend to harm girls or women or those who you believe are only claiming to be trans in order to gain better access to their victims. I think everyone here is aware that there are male and female, cis and trans, individuals who do intend violence, be it physical, emotional or sexual, violence against other people. This is NOT confined to males only or cis males or trans females or any subset of individuals along the male/female continuum.

I'm concerned about the "passingly small" portion of MALES who sexually assault and abuse females. And you can play the "oh some women do it too" game... but at the end of the day, 99% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by males. Even those males who are *victims* have a 99.9% chance of having been assaulted by another male.

Pretending that sexual assaults and domestic violence and similar crimes are somehow "the same" among both men and women hampers efforts to reduce the amount of sexual assaults and sex-based violence that women are subjected to.

Some parents are horrified at the idea that a gay or lesbian child might have designs on their perfectly straight child and seek to bar LGBTQ people from their kids' presence. Are you in favor of barring gay and lesbian students from locker rooms with others of their sex/gender? Surely we all know that some tiny subset of these people DO have 'designs' on the straight students but that's passingly rare, don't you think?

Why on earth would I bar a female from a female locker room? Why would I bar a male from a male locker room? Are you somehow under the impression that butch lesbians show male pattern violence? Do you think that the propensity toward sexual aggression is driven by haircuts and clothing?

 

[Toni]

Beatie is female.

Beatie is nonetheless a man.

Uh huh. And a sexually mature female equine who is aggressive is a stallion too. You're redefining "man" to mean something completely different from what it has historically meant... and then you're forcibly applying your definition retroactively to supplant sex.

Seriously, there is not a single human on the planet that actually, genuinely, truly believes that men can get pregnant and give birth. Because men are males, and males cannot get pregnant.

There are, however, some people who are so invested in the religion of gender identity that they are willing to *pretend* that humans are seahorses, and that some males have cervixes, and that cutting off one's breasts and taking exogenous hormones turns a female human being into a stallion.

I'm separating gender from sex.

Man--and woman--are gendered terms that are also socially loaded in many respects in the English language.

Man up! What kind of man are you? Are you a man or a mouse? Loose woman! Lady! Ladies don't do that sort of thing! Women need to keep to their places! Men cannot run a house! Women cannot run a business! Sissy pants! Swish! Bull dyke.

Bull shit.

History is filled with persons who were born (or assumed) female at birth but who lived their lives as men--either to obtain an education, to obtain some control over their lives or to serve in military positions or other positions denied women and I'm certain many other reasons that are not leaping to mind now. Some were only discovered upon their death and some of those were still honored and buried as men. Same is true for men who lived as women--some were born or assumed from birth to be male but later lived their lives as females. Some were castrated to serve particular purposes, not necessarily consenting.

Some individuals are born with ambiguous genitalia. Some are born with both male and female sex organs. Some apparently female children have testes instead of ovaries and this is not discovered until they are well into adolescence and have not begun to menstruate.

None of this is anyone's business but their own--and their medical providers and any person with whom they decide to share that information.

There is more than one man who has given birth. I mentioned a famous example upthread but nonetheless, there are many individuals today who were assumed to be female at birth, were raised to be female, who may or may not be genetically, chromosomally, hormonally or cellularly female but who nonetheless now are male in nearly every way that matters and in every way that ought to matter outside of some medical appointments and procedures.

 

[Toni]

In your opinion, what is the best, most reasonable solution for young trans girls and women, say, in a school locker room? I'm talking about pre-surgical trans people, those who have not and may never decide to have their male genitalia replaced by female genitalia.

In the boy's locker room, many would face a great deal of stress and perhaps even physical and emotional violence. In the girls' locker room, they may (or may not!) make some or all of the girls uncomfortable.

Right here, you demonstrate the problem. You are placing the emotional comfort and potential physical safety of one young male ABOVE the emotional comfort and potential physical safety of several young females. In your quest to be kind, your solution results in many people being kind to one young male, by being unkind to a great many young females.

Why do you value the emotions of this young male more than the dignity and safety of the several young females?

Furthermore... What the holy hell is wrong with allowing this one young male to use a staff room or make some other arrangement so they can change in privacy? Why is the only allowable solution to force all of the girls to be uncomfortable for his sake?

I realize you are concerned about the passingly tiny portion of trans individuals who intend to harm girls or women or those who you believe are only claiming to be trans in order to gain better access to their victims. I think everyone here is aware that there are male and female, cis and trans, individuals who do intend violence, be it physical, emotional or sexual, violence against other people. This is NOT confined to males only or cis males or trans females or any subset of individuals along the male/female continuum.

I'm concerned about the "passingly small" portion of MALES who sexually assault and abuse females. And you can play the "oh some women do it too" game... but at the end of the day, 99% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by males. Even those males who are *victims* have a 99.9% chance of having been assaulted by another male.

Pretending that sexual assaults and domestic violence and similar crimes are somehow "the same" among both men and women hampers efforts to reduce the amount of sexual assaults and sex-based violence that women are subjected to.

Some parents are horrified at the idea that a gay or lesbian child might have designs on their perfectly straight child and seek to bar LGBTQ people from their kids' presence. Are you in favor of barring gay and lesbian students from locker rooms with others of their sex/gender? Surely we all know that some tiny subset of these people DO have 'designs' on the straight students but that's passingly rare, don't you think?

Why on earth would I bar a female from a female locker room? Why would I bar a male from a male locker room? Are you somehow under the impression that butch lesbians show male pattern violence? Do you think that the propensity toward sexual aggression is driven by haircuts and clothing?

No one, male or female, should be subjected to sexual abuse by any person.

Female sexual assault upon other females and upon males is under reported and is often made the butt of some very ugly jokes.

 

[Emily Lake]

I'm separating gender from sex.

I know you are. But you're also robbing a commonly used, commonly understood word of all meaning and replacing it with a word devoid of meaning.

Man--and woman--are gendered terms that are also socially loaded in many respects in the English language.

Man up! What kind of man are you? Are you a man or a mouse? Loose woman! Lady! Ladies don't do that sort of thing! Women need to keep to their places! Men cannot run a house! Women cannot run a business! Sissy pants! Swish! Bull dyke.

Bull shit.

I agree that all of those social trappings are bullshit. I want to destroy all of those social barriers and expectations.

But I don't think that making it impossible for people to talk about material reality in coherent ways is going to do that. Nor do I think that forcibly separating the word for an adult human female from sex is effective. What we're left with right now is actually reinforcing and entrenching those social roles. We've moved so far down the rabbit hole that people who are gender non-conforming are being educated and convinced that they are actually the opposite sex, and are in the wrong body. And instead of them simply embracing their non-conformity, they are undergoing unnecessary surgeries and chemically damaging their bodies in order to cosmetically alter themselves to try to conform with the stereotype they think they should belong to.

If Grace Jones were at the height of her career nowadays, she'd be cutting off her breasts and growing a beard instead of being the icon that she is. The entire reason for her being an icon would be lost.

 

[Emily Lake]

No one, male or female, should be subjected to sexual abuse by any person.

Female sexual assault upon other females and upon males is under reported and is often made the butt of some very ugly jokes.

I see. You're just going to go ahead and insist that there's some sort of parity involved. Okay then. Nothing can really be said to change the mind of true believers.

 

[Toni]

No one, male or female, should be subjected to sexual abuse by any person.

Female sexual assault upon other females and upon males is under reported and is often made the butt of some very ugly jokes.

I see. You're just going to go ahead and insist that there's some sort of parity involved. Okay then. Nothing can really be said to change the mind of true believers.

Parity???

WTF. It is delusional and disingenuous to pretend that women—biological women according to your standards—are never sexually violent towards other women, men and children. Yes, it is dramatically less common than by male ( by your definition) aggressors.

It’s also less well reported. Surely you are not going to pretend that there is not tremendous pressure on men to just admit they wanted it.

 

[Arctish]

I have to show ID when I buy wine at the grocery store, and it's a pretty good bet I'm older than you.

It's nothing personal, so why should I take it personally?

Let's try a slightly different approach. Let's say the rules previously had been "ask anyone who looks like they could be under 30 for an ID" and that worked pretty well, and you were 65.

In the last few years, however, there's been a large increase in the number of people self-declaring themselves to be transage, who identify as 35, even though they're actually 18. Some of those people will put on stage make-up, and will dye their hair gray so they look a bit more like a pensioner. They frequently wear cardigans and shawls. They also get really huffy when they're asked for ID, because even though everyone else is quite well aware that they're only 18, they have convinced themselves that their transage identity is more important than their actual age, and that it's offensive to ask them for ID. There's also another group of transage people who are actually 60, but identify as 22. They get botox and facelifts and wear mini skirts and skinny jeans. They get really angry when they're NOT asked for their IDs, because it invalidates their transage identity of being a young person.

These transage people have a tendency to harass individuals and businesses that don't affirm their transage identities. So in a fit of expediency, politicians decide to change the rules and now EVERYBODY has to show Id ALL THE TIME just so that this small group of people will shut the fuck up about their identities. So now, you, who hasn't had to show ID in a few decades, are now required to answer an inane question that is an affront to common sense... because someone somewhere decided it's more important to play along with the transage identities of the squeaky wheels than it is to treat everyone else with some basic sense and decency.

The rule used to be "ask anyone who looks like they could be under the legal age to buy alcohol for their ID in order to check their date of birth". The problem was twofold:

1. 'transage' individuals were claiming to have reached the legal age even though they hadn't lived long enough to qualify, and they had a tendency to harass individuals and businesses that wouldn't affirm their 'transage' identities despite there being legal consequences for selling alcohol to minors.

2. people complained about discriminatory treatment when some young looking individuals were allowed to buy alcohol, no questions asked, while others had to present ID.

Simple solution: everyone gets treated the same. Everyone has to show IDs to the clerk, waitperson, bartender, or business owner in order to purchase alcoholic beverages.

WRT this thread, I really don't see the problem with medical forms that ask everyone the same set of questions. Sure, the manly men will get huffy about their masculinity being disrespected but wounded pride aside, what's the harm here? IMO the benefit of making sure important details aren't overlooked and complicating factors aren't assumed to be absent outweighs whatever benefit might be derived from guessing about the sex characteristics of patients about to undergo potentially harmful procedures.

I was serious about this conflict getting worse as Western societies continue to adopt more sex- and gender-neutral policies.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There was a case of a six year old mother. And Wikipedia lists two more than gave birth at age six.

All with precocious puberty, which a doctor would have noticed.

A normal six year would not be pregnant, and it's actually quite silly to assume that one needs to ask a normal six year old girl. Let alone a normal six year old *boy*

It is possible to conceive on one's first cycle and thus never have menstruated.