Male patients asked if they are pregnant at NHS Trust

[Metaphor]

I'm glad to see we finally have a thread on an important issue, <snipped rest of ludicrous whataboutism>

I'm sorry you feel the need to come in to other people's threads to explicitly tell them what they are talking about is not worth talking about.

 

[Emily Lake]

You tell us.

Should the possible discomfort of some men outweighs the potential medical benefit of universal questions in a medical setting?

Change is hard. It almost always causes some degree of discomfort on the part of everyone. Usually more for those who believe they are experiencing a disproportionate share of the discomfort. Or who are not used to experiencing any discomfort at all.

Sure, change can be hard. Change for irrational reasons in particular is really challenging. And that's where I get stuck. Not that "oh noes some mens feels might be hurt" I don't care about that.

What I do care about is actual reality. What I care about is the inadvertent message that this question sends.

Half the population is completely incapable of being pregnant. Male humans CANNOT get pregnant. Not at all, end of discussion. That's reality.

By making it a habit to ask males if they "might be pregnant" it introduces the idea that we don't know, and maybe, somehow, reproductive biology will magically alter and maybe males might start getting pregnant. It attacks and weakens an incredibly fundamental element of our reality. This isn't a social construct, this isn't a mere idea... this is how the species continues itself.

Introducing uncertainty into a process that is NOT AT ALL uncertain is completely irrational. If we allow this kind of nonsense, in a generation we're going to have gay male couples visiting the fertility clinic for treatment, because no matter how much they try, neither one of them has conceived. We're unraveling knowledge, objective knowledge about material reality.

 

[Emily Lake]

Nurse may well be thinking "Of course you're not pregnant. You're ugly and mean, nobody wants you. I wouldn't fuck you with my husband's dick."

Even if Nurse took the chance and DID fuck Mr. Smith with her husband's dick... I'm certain that Mr. Smith will not EVER get pregnant.

 

[Emily Lake]

However do the Mr. Smiths of this world live with themselves, then?

Maybe that's why they are so unhappy.

Are you being serious here? Or are you just taking an opportunity to get snippy with someone you dislike?

Because you're insinuating that a fully grown MALE person of the human species is a FOOL because HE knows that HE CANNOT GET PREGNANT because HE IS MALE.

You're likewise insinuating that the wise male is the one who somehow acknowledges that it's possible for them to get pregnant?

I mean, I get sticking to the party line and all, and I get "that tribe is evil" mentalities... but come on now. This is really getting silly.

 

[Emily Lake]

And the people wailing about it are male authoritarians who don't like change.

To be fair, there's a rather large number of liberal women who are also quite a bit pissed off by whole-ass males winning their women's sports, being lauded as the "first" or the "greatest" woman of something or other, showing up in our private spaces and showing their genitals off against our consent, and calling us "bleeders', "menstruators", "birthing bodies", "people with cervixes" and other such dehumanizing and objectifying terms.

 

[Emily Lake]

A personal question that safeguards health: are you pregnant (or may you become pregnant)?

A nonsensical question that does not: are you ("male"/"female")?

One addresses material risk.

The other has like, five or six different meanings, and likely many more depending on brain expression differentiation of "sex" by just as many variables as the rest of it, as @Toni pointed out.

This is false. I know that you prefer to live in the imaginary world where sex is some magically unknowable thing without yanking down someone's pants, and where sex has no impact on anyone's lives at all... But reality doesn't actually give a shit about your fantasy.

In medicine, sex actually affects more things that pregnancy. Pregnancy is a subset of the things that are affected by sex.

 

[Emily Lake]

If you are absolutely certain there will be no harm whatsoever? Sure. But that would necessitate a very thorough knowledge about the other person. Because if you don't know all about them, you won't know if a procedure might do harm.

If there is a risk of harm, then no, it's not better to spare people the discomfort of being asked such a question. It's better to ask everyone if they might be pregnant than take the chance a pregnant person might be overlooked. Sparing feelings isn't nearly as important as minimizing risks.

MALE HUMANS CANNOT GET PREGNANT

 

[TomC]

Half the population is completely incapable of being pregnant. Male humans CANNOT get pregnant. Not at all, end of discussion. That's reality.

Here's another possibility.
MRI technician explains that this procedure could, probably would, cause great damage to an unborn child.
Send the patient outside to fill out a form indemnifying the technician, the hospital, and the government from any possible ramifications of going forward with the procedure. Require patient to sign everything, in triplicate.
Right then, between admittance and the MRI. Not some time in the past, fill out the form right now.

Simply answering a yes or no question seems much more efficient and seems much more sensible to me.
Tom

 

[Emily Lake]

MRI technician explains that this procedure could, probably would, cause great damage to an unborn child.

That doesn't alter the fact that male humans cannot get pregnant.

 

[TomC]

Nurse may well be thinking "Of course you're not pregnant. You're ugly and mean, nobody wants you. I wouldn't fuck you with my husband's dick."

Even if Nurse took the chance and DID fuck Mr. Smith with her husband's dick... I'm certain that Mr. Smith will not EVER get pregnant.

You are more confident than I am concerning hospital staff.
No disrespect, but I know for a fact that hospital staff are fallible human beings.

My dad's heart surgery turned into a months long nightmare because it didn't occur to the staff to ask "Have you ever had varicose veins surgery?"

Simple, but crucial, question. The question wasn't asked and he spent weeks in an artificial coma due to the surgeon not realizing that the thigh veins he planned on grafting to Dad's heart just weren't there.

Yeah. I get a little testy when people try to tell me that they already know what's going on. They don't need to ask simple questions.
Tom

 

[Toni]

You tell us.

Should the possible discomfort of some men outweighs the potential medical benefit of universal questions in a medical setting?

Change is hard. It almost always causes some degree of discomfort on the part of everyone. Usually more for those who believe they are experiencing a disproportionate share of the discomfort. Or who are not used to experiencing any discomfort at all.

Sure, change can be hard. Change for irrational reasons in particular is really challenging. And that's where I get stuck. Not that "oh noes some mens feels might be hurt" I don't care about that.

What I do care about is actual reality. What I care about is the inadvertent message that this question sends.

Half the population is completely incapable of being pregnant. Male humans CANNOT get pregnant. Not at all, end of discussion. That's reality.

By making it a habit to ask males if they "might be pregnant" it introduces the idea that we don't know, and maybe, somehow, reproductive biology will magically alter and maybe males might start getting pregnant. It attacks and weakens an incredibly fundamental element of our reality. This isn't a social construct, this isn't a mere idea... this is how the species continues itself.

Introducing uncertainty into a process that is NOT AT ALL uncertain is completely irrational. If we allow this kind of nonsense, in a generation we're going to have gay male couples visiting the fertility clinic for treatment, because no matter how much they try, neither one of them has conceived. We're unraveling knowledge, objective knowledge about material reality.

You really don’t get it: people in radiology don’t necessarily read an entire chart. They do ask a set of questions. It is not always obvious who is male and who is female. A few individuals are intersex and don’t neatly fit into either category. A trans man may or may not have retained their uterus. They may or may not think of themselves as medically male or medically female. A trans woman may or may not think of themselves as medically male. Or they may. But the real issue from a radiologists’ POV is whether or not a patient may be or may intend to become pregnant.

Answering or not you are or might be pregnant will crystallize this salient issue for every single patient.

 

[TomC]

MRI technician explains that this procedure could, probably would, cause great damage to an unborn child.

That doesn't alter the fact that male humans cannot get pregnant.

Do you believe everything you read on a piece of paper?
Tom

 

[Arctish]

If you are absolutely certain there will be no harm whatsoever? Sure. But that would necessitate a very thorough knowledge about the other person. Because if you don't know all about them, you won't know if a procedure might do harm.

If there is a risk of harm, then no, it's not better to spare people the discomfort of being asked such a question. It's better to ask everyone if they might be pregnant than take the chance a pregnant person might be overlooked. Sparing feelings isn't nearly as important as minimizing risks.

MALE HUMANS CANNOT GET PREGNANT

HOW DO YOU KNOW THEY ARE MALES?

You need to have very thorough knowledge about the other person before you can be certain they can't get pregnant.

Remember Hayley Haynes, the individual with XY chromosomes, androgen insensitivity, and no gonads, who managed to grow a uterus and give birth to twins after getting a shit ton of hormone therapy? A lot of people would have called her female before they knew about her Y chromosome, and male after they found out, but then decided she must be female despite her chromosomes when she got pregnant. Would it have been okay to ask her if she thought she was pregnant before she grew a uterus?

Sexism aside, what is the problem here? I don't go out of my way to hurt the feelings of men but I think it's stupid to have 'blue for boys' and 'pink for girls' medical forms to avoid making men feel like their masculinity is being demeaned by making them answer the same questions women are asked. A standard form to cover all known complicating factors is much simpler and more efficient, therefore IMO it's preferable.

 

[Metaphor]

Remember Hayley Haynes, the individual with XY chromosomes, androgen insensitivity, and no gonads, who managed to grow a uterus and give birth to twins after getting a shit ton of hormone therapy? A lot of people would have called her female before they knew about her Y chromosome, and male after they found out, but then decided she must be female despite her chromosomes when she got pregnant. Would it have been okay to ask her if she thought she was pregnant before she grew a uterus?

I imagine since Haynes's sex marker would have been 'F' with nobody any wiser, yes, it would be 'okay' to ask her.

I have a real question for you: do you think this policy arose from some mix up with somebody with a difference of sexual development (DSD)?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My SIL is repeatedly thought male. You're saying a nurse will never do what many other women have???

Does your sister in law tell medical providers she is male?

I am suggesting that you have no evidence that any female was ever missed by the previous NHS Trust policy, and I am not suggesting that anybody's sex should be assumed from how they appear.

The point that you continue to ignore is the nurse clearly made a decision about my wife based on looks, not the chart. If the mistake can be made that someone whose chart clearly shows them to be non-fertile gets asked for a pregnancy test because they look like a reproductive age female, then someone who doesn't look like a reproductive age female can be missed.

Rational policy is informed by evidence.

You can learn from close calls. For a good model of how to handle safety look to aviation. They have gotten serious about commercial aviation safety. They pay attention to the lessons of accidents, they pay attention to the lessons of close calls. They pay attention to not burying the pilot in warnings so they miss the one real one amongst 1,000 spurious warnings. For the most part they pay attention to sleep requirements. (The system does not correctly handle the case where pilots deadhead somewhere after their time on duty, though.)

 

[Arctish]

Remember Hayley Haynes, the individual with XY chromosomes, androgen insensitivity, and no gonads, who managed to grow a uterus and give birth to twins after getting a shit ton of hormone therapy? A lot of people would have called her female before they knew about her Y chromosome, and male after they found out, but then decided she must be female despite her chromosomes when she got pregnant. Would it have been okay to ask her if she thought she was pregnant before she grew a uterus?

I imagine since Haynes's sex marker would have been 'F' with nobody any wiser, yes, it would be 'okay' to ask her.

I have a real question for you: do you think this policy arose from some mix up with somebody with a difference of sexual development (DSD)?

I think it's more likely this policy arose from someone who was pregnant being exposed to something that could harm a fetus, and hospital administrators asking themselves "how can we ensure this doesn't happen again", in conjunction with a law changing the sex specific word "female" to the broader term "individuals" so that its provisions applied more broadly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are assuming all male patients would suffer ‘discomfort’ if asked the same questions all female patients are asked.’ Sure not all make patients are fragile or assholes or so insecure in their masculinity that they are offended.

At least I don’t think so ill of males. Maybe you do…..

Exactly. Once it becomes widely known that everyone is asked why would anybody but a Karen be offended?

I'm reminded of a bit of a flap that came up on here back when Saddam was captured. Some non-US based people felt he was being seriously disrespected in a photo where the medical people were wearing gloves. It did not have that effect on US-based people because we know that it's standard medical practice here to use gloves when entering the body in any fashion whatsoever, even if there is not actually going to be contact (sticking a needle in.)

 

[Metaphor]

The point that you continue to ignore is the nurse clearly made a decision about my wife based on looks, not the chart. If the mistake can be made that someone whose chart clearly shows them to be non-fertile gets asked for a pregnancy test because they look like a reproductive age female, then someone who doesn't look like a reproductive age female can be missed.

And I'm telling you, as I've already said multiple times, there is no evidence that there was some deficiency in the NHS Trust previous practice. None. No evidence that the policy was that sex was done by 'sight' instead of patient record, or that the practice had deviated from the policy.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Thanks for the non-answer. Should the feelings of men who feel embarrassed or concerned about being asked if they are pregnant count?

I'm regularly asked at my doctor's office about my sex life. The question makes me uncomfortable but I don't create a bitchfest about it on the internet.

I think we can all agree that Ziprhead's sex life makes us all uneasy.

Yeah, what is he??

Zippers go on jackets, pants, dresses and gaiters, not heads!

 

[ZiprHead]

I'm not tellin'.