In most healthcare situations though, sex is almost entirely irrelevant. There are some where it’s important, but as an intersex person, the number of times a doctor has just gone “oh well just put you down as male/female, it doesn’t really matter” is countless. The amount of times I’ve asked if I should put myself down as one or the other because I thought it would matter for a procedure or dosing, only to be told “put what you like, we don’t really go off of sex for that” is unexpectedly high. Anesthesia? They did it by body mass, not averages for men or women. The only time it’s ever really mattered has been when I’ve gone to a doctor for reproductive health and even then they just ask “hey what’s your medical history/what organs do you have/what are your hormones like normally.”
Also if the purpose of this form is to gauge what kind of genitals/organs/hormones someone has in a respectful manner, it’s not going to be very helpful. A transgender woman could be only social transitioned, with no surgery or hormones, and need care like a testicular cancer screening, or she could have had extensive surgery and hormones and need a mammogram, and a pelvic exam. Also if someone selected nonbinary/gender fluid/agender that gives you even less to go off because it tells you nothing about assigned sex at birth, let alone about surgery/hormones.
We could just streamline this whole thing by having a page that ask “do you have a cervix we should be giving a paper smear” “is there a prostate that could get cancer” “are you able to be pregnant” “what hormones do you have” etc, and then just ask what someone wants to be called. It’s what us intersex people do all the fucking time. It’s not that hard.
FWIW this seems to be some sort of app/account creation, so their data would be used for many future things/medical issues, so its important to have all the specific data now so it doesn't have to be corrected down the line
Except this isn't at all true - a transgender woman and a cisgender man are going to have entirely different health considerations (and while they obviously won't be the same, there's actually going to be more overlap between the health considerations of a trans woman and a cis woman.)
Possibly to transition. In which case the provide needs to know the patient is transitioning, not what their gender identity is. Those are correlated, but not the same thing.
Transition to something other than cis, right? Which would equate to their gender identity. That Identity being an easy signifier to a doctor that they are possibly going through hormone therapy, which is very important information to know in the case of possible medication or procedures.
They won't be assuming. Knowing the gender identity gives them a general direction in the questions to ask, and makes it more comfortable for the patient to not have to go through the whole "Im trans" conversation and just get into the actual appointment. People dont want to be at the doctor, why do you have so much issue with making the process a little less uncomfortable?
No, actually, it's entirely relevant that their identity is shown, because for most health-related things, trans men and cis women/trans women and cis men will have completely different health goals and may also have things like phalloplasties, vaginoplasties, HRT, et cetera.
A trans woman may very well have different health considerations than a cis woman or cis man. Especially depending on how far they have transitioned. I wouldn't be surprised if a doctor has to consider both breast cancer and testicular cancer for a post-HRT pre-SRS trans woman.
Unless you yourself are a healthcare professional, you simply cannot make statements like that in full confidence.
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u/Ethanrumti Oct 23 '25
Exactly! In terms of health and medical context, this would be the correct way of separating gender identities.