“but your doctor needs to know what genitals you have or were born with!”
I agree, and I think this supports the ousting of the female/male dynamic.
The only people who need to know about your genitals is your doctor (and your partners that you’re sexually involved with), this is done through conversation and discussion. There is no need to have the F/M distinguishers on paperwork, IDs and the like.
“how will doctors know???”
By doing their jobs and talking to you, by doing their jobs and running tests. It’d change nothing.
This concept that “you’re a woman but biologically male!” is so convoluted that its disgusting. “Female” denotes woman and “male” denotes a man. These two terms are so heavily gendered that there’s nothing truly “scientific” about it, and this split of gender and biological sex only is out to support a misgendering view of trans bodies.
There’s no reason a trans woman can’t put a F on her medical forms. It’s arbitrary information and doing anything else only serves to publicly “out” her to possible hostile environments and people.
A doctor that paid attention in school will know what a penis is, they will be able recognize a post genital surgery by looking at such; and if a doctor can’t distinguish that without some arbitrary letter on a paper, then they need to go back to school.
There is no logical reason to be calling trans women male. To do so is transphobic.
And more to the point, modern medicine acknowledges that chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, hormonal sex, morphological sex, and behavioral sex (extensive overlap with but not the same as gender and/or gender role) are different and need to be considered differently under different circumstances. No one thing is biological sex.
If we are evaluating you for something where (say) your chromosomal sex (XX, XY, XO, XXY, etc.) matters, we can ask that question *specifically.* Same goes for estrogen-progestin dominant vs testosterone-dominant, Mullerian vs Wolffian duct derivatives, Sertoli and Leydig cells vs ovarian tissue, gender, and so on. Saying “male” or “female” is a heuristic that may cover most people, but FAR from most configurations and is inadequately specific for issues where “biological sex” is relevant.
There is no reason to call your trans women patients male. Like, ever. It’s transphobic, and it’s bad medicine.
And further to the point (and the below holds true for various biological sex markers, eg hormonal profile, not just “sex behavior,” e.g., the range of normal clitoral sizes is greater than the difference in size between the average clitoris and average penis):
(Nelson, R. (2005). An introduction to behavioral endocrinology (3rd ed.). Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates.)
See also: examining someone’s bits doesn’t a man or a woman make.
This was incredibly detailed and a great addition!
