Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth.
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@dalias @x0 @Zumbador @Willow I think it's both. I've had at least one experience where the doctor saw the M on my chart, took me seriously, learned I have a uterus, and immediately ceased to take me seriously. It was night and day, and it was astonishing being able to view his behavior from both a male and a female perspective. Any cis men reading along, if you think a (male and assumed cis) doctor is great and really listens, ask a woman how he acts without you in the room!
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow i hadn't considered this would help, but makes sense!
And mischief for a good reason is always nice
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow I may do this when I have spoons for it. Because it isn't just about trans people; it's about privacy, it's about sexism (being cis female, I've had my share of that), it's about "why the heck do you need to know?"
Just fighting back against this surveilance society, it is worth doing. -
Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow Boring cishetero, been doing that forever. It's just private fucking information and I get genuinely angry at being asked. Happy to hear it helps.
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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
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@Willow Boring cishetero, been doing that forever. It's just private fucking information and I get genuinely angry at being asked. Happy to hear it helps.
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow "If you have nothing to hide, you're doing it wrong and you're a bad comrade" is a take I am fucking living for.
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow I actually used to do this on forms and stuff all the way from high school through uni - I would just check the field with "prefer not to say" or some variation thereupon.
This was all before I realized I was NB
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow I’ve been responding “prefer not to answer” to gender and other “demographic” questions for a decade or more now. It will be simple enough to lodge complaints too.
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow I've been doing this for years. Isn't anyone's business. Glad that it helps.
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow As a middle-aged white lady I'm in my prime Karen era. I should use this power for good!
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow Did that with university registration new question this year. Got them to add a "prefer not to say" option (which I took) and make the question not assume various things like intersex people not existing (forcing 2% of students to lie). I was genuinely furious.
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In some social contextes it may be asked for statistical causes. It is, for example, quite important to find out if some service is largely used by one sex/gender when in theory the usage should be equal for the whole population.
Tbs, many forms ask data just for funsies and/or for the newsletter-greeting (and ofc you HAVE to subscribe to it).
Can't understand if they want to start the newsletter with preferred name, they won't also ask preferred title?
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My very straight and cis partner did this at work. In the end, a huge international company ended up removing the gender question from a commonly used questionnaire because they were right: It made no difference whatsoever.
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@Willow I may do this when I have spoons for it. Because it isn't just about trans people; it's about privacy, it's about sexism (being cis female, I've had my share of that), it's about "why the heck do you need to know?"
Just fighting back against this surveilance society, it is worth doing.@kerravonsen @Willow If they have a research need for it then I want to see their ethics approval code.
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I will throw sand in the gears of marginalization, by feigning ignorance and incompetence, and eventually I will be indignant that they feel the need to check what's in my pants. As a straight white Christian with English as his first language, I am entitled to the Right of Karen: "Who is your supervisor?"
@Lane @Willow Exactly! I am given a tremendous amount of social privilege, despite the fact that I've not earned it, simply based on how I look. I will happily spend this accrued capital to confront those who want to marginalize others. I have basically run out of patience with this nonsense and I simply will not tolerate it any longer.
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@dalias @x0 @Zumbador @Willow I think it's both. I've had at least one experience where the doctor saw the M on my chart, took me seriously, learned I have a uterus, and immediately ceased to take me seriously. It was night and day, and it was astonishing being able to view his behavior from both a male and a female perspective. Any cis men reading along, if you think a (male and assumed cis) doctor is great and really listens, ask a woman how he acts without you in the room!
@raphaelmorgan @dalias @x0 @Zumbador @Willow i have had so many negative experiences with male doctors that i absolutely refuse to use them now
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Call to action to cis people: be assholes anytime you get asked for your sex assigned at birth. Write letters, complain to staff, refuse to answer. Make it impossible to collect sex assigned at birth. Be really offended that anyone would ask you. Make enough noise that if trans people want to quietly not answer or give whatever answer feels correct to them, no one will notice.
@Willow Thank you for this! I have never seen such a question, actually, but I will be more cautious about that now. I've been asked to give gender, but never "assigned at birth" - this seems very rude.
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In some social contextes it may be asked for statistical causes. It is, for example, quite important to find out if some service is largely used by one sex/gender when in theory the usage should be equal for the whole population.
Tbs, many forms ask data just for funsies and/or for the newsletter-greeting (and ofc you HAVE to subscribe to it).
Can't understand if they want to start the newsletter with preferred name, they won't also ask preferred title?
It seems to me that product and service usage that is gender specific would be much better correlated to the gender one is presenting as than some assigned birth gender.
Like clothing, makeup, hair care, etc.
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No, it's not actually *ever* medically relevant what you were assigned at birth. This information is used for shorthand in order for practitioners to make assumptions about your body, but those assumptions are regularly incorrect even when only dealing with cis people, let alone when you add in trans, intersex, chimerism, or other conditions.
Relying on sex as a significant piece of data is lazy medicine and any practitioner that clutches to it for literally anything is suspect.
Anatomy and hormones are regularly affected by so many factors from diet, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, cancer, environmental factors and exposures, injury, etc.
A medical practitioner who is doing a proper job is not going to treat you like a group, but as an individual with individual conditions, factors, and needs.
Lots of providers are increasingly choosing to do an organ index instead, at least when they realize that's even an option. My spouse and I have successfully urged providers in multiple departments/clinics to stop worrying about assigned sex and instead to introduce a (voluntary) organ selection sheet that lets the provider know what you do or don't have when it's relevant.
