Intersex Activist, Short Messages

My idea: How medical forms could respect everyone.

Gender Etiquette 101. SEX and GENDER are Different Check Boxes

Here is a sample that might work in respecting everyone when filling out forms for hospitals, doctors, mental health, or councilors. This would be a huge relief to me if I showed up at an emergency room and was given this instead of some conflated two options “male” or “female” that would not be accurate:

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Definitions and Terminology

SEX (Anatomical/Physical):

Endosex: typical male or typical female bodies, hormones, and chromosomes.

Intersex: a variation of genitals, reproductive systems, hormones or chromosomes that do not fit typical binary definitions of male or female.

Altersex: A word that can be used, if chosen, to explain that a person had surgery or hormones to change their sex.   For example, you can surgically be M to F (male to female transgender) or F to M (surgically female to male transgender).

GENDER (Gender Identity or Personality): 

I like to educate that Gender or Gender identity is how a person feels they are a man/boy, woman/girl, both, neither, or other.  There are many ways to explain this, so I leave an “other” box.

I write more about how I feel about sex and gender being two different things here: Cultural Dysphoria: Stop conflating anatomical sex with gender identity.

After a medical career, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of accuracy. When we encounter anti-gay, anti-intersex, anti-trans bias in medicine we are NOT encountering a respected, honored and privileged tradition. We are encountering totally unacceptable and flagrant attacks on the foundation of medical philosophy which is that our purpose in medicine is to save life, reduce suffering, promote healing and create health in any and everyone who comes to our door or who we find lying in a gutter. We are supposed to actively ignore whether the patient is a freak, a political dissident, ‘the enemy’, or even a murderer. When you enter a hospital none of those things should be on our minds as you lie there injured or sick. Accuracy matters as it pertains to things we need to know about your body in order to help it and you get to health. When you are treated as a means to achieve a profit that is wrong. When you are treated as if you don’t deserve anything more than a bare minimum for any reason that is wrong. When you are deliberately abused, denied, and injured by medical personnel who take it upon themselves to use your helpless state to exploit or punish you they are wrong. A form like this is not just important it’s essential. If a person like me just checks off the male or female box we’ve effectively tied the hands of our doctors & nurses. I have never just checked those boxes and instead have written in what Anunnaki’s little form easily corrects.”

Comment on Facebook by an intersex gay man, Jim Costich.

All our suffering because | Pink or Blue


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