Formulas. Speaking in formulas. Speaking in dopy unreasonable unexamined formulas. It doesn’t make for good thinking.
It’s a scientific and medical fact that men can get pregnant and also have abortions. Trans men and non-binary individuals are human beings who deserve to be acknowledged by society. They choose their own identity—not me, not you, not any doctor, and certainly not any politician.
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) July 12, 2019
Of course “trans men and non-binary individuals” are human beings. That’s not in question and never has been. Shouting that they’re human beings is answering a question that was never asked.
But as for “they choose their own identity” – that’s where the mindless formulas fall apart. We don’t get to “choose our own identity” in every sense. We can choose the aspects that are subject to choice, and not the others. We don’t get to choose to be raccoons or toothbrushes or planets. We can pretend to be those things, if we like, but we can’t literally choose to be those things or billions of other things like them.
“Identity” is a very baggy word, and it has become more baggy than ever with the new move to claim that sex is a matter of identity as opposed to material fact. It’s being used as a kind of magic wand to entitle people to claim to be something they’re not and physically can’t be, and the results are turning out to be less than salubrious.
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9 responses to ““They choose their own identity””
I’m hoping “MD” stands for something other than Doctor of Medicine…
“Magnus” something comes to mind…
Yeah nah I bet it’s a doc. My profession seems to be riddled with docs who have bought into this trans crap. I said in a clinical teaching context not long ago that no matter what pronouns a patient prefers, we need to know what sex tHe patient is so we can provide safe and effective medical care. One of the students terfed me. The rest, though, laughed in his face so I have hope for them yet…
Yes, you’re probably right. I was just being sarcastic and hopeful at the same time. Just have to remember that Dr. Oz is a doctor, so that MD doesn’t mean right, reasonable or even honest.
That student is going to be a danger, especially to trans patients. However woke and ally-like they may be, it’s a false compassion. All the requested pronouns in the world won’t help once you’re an iatrogenic fatality.
So how will that student diagnose and treat the first trans woman they come across who has testicular cancer, a prostate problem or Alport syndrome as examples. I mean, the NIH note that “Researchers are working to identify and understand differences related to the cause, prevention, treatment and impact of diseases and conditions which primarily affect men or women, or which affect men and women differently — with particular emphasis on gender and sex as key variables. Such differences can have a significant impact on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease in both sexes.”
Surely failure to take a full history and understand that the person in front of you is actually a biological male (or female as the case may be), is critical to appropriate diagnosis and treatment. to do otherwise would be negligent and potentially place the patient at risk due to either inaction or inappropriate action.
Rob, another thing is a transman who reports with certain symptoms not uncommon in a woman with a heart attack, but not usually what you look for in a man with a heart attack. Again, knowing the sex can be helpful in saving lives.
It’s going to be a problem for health isn’t it. If I turn up at your clinic claiming to be a black woman who’s been living in the Congo; do you a) trample over my human rights of self expression by assuming I’ve got something common to white men who deliver the mail to you every morning or b} wait until the tests for pregnancy, ebola and sickle cell anaemia have come back negative.
I also wonder how long it will be before the ‘right to identify’ spreads to the animal kingdom : “Well Mr Howde, it was a good idea to bring in the mosquito that bit you as only the females carry the virus. However we can’t tell what sex the little blighter thought he – sorry ze – was, so it’s large, painful needle time I’m afraid”.
And the trans movement will likely increase the number of women with color blindness and with hemophilia, fairly rare in both cases in females.
On the plus side it’s going to make equality a doddle.
Instead of the lengthy and difficult job of identifying, training and promoting people to correct imbalances; just ask some of your existing workforce to identify as whatever you’re short of for the duration of the diversity audit.