How is that in any way in conflict with what he said? You're just making an argument for more inputs.
Biological sex, hormone levels, etc.
The GP literally said “giving any medical prominence to gender identity will result in people receiving wrong and potentially harmful treatment” which is categorically false for the reasons the comment you replied to outlined.
Sex assigned at birth is in many situations important medical information; the vast majority of trans people are very conscious of their health in this sense and happy to share that with their doctor.
>Sex assigned at birth is in many situations important medical information
Which is not gender identity. As a result of being trans there may be things like hormone levels that are different than what you'd expect based on biological sex, which is why I say hormone levels are important, but how you identify is in fact irrelevant.
Well, this is clearly wrong – it's obvious, for example, that gender identity could have a significant impact on mental health.
Regardless of that, you seem to agree that:
- Sex assigned at birth is important medical information
- Information about gender affirming treatments is important medical information
So I don't think there's much to worry about there.
The problem is that over the past few decades there has been substantial conflation of sex and gender, with many information systems replacing the former with the latter, rather than augmenting data collection with the latter.
I think it's pretty clear to see how discrimination is the cause of that. Why would you volunteer information that from your point of view is more likely to cause a negative interaction than not?
In many places I'd seriously question the motives for asking about either in general. Do you really need gender info to write better targeted spam mails for your SaaS product?
>why I say hormone levels are important, but how you identify is in fact irrelevant
I don't understand what your issue with it is, it's just another point of data.
I don't want to be treated like a cis woman in a medical context, but I sure do want to be treated like a trans woman.
> hormone levels, etc.
Right… their gender they identify as.
So sex, and then also the gender they identify as.
You can’t hide behind an “etc”. Expand that out and the conclusion is you really do need to know who is trans and who is cisgender when doing treatment.