I was originally going to ask how many legal genders there should be, but I fail to see a compelling argument against 0.

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[–] 2 points 23 hours ago (11 children)
  • you're trans
  • you're involved in an accident
  • you're unconscious
  • EMTs administer medication at levels that a woman can handle depending on body fat composition and hormonal fluctuations
  • being a genetic male, you die because you lack the increased body fats and estrogen that was assumed in dosage

I get your point, but it's important to have your gender somewhere on a trustworthy source that everybody has.

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  • [–] 0 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 child)

    As someone who's been transitioning for 12+ years, I guarantee my body fat and hormones are literally nowhere near "genetic male". Medically confirmed in fact, repeatedly. You're making big assumptions about trans bodies that aren't necessarily true.

    I'd love to see what emergency meds you're talking about that are more dependent on body fat composition rather than something like BMI, allergies, medical conditions, or age. But even then- soft tissues are the most affected by medical transition and are more closely aligned to their cis targets. That's kinda the whole point. Not to mention the medical expertise behind whoever is administering said drugs.

    Edit: oh you're from lemmy.ml, that explains a lot

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  • [–] 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

    Cisgender women have a naturally higher percentage of body fat than cisgender men, so lipophilic drugs have a larger volume of distribution in women. They sink into the fat tissue, stay in the body longer, and can take much more time to clear out. Overlooking sex-based variations in volume of distribution can be dangerous in an emergency situation, it absolutely can result in adverse drug reactions.

    That kind of information can be a factor in an emergency medicine situation, it's not worth pretending that it's not the case.

    Medicine is one of the areas where biological sex is actually relevant.

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  • [–] 3 points 23 hours ago (1 child)

    This sounds convincing, but then, is there actually any medication an EMT would administer based on sex? I honestly dont know.

    Maybe we should all have blood types written down somewhere, because that surely is the same situation right? (I mean, we should all know it, I don't)

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  • [–] 2 points 23 hours ago (6 children)

    Emergency medication isn't dosed by gender, it's dosed by weight. It really would only matter with certain drugs in pregnancy.

    It is helpful to know the original gender for some things because certain illnesses present differently in men V women and not all of that changes post transition so if you are treating a man it would be helpful to know that he was born a woman so you don't brush off certain symptoms as minor if in fact in a women they would be very alarming. For example, men having heart attacks are more likely to present with the classic chest pain radiating to their arm. Women can have chest pain, but often present as sudden onset of nausea and vomiting with no pain. That's a rare presentation of a heart attack in a man, so a man complaining of severe nausea is more likely to be thought of as GI in nature, but if you know he's trans then alarm bells start screaming that this might be cardiac and you need to do an EKG now.

    But in an unconscious trauma patient, it doesn't really matter. If a trans man still has a uterus then that's an additional organ to be damaged that might not be expected, but that's not something that's going to be caught in the ambulance either way because we don't have a CT scanner hanging out in the cabinets.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 child)

    For example, men having heart attacks are more likely to present with the classic chest pain radiating to their arm. Women can have chest pain, but often present as sudden onset of nausea and vomiting with no pain. That's a rare presentation of a heart attack in a man, so a man complaining of severe nausea is more likely to be thought of as GI in nature, but if you know he's trans then alarm bells start screaming that this might be cardiac and you need to do an EKG now.

    This is why we need more medical research focused on trans and intersex bodies. It's honestly a travesty that it hasn't been studied much, largely due to the pushback from oppressive governments and transphobes. The problem extends beyond trans people, so much medical research is modeled on white cis male bodies, but I'm sure you're already aware of that issue.

    Transition affects nearly every part of the body. It's already known that trans brains more closely resemble their cis counterparts rather than their sex assigned at birth (citations: NIH.gov, Scientific American). It wouldn't make sense to treat a trans woman as a cis man for brain imaging. In trans men, testosterone deepens the vocal chords and can even slow down or stop periods. In trans women, estrogen shrinks the prostate and can even reverse male pattern baldness. Surely there are other effects on internal medicine, both positive and negative

    Part of trans liberation involves sponsoring more research in this topic. In your heart attack example, has it been scientifically proven that the symptoms are immutable with transition? Does the amount of time someone's been transitioning affect it? These are genuine questions, I don't know the answers to them

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  • [–] 2 points 8 hours ago

    I agree that more research needs to be done. I don't know the answers to those questions either. I'm sure there's lots more knowledge out there that is known that I just don't know, but there's also tons of knowledge that's lacking, the same way that there's tons of knowledge that's lacking about women's bodies. Humans are fascinating and there's so many different factors that can affect medical presentations or risk factors.

    Unfortunately in the current climate that research is considered too "woke" to "waste" money on, so people will continue to suffer from insufficient medical care even when their providers are genuinely trying their best.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (3 children)

    Weight isn't the only consideration for emergency medicine dosing, though... There are lipophilic drugs in emergency medicine. CT scanners aren't the only thing used in emergency medicine, point-of-care ultrasound is used by physicians too.

    It's not like biological sex is irrelevant in emergency medicine.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 hours ago* (2 children)

    Sure, but none of the drugs that would be used in the situation you describe would matter enough to kill or seriously harm anyone. At worst it would just have a longer half life and then you just don't give as many or as high doses later on. And that also applies to many different demographics including old people and people with other medical issues that causes them to clear drugs slower, which is why patients are monitored and dosed accordingly and the dosage schedule is a guideline not a rule.

    If some random distribution of body fat could kill a person then you'd have people dropping dead left and right based off differences in everyone's muscle mass to body fat ratio and it just doesn't work that way.

    I never said it was irrelevant, I literally wrote that it can be very very relevant in some cases, but it's not so relevant that it's vital to know if you're unconscious and bleeding out.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

    I mostly agree with you, but it's not like overdoses caused by medical errors don't ever happen either. Because it has a longer half-life (due to biological women commonly having a higher percentage of body fat compared to biological men, for example), medication levels can build up (as you mentioned) and result in adverse effects if you make a mistake with dosing. Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics do matter too.

    Just because it's not common (because physicians are trained to handle it appropriately) doesn't mean it's not possible.

    Like you said, demographics (including age, biological sex, etc) do matter.

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