Last summer, I went to establish care at a new doctor’s office. My beloved pediatrician, one of the few true family doctors left in the industry, had once kindly offered to keep seeing me until I have my own children, but I was in the midst of a post-college move, and that was no longer feasible. So I found myself in a waiting room wading through the moat of new-patient forms that stand between patients and doctors all across America.
As many of those forms now do, this one wanted to know not only my sexual orientation and sex, but also the so-called gender I was “assigned at birth,” whether I identified as transgender, and my preferred pronouns. (It was five separate questions — the form is linked on their website.)
As if that weren’t enough, when the nurse walked me back into the doctor’s office, she proceeded to ask me the same questions again. I might have pointed out that I’d already had to endure this interrogation once — I know I made a face. Looking back, I wish I’d thought fast enough to remind her that sex is an immutable characteristic that is neither “assigned” nor “reassigned,” but I was just ready to get out of there. Needless to say, I never went back.
A colleague of mine had a similar experience filling out an online form for his daughter’s upcoming medical visit. After spending 20 minutes trying unsuccessfully to click “submit,” he realized that while he’d
