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It's completely apparent that replacing the mention of the female sex in cervical screening awareness for "inclusive language" has absolutely nothing to do w increasing uptake of screening & improving health outcomes & everything to do w furthering a political narrative
In every avenue of medicine, clinicians are taught to perform "person based care" - an attempt to understand the patient as a person, that their lives shape their experience of ill health & their access to healthcare. Referring to "the diabetic foot in bed 4" or the "paraplegic
in the side room or the "schizophrenic in A&E" is rightly acknowledged to be dehumanising. When women or trans men attend their smear test, they are attending as a person, not as the keyholder of a body part. A sex class analysis is absolutely essential to understanding the
barriers to cervical screening when we know that health outcomes are shaped by the exp of sexual violence, the female burden of poverty & the inherent sexualisation of the female body = internalised shame. We also know that women with learning disabilities and severe mental
illness are some of the most disengaged groups with cervical screening & have disproportionate adverse cancer outcomes. Person centred care is about understanding that a trans man may have concerns about a smear test against their broader feelings towards their female body.
Women do not need to be written out of the record in order for this individualised care to be performed, nor does a demand to declare the value statement that "they are men" benefit this healthcare provision whatsoever.
And it just seems completely risible & I'm loathsome to need to even say - the fact that trans men or female patients with a NB identity may require a smear test, does not mean we have no notion of who is male or who is female. Sex is a determinant of health.
Every single healthcare professional that performs a smear test, that analyses the sample, that informs the patient of the results, that performs any subsequent treatment, knows that the patient before them is female.
