I called to make an appointment with a doctor. This being the U.S., since I wasn’t bleeding out at the time of the phone call, the appointment was for three weeks in the future. Listening to my voice and learning that my first name is “Philip,” the receptionist asked “Do you identify as male or female?”
Initially I thought “What a wonderfully sensitive medical office.” Then it occurred to me that I had been given only two gender ID options and therefore the question was offensive to those who identify as neither male nor female. Furthermore, since the appointment was three weeks in the future, to respond those with fluid gender, the receptionist should have asked “What’s your best estimate of your gender ID at the end of May?”
This being the U.S., since I wasn’t bleeding out at the time of the phone call, the appointment was for three weeks in the future
You ought to listen to Bill Gurley’s podcast on the Ezra Klein Show: https://player.fm/series/the-ezra-klein-show/vc-bill-gurley-on-transforming-health-care . He’s investing in companies that are supposed to improve this sort of problem.
Was this appointment conversation conducted with a craigslist 20 year old who doesn’t yet realize she should could be collecting 40% of earnings from the doctors in the practice rather than working?
Phil, I have been thinking about life in the airlines recently. Fellow pilots tell me major airlines are desperate for female pilots and will hire them with just the bare minimum flight time. Would it be possible for a male pilot to identify as female only for the purposes of employment? The pilot might not even have to dress up as a female and might only identify as female at work. Phil, how might an airline react to this? Do you think this could be a short cut to the major airlines?
The title of this post would also work as a new subtitle for the blog as a whole 🙂
@toucan sam
If pilots are anything like the stereotypes, tv show wings, reckless skirt chasers, then the line ” I am a lesbian stuck in a man’s body” might fly with the male colleagues.
Sam: I think that the uniform regulations for pilots are gender-neutral, e.g., black pants and shoes, white shirt, company jacket. So I think your plan would work! There is no real need for the airline to keep track of personal characteristics once a person is hired so they might never ask again.
(Right now I think a person of any or all genders could get hired at FAA minimums for a regional airline first officer job. Where being a preferred gender might help is getting a major airline F/O job.)
I remember a number of years ago my father was filling out the form to renew his drivers license in MA. One of the questions was “have you changed your sex since your license was last renewed.”
He muttered “this isn’t right… they should have asked ‘have you had an odd number of sex changes since your license was last renewed.”
This was decades ago, before there were more than two options to choose from on the form.
“Odd” sounds like hate speech. It’s binary and genderizes the number continuum. Your father gets a pass this time but he should be more sensitive in the future.