Registering at the eye doctor, whose patient portal credits CPT©2025 American Medical Association with all of the questions and choices below:
Hatefully, there is no “ze” nor a write-in box:
The default sexual orientation is “don’t know”:
But some other choices are available:
Should there be an “irrelevant” choice for people who’ve been in heterosexual marriages for longer than 4 years? Psychology Today:
What’s more, we found that marital satisfaction for both husband and wife deteriorated in step with the wife’s loss of sexual desire. (The husband’s sexual desire was irrelevant to anybody’s marital happiness.) Might wives lose sexual desire because the marriage is turning bad? No: Time-lag analyses indicated that her loss of desire came first, leading to lower satisfaction later. Early levels of (dis)satisfaction did not predict how rapidly the wives lost interest in sex. … Crucially, it was not due to childbirth. Becoming parents made the mismatch worse, as in steeper declines in wives’ sexual desire. … A possible explanation that fits our data is that female sexual desire increases during the brief phase of passionate love. Nature may have arranged that as a way of encouraging the man to make a long-term commitment.
We can also see how the American Medical Association thinks about race, the default for which is “any” (the racial equivalent of “pangender”? Why isn’t it “panracial”?):
1.4 billion people in China, a country with 56 officially recognized ethnic groups, are lumped together as “Chinese”. For cousins of Elizabeth Warren, i.e., the 3,000ish enrolled Chinooks, there are five categories:
Why so many posts on this boring passe gender crap?
Did your ex go lesbo?
Does your kid claim they/them?
What is the source of your fixation on this societal construct?
Progressives were never interested in gender expansiveness in the same way that progressives never used the term “Latinx”? https://youtu.be/8jNUgrqOdpY?si=WBgEBoPgAM3KoaqM
What are the cool kids concerned about now that the battle for 74 scientifically recognized gender IDs has been won (and thus become “passé”)?
(You asked about our kids. Their pronouns are Go/Gators.)
Dear SunTzootSuit, if some parts of society force you to say that 2+2=5, or you get bombarded from the media that 2+2 are 5, 6, 7, you can say anything only not 4, even if it is completely unimportant what are 2+2 (which it is not), there is something dark, orwellian and dangerous behind it, definitely not boring. And the sexuality is second most important thing (after naked survival) for every biological entity. Claiming it to be boring is dark and arrogant (could go deeper into it, but it is not worth it).
SunTzootSuit, I believe that from Nature’s point of view sexuality is only important for individuals who are going to reproduce or nurture the members of their own species. If most of the genders are not interested and invested in the next generation of their own species, sexuality, like you mention, becomes “boring” from Nature’s perspective.
If you identify as emmetropic, do you still need an eye doctor?
I would find another doctor.
“A possible explanation that fits our data is that female sexual desire increases during the brief phase of passionate love.”
I’m not sure that Psychology Today is highly regarded, but that seems to beg the question.
My colleague is divorcing his wife because her sexual desire increased…for her tennis coach. He asked her to stop doing that but she didn’t want to stop. As part of her reward, he gets to buy her a house in the most expensive neighborhood in Alabama.
Sam: That’s a beautiful story about a strong independent woman rationally following the incentives put in front of her by our wise government!
> My colleague is divorcing his wife because her sexual desire increased…for her tennis coach.
Hahaha! That ellipsis makes it very funny!
> A possible explanation that fits our data is that female sexual desire increases during the brief phase of passionate love. Nature may have arranged that as a way of encouraging the man to make a long-term commitment.
Reminds me of Schopenhauer’s “Essays and Aphorisms”, from 1851. “Dr.” Phil, who has stopped believing in SSL certificates for securing his book, might want to take notice that although divorce booklets were not around in the past, a few insights about marriages (due to romantic love) have been around, LOL!
> With girls, Nature has had in view what is called in a dramatic sense a “striking effect,” for she endows them for a few years with a richness of beauty and a, fulness of charm at the expense of the rest of their lives; so that they may during these years ensnare the fantasy of a man to such a degree as to make him rush into taking the honourable care of them, in some kind of form, for a lifetime — a step which would not seem sufficiently justified if he only considered the matter.
why do they care about any of these? isn’t the collection of any of this data a blatant privacy violation? what is the justification?
Federico: The beauty of medical forms in the U.S. is that no justification is ever required or offered! Given the 80 million-ish immigrants to the U.S. in recent decades (see https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2015/09/28/modern-immigration-wave-brings-59-million-to-u-s-driving-population-growth-and-change-through-2065/ for data through 2015), hardly any of whom have been physicians, we Americans are fortunate any time that a doctor’s appointment opens up!
what happens if you refuse to answer?
Nothing. Maybe you will not able to submit.
Philip, how do you get screenshots from volatile drop-downs? Taking pictures of the with a mobile phone? Or holding mouse and pressing screen print keyboard key at the same time?
I use Windows 10 because I am not sufficiently elite to own a Mac. I make screen shots with the Windows-Shift-S command and then snipping the part that I want with a mouse.
IMO, OSX is a good compromise between Linux and Windows. I used to use only Linux for many years, but when I need form filling, browsing type stuff done I realized MacBooks are good, better than Windows.
It think MacBooks are better because fewer viruses are written for them, Apple overall focuses on the right aspects of laptops and OSX is Unix based. But I haven’t used MS Surface type premium stuff.
The shortcut for snipping on OSX is also three keyed Shift + Command + 4 or Shift + Command + 5. So one can make these type of pics there as well.
The race part of the characterizing has been going on for a long time. Back four decades ago right after college I worked for the census department and part of the job was asking people their race. People would bang on for a long time, that their mother was Italian and their father Irish or Polish or whatever so they are not sure, consider themselves, etc. & I would sit with glazed eyes since whatever the mix it would go into the category of “white.” I think then there were seven categories, the most exotic (for NYC) being “Pacific Islander.”
Yes, I remember those days. There was a reason they wanted to know more about you, including the origins of your parents and ancestors. That information helped determine your genetic makeup and assess your risk for certain diseases. By contrast, the questions being asked today is Wokeism, more about making people feel “good” than yielding any helpful scientific and genetic insights into the person.
From the inside –
“Social Determinants of Health” are now an important part of our physician documentation as decreed by Medicare in October 2023 for the start date of January 2024, so answering these questions likely helps cover the required documentation so the doctor can get paid.