There's a bunch of headlines atm about the importance of "biological sex" being recorded but very little about how they're going to ensure transfems have access to mamography. - ThreadSky

damselindystopia.bsky.social • 27 days ago

There's a bunch of headlines atm about the importance of "biological sex" being recorded but very little about how they're going to ensure transfems have access to mamography.

Reposted from Sarah Clarke

Let's say I'm a trans woman who has just found a suspicious lump on her breast. Does answering "male" to this question make it more or less likely that I will receive relevant advice?

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davidmichaelpick.net•27 days ago

"Standard" XY men can get breast cancer too. It's rare but happens. Any lump anywhere needs investigation for anyone. Selection of tests can legitimately vary depending on circumstances. A mammogram should be offered if appropriate and might be for an overweight man. /

davidmichaelpick.net•27 days ago

Decisions about who gets offered screening (for any condition) should be based on statistical risk and risk/benefit factors including the risks around false positives and, to be hard nosed, financial costs especially in a system with a single payer and externally controlled overall budget.

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

I mean, yeah? Obviously. And the data we have on breast cancer risk in trans women on HRT suggests we should be screened in the same way cis women are.

https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1652

ciara2001.bsky.social•27 days ago

I suspect that's because they don't want to ensure access, it'll only be seen as "feeding our delusions" or something

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

Oh they'll 100% accuse us of getting a sexual kick out of cancer screening before they'll accept we just don't want to die horribly.

volition-newlove.itch.io•27 days ago

and then use these deaths to decry "the dangers of cross-sex hormones"

polerin.bsky.social•27 days ago

I didn't find a lump. I went for a regular mammogram.

It saved my life, I had stage 2 cancer that would have rapidly gotten worse.

smilingrain.bsky.social•27 days ago

I remember watching a South Korean medical drama trying to help their culture address that male and female breast tissue is the same...

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

Both transfems and transmascs on HRT need mamography as we age. It's not even a question of gender identity vs biological sex. Doing screening by sex categorisation *does not work* for trans people.

https://medium.com/@Anarchasteminist/sex-gender-and-breast-cancer-7ea235cd4e2a

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

Of course, not all transmascs will need breast cancer screening either. Cos there's not much point doing a scan on something that's been in a medical waste bin for a decade.

mysicksadlife.bsky.social•27 days ago

honestly given that anyone can develop breast cancer, i would figure anyone who has a known family history of cancer, esp breast cancer, should be screened?

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

Like cis men have a very small risk of breast cancer so any screening is likely to throw up a lot of false positives tbh, idk how it shakes out when familial risk is accounted for but it def all needs to be much more granular than just assigned at birth sex.

mysicksadlife.bsky.social•27 days ago

I honestly don't know enough either, and there really aren't enough studies on like... the risks of estrogenic hormonal dominance for trans mascs who went through natal puberty and then had top surgery; I would imagine there's a reduction in risk after both that and changing one's hormonal sex, but-

mysicksadlife.bsky.social•27 days ago

-I would like to *know*. That's just one example, ofc/

Going by birth assignment doesn't really work, you're right, bc trans folks exist across the spectrum of both hormones and boobage; there needs to be more research on how transition affects risk for folks both growing and removin em

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

de Blok et al is the largest scale study I found when I looked a couple of years ago but numbers were too small to drill into effect of mastectomy on risk profile. Idk if there's been anything new since then.

https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l1652

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

Idk maybe we could screen people for cancer based on their actual risk profile and not what some shit sociologist thinks their risk profile should be based on assumptions about gamete production. Crazy talk, I know.

weel.bsky.social•27 days ago

Yeah. I keep getting messages about cancer screenings on body parts I don’t have because, well, you see, they record various kinds of gender, but the one the system is set up to actually use is the administrative one, which has to be consistent with health insurance or claims could get denied…

weel.bsky.social•27 days ago

…and what health insurance has is in turn based on what’s registered with my employer, which in turn comes from some ID document I gave them when I started work, and none of that is medically relevant in the least.

weel.bsky.social•27 days ago

And none of it would be improved by going off anatomical sex at birth, or genetic sex at birth, or administratively assigned sex at birth, or whatever, because guess what, I wasn’t born yesterday. But I guess all this must be most comforting to the cis somehow.

damselindystopia.bsky.social•27 days ago

And it's not just cancer. If you treat trans guys who have sex with other men like cis women for the purposes of sexual health you are going to cause potentially fatal problems.

https://bsky.app/profile/foxdie.bsky.social/post/3lkb4tr5wls2z

starshipsolidarity.bsky.social•27 days ago

trans men on hrt may eventually need prostate exams also! i talk about this a lot because so few people know about it including people directly affected by it

withouthistoryband.bsky.social•27 days ago

Don't even get me started on how bad the gendered assumptions in sexual health are for everyone. Cishet women who do group sex having to fight for throat swabs while being asked irrelevant questions about their damn fertility. HIV testing not being recommended to het people at all etc etc etc

withouthistoryband.bsky.social•27 days ago

Sex and gender turn out to be really fucking bad proxies for risk in most circumstances. Who fucking knew?

karums-caramel.bsky.social•27 days ago

📌

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