November 20, 2021

When I went to make an appointment online to get my COVID booster earlier today, I was told to provide my "sex assigned at birth." As you can see from the photo, I couldn't skip this question. When I clicked the little question mark icon beside the box, the popup indicated that Rite Aid was being required to collect this info by the CDC. I seriously doubted that there was any medical reason to know this -- and a friend later confirmed that -- and "assigned at birth" is the language the far right uses to try to erase trans people. I checked CVS's site, and they had the same language. My friend followed up with me some hours later: she said she'd been informed that vaccine providers "are being asked to get legal sex to ensure equal distribution of vaccines." For some of us, legal sex is very different from sex assigned at birth, and disclosing the latter can make us vulnerable to harassment, etc. When I made my first appointment, I thought about lying about my assigned sex, but instead scheduled the appointment in a neighborhood a little ways away from mine, even though the nearest Rite Aid to me had appointments. And I was both angry and anxious about the situation all day. After the subsequent exchange with my friend, I cancelled that appointment and made another one with my neighborhood pharmacy, using my legal sex -- and in terms of my endocrinology, my actual sex -- instead. (NB: I'm distinguishing my "sex" from my gender identity, which is and has always been female.) This is one of the seemingly small things that cis people look right past for the most part, but that can make the lives of trans and nonbinary folks unnecessarily difficult and stressful.

 

And the question remains: if the CDC is actually asking for recipients' legal sex, why are Rite Aid and CVS asking for sex assigned at birth?