Skoliosexual? Demisexual? Kaiser Permanente Portland wants job applicants to tell.

Jeffrey Collins, President of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals. | Kaiser Permanente

By Portland Courant Reports

Dec 12, 2024

Kaiser Permanente of the Northwest may hire you for one of its job openings.

But before it does, it wants you to tell its human resources department more about both your "sexual orientation" and your "gender identity."

The health care giant, which claims to be the largest in Oregon and Southwest Washington, asks job applicants to disclose both, according to screenshots obtained by the Portland Courant, offering a sweeping set of selections from which to choose.

For "sexual orientation." job applicants have 12 choices, including "asexual" (definition: you are attracted to nobody), "pansexual" (definition: you are attracted to anyone and everyone) and "demiromantic," or "someone who only develops romantic feelings for another person when they have a strong emotional connection to them," per Web MD.

That's not to be confused with "demisexual," or "a sexual orientation in which a person feels sexually attracted to someone only after they’ve developed a close emotional bond with them."

"Forming a bond doesn’t guarantee a person will feel a sexual attraction, but the bond is needed before sexual activity is even possible," according to the Cleveland Clinic, which publishes a dictionary of such terms.

Another Kaiser Northwest "sexual orientation" choice is "skoliosexual," a term Dictionary.com says was "coined in 2010 by a an anonymous (online art gallery user) named Nelde" to describe people who are attracted only to those who don't believe they are a male or a female, but rather "somewhere in between."

After choosing their "sexual orientation," job applicants move on to picking one of 31 "gender identities."

"Gender" is a word used by political activists instead of the accurate "biological sex," which is inarguably immutable.

"Gender identity" choices include "agender" (definition: person doesn't identify with any gender), "neutrois" (definition: same as "agender," but a person prefers a different word), "feminine-of-center" (definition: identifies as more feminine than masculine, but doesn't necessarily identify as a woman), "genderqueer" (definition: identifies as a combination of male and female, or neither) and "androgynous" (definition: same as genderqueer, but the person prefers a different word).

Jeffrey Collins, President of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals, says it is important to talk about sex in the workplace.

“Kaiser Permanente is the first employer where I’ve been able to be open about who I am and who I love,” Collins, who is a homosexual, said in a post on LinkedIn. “I’m proud to celebrate our LGBTQ+ community — and the importance of inclusion and belonging in the workplace."

Collins is responsible for overseeing Kaiser Permanente's healthcare delivery and health plan operations across Oregon, as well as in the Vancouver and Longview/Kelso areas of Washington.

Collins' post came as a response to Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s post regarding “Pride Month” in which the health giant lit the upper floors of its Portland headquarters in rainbow colored lights.

“We’re shining light and love over Portland this June in celebration of Pride Month — and celebrating equity, inclusion and diversity for everyone. #pridemonth,” Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s post reads.

Kaiser Permanente is at the forefront of the transgender movement in its healthcare options, particularly with its offerings for children.

The medical giant recently noted it treats patients for "transgenderism" who are as young as three years old.

A study undertaken of Kaiser Permanente’s patients included 1,347 transgender and gender-nonconforming youth and found that most have mental health problems at a rate higher than the average population.

“Among these young people, the most prevalent diagnoses were attention deficit disorders in children, 3 to 9 years of age, and depressive disorders in adolescents, 10 to 17 years of age," according to the study’s lead author, Tracy A. Becerra-Culqui, PhD, MPH, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation.

Kaiser Permanente manages 40 hospitals and over 616 medical offices, employing more than 300,000 staff members, including over 98,000 doctors and nurses.