Day: November 27, 2017

acciolilyc:

naamahdarling:

moniquill:

So I’m a phlebotomist.
And sometimes, I work at a site that is directly adjacent to an endocrinologist.
Which means I see and take blood from a lot of folks that are trans, or nonbinary, or gender nonconforming.

Do you have any fucking idea how easy it is, in customer-service speak, to respect someone’s gender?

I mean, I’ve had super awkward situations where I have to say things like ‘I’m sorry, that name isn’t coming up in our system. Is there another name…“
And without fail they provide their deadname and I plug it in and I say ‘Ok, that came up, do you want me to fix that in our system?” And they say ‘Yes’ and then I ADD IT AS A SYNOMYMOUS NAME. Same as I would for someone recently married or divorced. The end.

I have never experienced a situation in which I have felt motivated to ask someone’s pronouns.

I have had situations in which I have thought to myself ‘I have no idea if this person is ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ and instead have gone ‘Next patient please?’ or ‘I can help who’s next’ or ‘I can help you now’
while looking directly at them.

I have had situations where I’ve gone ‘I’m like 90% certain that I’ve been given a record with this person’s deadname because this name does not match at all the gender presentation of the person I’m looking at’
And I say ‘Ok, can you spell your last name for me? Ok, spell your first name? And your date of birth?’

and then I quietly write ‘preferred name [the name they just spelled] on the top of thier record.

THIS IS NOT HARD.

And if this is not hard for me, as a person working in medicine who has to make certain that the person I’m talking to is the same person on the medical record that I’m looking up, how much easier must it be for, say, a barista who doesn’t give half a fuck who you are? I’ve BEEN a barista in the past.
If a Barista is asking your pronouns, that person is an asshole.

This just gave me so much hope, thank you.

yup, pretty much, I work issuing documents and helping people solve legal problems, it’s vital that I know that the person I’m talking to is the person they say they are, still never had to ask someone their pronouns.

By the nature of where I work, I can’t enter a preferred name on their file if it isn’t on a valid document first, but sure as hell I can make as non-confrontational and not-in-their-face as possible. 

If I have a reason to believe the person is transgender I just ask for any form of id at the door to check if they have an appointment, instead of asking for their names and forcing them to use their deadname. If I’m not sure the name in their documents are the name they are currently using I don’t use any names out loud while talking to them. If I’m unsure about which pronoun to use I just avoid them all together. The slightly informality of addressing someone as “you” without an attached ma’am or sir is much better than getting it wrong.

As part of my job, I have to double check all the info we have on their files, usually by reading it of the screen, if the person gender presentation doesn’t match their name and gender on the file I just turn the computer screen around so they can read it themselves and check instead of reading it out loud on a room full of people.

Of course there is awkward moments, sometimes I will get asked if I can’t change their files info and I have to apologize and say I need to follow what is on their document, or I will have to put an actual post it on something so the person handling it after me knows that there is no mix up and the picture is really of the person in question.

But all in all it’s not hard, and that is working somewhere where I can’t be accommodating and have to stick to what is legally true, independent of presentation. If people who don’t give a fuck about government records ask your gender/pronouns to sell you coffee they are definitely just being assholes.