On my first day of medical school they handed us our badges and had a table full of pronoun ribbons (so, she/her, he/him, they/them) that we could stick to the bottom of our badges. There was a strange pressure to take the ribbons and they were briefly explained, but the whole thing felt forced, abrupt, and confusing. In those overwhelming hours of my first day of medical school, the pronoun thing felt like an attack and was unexpected. I didn’t know that several schools across the country were making moves to include pronouns in name tags and email signatures until I picked up my badge that day.

I had no interest in walking around with “she/her” pasted on my badge. Those are the pronouns I use, but why should I walk around with them on my badge? I also didn’t like the ribbons themselves. They were impractical. They stuck to the bottom of my badge, making it longer and heavier. I was concerned that this extra volume and mass would make my badge more likely to hit me in the face when I was doing compressions. Also, the fabric couldn’t be cleaned with an alcohol wipe like the rest of my plastic badge. It’s important to sanitize things in healthcare.

I decided to not add the ribbon to my badge. But, the idea of pronouns stayed with me. It bothered me. It bothered me that I was uncomfortable by the idea of wearing my pronoun. Why was it uncomfortable to me? Why had some people said we all should wear pronouns? I decided I needed to find answers to those questions.

I would come to learn that pronouns are an important topic because there are people who are either given the wrong one by society and/or who don’t identify as a he or a she and, instead, identify as a they. Using the wrong pronoun is a form of misgendering (assigning someone the wrong gender) and often can be considered a microaggression against that person. Many of the people who use “they” pronouns consider themselves nonbinary, which means that on the spectrum of male to female they don’t fall on one extreme. These groups of people, those that use pronouns that weren’t assigned to them by their parents, often endure others using the wrong pronoun. The idea behind having everyone declare their pronoun was to normalize talking about pronouns and to reduce our tendency to assume we know other people’s gender identities simply by looking at them. All the above made sense to me. I also thought we all should be able to use whatever pronoun we want. But, for some mysterious reason, I was still hesitant to add pronouns to my name badge.

I talked about the pronoun label with some friends. I talk about it with some people I love who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. I thought about the patients I had worked with when I worked in the emergency department and on the ambulance. I thought about the patients who were always called the wrong pronoun. I thought about how thankful they were when I asked about their pronoun or used the right one. I thought about how awful I felt to have someone be thankful that a did something as basic as use a pronoun correctly. Pronouns are pretty basic grammatical elements. But, of course, using the right pronoun isn’t about grammar, it’s about respecting people’s identities…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Time went on. I put my pronouns on my badge and then I ripped them off again. I kept thinking. What kind of message would wearing a pronoun send? Could I back up and live up to that message?

For all of this year I didn’t include a pronoun on my badge or my email signature. But, my pronoun abstinence wasn’t passive. I kept thinking and observing. A resident with a pronoun pin (not a ribbon) on his badge came and talked to one of my classes. I liked the pin way more than the ribbon. My school had a guest speaker come and talk about being a trans man. His stories about navigating healthcare were unpleasant and demeaning. I’d never want similar experiences and I would never wish the emotional pain he experienced on any of my patients. Then, later in the year, I learned that someone close to me started publicly using they/them pronouns.

As I kept thinking, I realized that I’ve also spent a fair amount of time thinking about pronouns in the past. Why? Because people mess mine up all the time. Not when they see me—my born sex, presentation, gender identity, and societally assigned pronouns and gender have always matched (that means I’m cisgender)—but almost 40% of the time when correspondence is over email people get my pronoun wrong. Why? Because people don’t read carefully. My name is “Jett,” but many people read it as “Jeff.” What’s more, “Jett” is a gender-neutral name. People guess wrong often. I find it funny how many people get my gender wrong because of my name over email. It does not hurt me when people think I’m Jeff the he/him in an email. It doesn’t bother me because I know they’d correct themselves and apologize when they meet me. I know this because that has happened to me on several occasions.  

But, what if people didn’t apologize? What if people got my pronouns wrong when they talked to me, face-to-face? That is the questions I realized I needed to consider. Upon thinking, I realized I’d correct them and be annoyed. I know I am a woman. I’m proud to be a woman. Considering that I am a woman and I want others to see me as a woman too, I came to realize that it does matter to me that people use she/her pronouns when they talk about me. If everyone called me “he/him” I think it would be like a bunch of ants invading my home. One ant (one pronoun) is very little and its bite would sting but it wouldn’t cause much damage. But many ants are quite destructive and add up quickly.

If you’re like me and fit what society assigns you, you’ll never know what stress or pain it causes to be misgendered. But, I challenge you to consider how you’d feel if every time someone talked to you they called you the opposite pronoun from the one you use. That means, if you’re a she/her they called you a he/him (or vice versa). I challenge you to sit and actually think about it. How would you feel?

My last month of school this year I decided to join the pronoun presenters. I ordered she/her pins for my badge. It was $2 a pin, less than a pack of gum to fix the ribbon problem. I decided to order those pins because I know there are people out there who society continually labels with the wrong pronoun.

This country has been talking about systems used to suppress and control certain groups of people a lot lately. One of those systems is language. One of the methods to harm people is forcing them to answer to a pronoun that is not correct. I think of it this way, when someone comes to me and tells me they have a headache I do not say, “no, you have foot pain not a headache.” If I can’t know where someone hurts better than they do themselves, how can I possibly know their gender identity better than they do? How can I know better than they do their correct pronoun?

I decided to get pronouns for my badge because I work in healthcare. I think as a physician I should be a life-long learner. That doesn’t only mean I will keep up with the latest medical knowledge. It also means that I will continue to learn more about the different people who are and will be my patients. In the end, we use medicine to treat people. The key word is “people.” And the identities each person has are an important part of who they are and is, therefore, relevant to their overall health.

Now, after thinking about pronouns for a year, I still make mistakes while using they/them pronouns. I make mistakes when using pronouns that are different from what I originally assigned a person before asking what their pronouns actually are. But, I make fewer mistakes the more I practice. And I do practice. It is important to me that my patients, and anyone in my life, can be who they know they are, not who society has said they should be. So, when I wear my pronoun the message I wish to convey is that I want a society were everyone can use the pronoun that suits them whether or not it is the same pronoun their parents used for them as a baby. The idea I want to support is that each of us has to do our part to be accepting of people who are different from us. It is one thing to say that all people have a right to life, liberty, and happiness and quite another to create systems that support that and to act as if all people have those rights. Getting pronouns right is one tiny thing each of us can do to start to change our biased language system. Remember, the thing about ants is that their power comes from numbers not size.