Asking how a person prefers to be addressed during an initial exchange can influence the dynamics of a conversation, particularly for health care providers and the people they are trained to serve. For clients who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT), a health provider’s knowledge and sensitivity to pronouns – she, her and hers; he, him and his; or they, them and theirs – can create a welcoming space or an unintended obstacle to communicating health concerns.
You cannot look at someone and determine which pronoun the person prefers. Advocates say the best way is to ask the question. The same question(s) to everyone – without judgement, then, everyone’s preference is honored.
“Sex is between your legs and gender is between your ears,” Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) Program and Training Coordinator Eugene Potchen-Webb said during a “Welcoming Spaces” training December 2 at Planned Parenthood in St. Louis. “Gender is your own definition of who you are – you label as you choose.”
Held in conjunction with Cover Missouri Coalition member PROMO (a statewide LGBT advocacy organization), the training took place during the health insurance open enrollment period. Health insurance navigators and representatives from area hospitals, health centers and community agencies participated.
Having a standard gender-affirming language to use during data collection in medical facilities was discussed.
“We have been identifying and working with health institutions, physicians and hospitals across the state to update their policies; to help train their staff and federal regulation and guidelines have also helped them with policy changes,” said Elizabeth Fuchs, manager of Public Policy at PROMO. “There are rules now, that if you want to keep your funding for certain funding streams, like Medicare and Medicaid, that you have to be in compliance with updating policy around sexual orientation and gender identity, data collection. With that, hospitals … are coming up with their own in-house training program.”
Fuchs added that electronic medical records systems are being updated to collect sexual orientation and gender identity information.
The training included participant discussion, a video and a quiz on sexual orientation and gender, intersex and trans terms to test their knowledge by matching the term with the description. Afterward, each term was explained, including terms that are offensive to LGBT community. A sheet with correct answers came later. In some cases, whether it was offensive or not seemed to be generational.
For example, “The transsexual term has fallen out of favor. Transgender is a better term these days,” Potchen-Webb explained. “When you hear the term transsexual, typically what it means it is a person who identifies as trans, who is taking steps through medical intervention that is changing their sex to match their gender.”
Potchen-Webb said transgender is a larger umbrella term that includes everyone in the LGBT community.
“Younger folks are choosing not to choose,” he added. “So they might have introduced themselves as their name and said their pronouns are ‘they, them and theirs’ or… they say their pronouns are ‘name.’” preferring to use their name only.
While some would say it is just as easy for a person to tell others of their pronoun preference without someone having to ask – the impetus in this case belongs to health providers who want to get as much, specific, accurate detail about clients or patients to connect them with needed services.
Organizations that went through the training received a special logo by their name on Cover Missouri’s Find Local Help tool, to identify that they have completed the necessary requirements to be LGBT Welcoming.
For more information, visit CoverMissouri.org, PROMOonline.org or see the You Tube video, “To Treat Me, You Have to Know Who I Am.”
