Your Pronoun Policy Sucks

If you run any kind of business or organization you need a pronoun policy. Your trans and nonbinary customers, patients, clients, and members already carry a major burden just trying to move through the world. If they are lucky to find a business that has a pronoun policy, they will be relieved. However, this relief might be tempered with a great deal of caution.

Let’s say that you already have a pronoun policy –  great! However, even if you have a policy in place, it is likely to fail. In fact, you or your employees are likely going to misgender your customers and clients almost 100% of the time even if you have a comprehensive policy in place. To share a few examples from my own experience:

1. I got misgendered 4 or 5 times in a row by a doctor even after I reminded them more than once regarding my pronouns. The doctor's assistant never corrected them.
2. During a phone call, I got misgendered by the owner of a business. I had to spend time helping them process through their own discomfort of having misgendered me. When I interacted with their staff in person multiple members of their staff misgendered me over and over.
3. I have had a couple work colleagues that I meet with about every three or four weeks. They misgender me every time we meet. I am the person who has to correct them every time.

These experiences happened at very well-meaning businesses that had a pronoun policy in place. What can you do to actually support your trans and nonbinary patients? Let’s assume that you have a policy that looks something like:

• All employees must affirm the gender identity of all trans and nonbinary customers and patients.
• All of your intake forms must include a field for customer and patient gender.
• All employees must be trained at the time of being hired to use a patient’s pronouns consistently.

This policy is a good start, but it will fail in practice. After your employees are working there for a week or two, they will forget that you even have a pronoun policy. They may ignore the gender field in your system because 95% of your clients don’t even use it. Maybe you bolster the policy with the following:

• Ensure that when a customer or patient arrives, that your front desk or administrative staff communicates the client’s gender to the rest of the staff.

OK, that’s an improvement. But what if there is no incentive to use a client’s pronouns when they are talking about them? Staff could become habituated to using the incorrect pronouns. When they actually talk to the client they will misgender them. You could add:

• Always use a client’s pronouns when talking about that client with other staff. 

OK, this is better. However, a situation will arise where one employee misgenders the client and the other employee doesn’t correct their colleague in the moment. This places all of the burden of correcting people on your client. This is especially likely to happen when a person in a supervisory role misgenders the client. Due to the inherent power imbalance, a junior staff person might feel shy about correcting their supervisor. You will need to add yet another rule:

• If a member of your staff notices a colleague misgendering a patient, they should gently correct the colleague in the moment. Staff members in a supportive, junior, or assistant role should feel comfortable giving feedback to colleagues in senior roles.

OK. This is starting to look better. Even with all of the above in place, there is still a good chance that you and your staff will misgender your clients. Here is what I think is the most crucial guideline:

• To reduce the chances of misgendering a patient, schedule practice conversations or mentally rehearse conversations before seeing a trans or nonbinary patient.

All it takes is 3-5 minutes of face-to-face or mental practice conversations to get yourself habituated to using a client’s pronouns. Practice a few sentences that you might speak to a colleague about your customer during the course of business or treatment.

To cap off the above guidelines, you need to train yourself and your staff for what to do when you misgender your customer or client. If you do misgender someone it’s natural to feel upset or even mortified. However, it’s taxing for trans and nonbinary people to have to emotionally comfort every single person that misgenders them. They are upset at being misgendered and instead feel pressure to comfort the person who misgendered them out of a sense of being polite not wanting to cause a scene. Instead of showing upset and apologizing profusely, simply briefly apologize and correct yourself. For example: “John David is interested in Option A, he, I mean, they would like to go ahead and check out”.

If you collect all of the above into one list, you get the following:

1. All employees must affirm the gender identity of all trans and nonbinary customers and patients.
2. All of your intake forms must include a field for customer and patient gender.
3. All employees must be trained at the time of being hired to use a patient’s pronouns consistently.
4. Ensure that when a customer or patient arrives, that your front desk or administrative staff communicates the client’s gender to the rest of the staff.
5. Always use a patient’s pronouns when talking about that patient with other staff.
6. If your staff misgenders a patient, they should correct themselves, apologize briefly, and move on.
7. If a member of your staff notices a colleague misgendering a patient, they should gently correct the colleague. Staff members in a supportive, junior, or assistant role should feel comfortable giving feedback to colleagues in senior roles.
8. To reduce the chances of misgendering a patient, schedule practice conversations or mentally rehearse conversations before seeing a trans or nonbinary patient.

This is a big list! However, I assure you that if you take a few minutes to review this list every time a trans or nonbinary customer or client decides to work with you, you will be among a small group of organizations that will actually make your trans and nonbinary clients feel supported.