The Barriers 2nd edition

Its been a while since I had a moment to jot down my thoughts here on the ole blog. I got frustrated today, and decided to carve out some time. I was thinking “the barriers” would be a great title for this blog as I logged in. Low and behold, I already used that title… ironically, it was my most recent blog entry!!! Hahaha, sigh… I could probably stop right there.

So I finally got around to calling to make an appointment for my gender expansive kid, and within 5 sec I was asked to hold. Then when they came back to the line, they wanted to know when the referral was sent. My referral came from another parent of a gender expansive child, so it didn’t come from our doctor. It’s already taken me like four months to make this call. I have three jobs, four kids and I am working on my Masters degree. What can I say, I’m a little bit busy. The lady on the phone sighed with irritation that I didn’t have a “referral”. Obviously she has never experienced a delicate situation where the individual care one receives is paramount. This particular doctor has expertise in gender expansive issues and has, I’ve been told, provided sensitive care to gender expansive children who might just be fearful of the very care they require.

I was empowered to make the call today after attending a lunch and learn about inclusive practice at my own institution. I thought, “I really have to do this and stop procrastinating. It’s the right thing to do.” The irritated woman informed me that not only am I required to have a referral (not by my insurance, but by their office) but that the referrals, another sigh, are processed in the order in which they are received. They get “so many” requests for appointments. Obviously my business, is not of particular importance, get in line.

I hung up. Frumpy. Now I have to make yet another call and wait some more, all while trusting that medicine will work the way it’s set up to… which I know, it won’t… inevitably, I will be calling again, and again… It is a wonder how anyone navigates this totally messed up system!

Pronouns

Many years ago when Wes started ABA therapy one of his goals was to learn pronouns and prepositions. I thought this was fine, even useful for a four year old to understand what it means to have something on, under, or next to something else. Equally I thought it was useful to understand what was meant by he, she, him, her, etc. Fast forward a few years, and I can say without much doubt that Wes understands on, under, and next to, but he still can’t always use them properly when trying to describe where objects are. Likewise, I think he understands the concepts of -he verses she- in our general cultural context, but he rarely gets those right either. We used to spend a lot of effort correcting him every time he misgendered people, but recently, say the last two to three years, I no longer see the point.

Liv helped me see that pronouns have meaning, even if I used them as just words. I think there are many words in our language that if thought of in this way, we might stop using. My Pronouns is a link to another website that has a really good explanation about why it matters that we use more care when addressing people with pronouns. I have become pretty good at using they/them when referring to people whose preferred pronoun is unknown to me.

I am very fortunate to work at a company that values these types of conversations, and gives me a lot of practice outside of my home too. As a parent, my gender non binary or transgender child gives me plenty of worry, especially with a shifting political environment that is prone to injustice and inequality, but it also gives me a lot of perspective. I am forced to look at our world through the lens of this child and their challenges. Maybe we could all spend a bit more time doing that.