Cancer can often seem to be linked to your gender. It can be easy to make assumptions that only women get womb cancer, or only men get prostate cancer. When chatting to others on the Online Community, sometimes it might feel easy to presume who someone is due to their or their loved one’s diagnosis. Anna, Macmillan’s LGBT+ Network Lead, is here to talk about why it’s important not to make assumptions when talking to others online, and how this can help our Community cancer forum to be a welcoming space for everyone.
Within this blog, we are talking about gender and biological sex being different. Your biological sex is what people are assigned at birth, and gender is what people identify themselves as. For lots of people, this is the same. However, it’s not the same for everyone. We hope that Anna’s blog might be an introduction to why this can be something important to think about, even if your gender and biological sex are the same.
If you’d like to find out more about what Anna does as part of her role, take a look at Anna’s ‘Day in the life’ blog.
For some, being misgendered, has made for a mildly amusing tale to tell at dinner parties. Maybe that restaurant server referred to you incorrectly as “Sir” once. You might be surprised that people sometimes can’t see you for who you are, when your own identity is so clear to you. It might be easy to forget, if this doesn’t happen to you all the time, that gender is cannot be assumed.
What’s the difference between gender and sex?
Gender and sex have been viewed as the same for quite some time. Indeed, it was only 1955 when sexologist John Money introduced the idea of thinking of biological sex and gender as being different. However, gender identity has existed independently of our physical bodies for as long as humans have been around. So, what’s the difference between them?
Gender identity is a person’s innate sense of their own gender, e.g. man, woman or nonbinary. The LGBT Foundation has some further information on what it means to be non-binary. This sense of gender may or may not fit society’s expectations of the sex they were assigned at birth.
Sex, biological sex or anatomical sex, is assigned to a person on the basis of and reproductive functions. Someone may be described as “intersex” if their reproductive or sexual anatomy does not fit into the typical definitions of female or male.
The phrase “assigned sex” may be used as most people are assigned male or female at birth by a medical professional, and that is what’s put on their birth certificate. Sometimes the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ are incorrectly used interchangeably, but anatomical sex is different to gender. So, for example, someone might be born with a body assigned as female, but identify as a man, or vice versa. This means that while someone might be diagnosed with womb cancer, they might not identify themselves as a woman. So, given that we don’t know someone’s gender or genitalia before they choose to tell us, we cannot assume either. And personal pronouns are separate again.
What does this mean for navigating online interactions, or new friendships?
What does this mean for navigating online interactions, or new friendships? We can start within ourselves, and make no more assumptions. Has the person we are speaking to told us their gender, or the gender of their loved one? Asserted their personal pronouns, such as whether they prefer “he” or “she”? If not, try to say “they” or “partner” instead.
“They” is your friend. It’s a word that has been in use since the birth of modern English, and is perfectly acceptable to use when you don’t know someone’s gender. When recounting a story including characters whose gender you don’t know, you will be used to saying “they”.
Where you don’t know yet, invite “they/them/their” into your speech habits.
While it might seem to be a word that means multiple people, you can easily swap it in to use it to mean just one person too. Try using ‘they’ where you’d say ‘he’ or ‘she’. When someone tells you their personal pronouns (he/she/they, etc.), use them.
If people usually presume the right gender for you, whether because of your name, how you look, your diagnosis or even your online username, this might not feel important. However, some people encounter being misunderstood a lot, such as someone presuming they are a man when they identify as a woman. Using “they” when you don’t know, might make a big difference to someone else feeling welcomed and supported.
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Stephen Covey
Of course, you are also able to connect with people online from a variety of different countries and cultures across the world on the Online Community and elsewhere, some of whom have names we have never heard before. Sometimes these people are misgendered because we make assumptions based on our own background. These instances show us that a name is also not a basis for assuming someone’s gender.
Why is it important to try to get this right?
Asking and correctly using someone's pronouns is one of the first ways to show your respect for them and their gender identity, from when you first meet them.
When someone is referred to with the wrong pronoun, even if by accident, this can make them feel disrespected, invalidated, dismissed, alienated, amongst others. In the Online Community, everyone is here to validate, support and uplift each other. While everyone can and does make mistakes sometimes, making small changes to how you talk to others, such as using “they”, can make a big difference both online and in your everyday life.
Not presuming someone’s gender based on their diagnosis is an important step towards ensuring everyone can feel welcome and supported on the Online Community. Gender can be a complicated topic, and it’s ok to have questions. If you’d like to learn more about gender or LGBT+ experiences, our recent blog, “LGBT+ History Month”, has lots of resources available.
