I really do love being at @StanfordMed - being here has afforded me countless opportunities to learn and grow as a physician-scientist-in-training and as a person.

That being said, I am **exasperated** that I still see boxes like this on forms all over our school of medicine.

I came across this one today on the application form for a recruitment program that we use to bring "diverse" away rotation students (i.e. prospective residents) to Stanford. This is how they ask about gender. They do not ask about sexual orientation at all.

Earlier this week, several of my @MSPA_National colleagues and I submitted a paper in which we showed - using national survey data from LGBTQIA+ medical students - that less than 30% of medical students are comfortable being out on their applications to residency. This is why.

Every time I see a box like this, I have to write an email to get it changed. First, I have to look up who the relevant administrator is for the form. Then, I have to write an email - often with citations - explaining how the form's language could be more inclusive...

...Then, I have to assure the people responsible for administrating the form that I know they are not queerphobic or transphobic. After that, I am generally asked to write the new version of the form and do some legwork to get it approved by the powers-that-be.

I have done this at least a dozen times. Frankly, I am bored. I am bored of the laziness I see within an institution that has the resources to self-correct. Why?

I get it. These issues of language can seem small. But oftentimes language is a critical first step towards acknowledging queer and trans people - knowing where and when to deploy the right terms is a fundamental matter of respect within our community.

The whole point of our vernacular within the LGBTQIA+ community is to extend a sense of inclusion, warmth, and family to each other regardless of the particularities of how we live our lives. If institutions truly value us, these are the things they need to learn. Full stop.

It depends on the exact context, and it can be tricky because language changes over time. For clinical stuff I usually consult the literature for the most up-to-date forms that have been validated, i.e. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2fjournal.pone.0232154&emci=9e4641b7-6e8e-ea11-86e9-00155d03b5dd&emdi=a7194a10-0d8f-ea11-86e9-00155d03b5dd&ceid=4096419

For more internal stuff (like this form), I usually just steal some version of the @ThePRIDEStudy's language for the relevant information.

At the very least, a form asking about gender should distinguish between sex-assigned-at-birth (i.e. male or female) and current gender identity. For current gender identity, the options I'd include are at least...

..."agender", "genderqueer", "gender non-conforming", "man", "nonbinary", "woman", and "another gender identity" (with a free-text box). They should be in alphabetical order and not mutually-exclusive (individuals can identify in more ways than one)