It’s very professional to have a card, and a southern school is helping students put the “pro” in “pronoun.”

At Florida State University’s wellness center, attendees can utilize cards with a queer play on words: You’ve heard of cue cards; introducing “Q Cards.”

From the project’s About Page:

The Q Card is a communication tool designed to help LGBTQ+ youth take charge of their health and talk to their providers about their identities.

The badges are meant to be handed to doctors by the sick and sexually interesting. They unfold to allow for a panoply of precision:

• Please call me [Insert Name].
• My gender pronouns are: ________
• My sexual orientation: [Gay, Straight, Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, Pansexual, or Asexual]
• My gender identity: [Female, Male, Transgender, Genderqueer, Nonbinary]

To be clear, the cards aren’t just for Florida State. You can order your own from the Seattle-based headquarters. More from the website:

At Q Card Project, we believe that all queer/trans youth deserve quality, sensitive healthcare that meets their needs, recognizes their agency, and empowers them to be active participants in their health. And we think the Q Card can help make this happen.

The Q Card takes a very different approach to identity and doctor visits than that of a document in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Via “Experiences of Transgender People Reviewing Their Electronic Health Records, a Qualitative Study,” health experts suggest secrets of the mind and pants should be delicately downplayed. Twelve edicts are issued for physicians’ note-taking; a few:

• Document name and pronouns without the term “preferred.”
• Document gender without the phrase “identifies as.”
• Avoid terms such as “male-to-female,” “female-to-male,” “FTM,” or “MTF” unless patient specifies identifying with one of these terms.
• Avoid medically irrelevant mention of sex-assigned-at-birth.

Q Cards put crotch-related credentials front and center. And per Florida’s VOICE, the bottoms of the cards explain why. “Most LGBTQ youth,” in fact, “are healthy and well-adjusted.” However, due to “cultural homophobia and stigma, some youth struggle with” the following:

• Depression/Anxiety
• Housing
• Sexuality/Gender
• Family Acceptance
• Religion
• Bullying/Harrassment
• Smoking
• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Relationships/Dating
• Sex/STDs
• Intersecting Oppression

Additionally, somehow:

• Pregnancy

An FSU spokesperson told the outlet the optional cards — which are advertised in the University clinic’s main lobby — “enhance communication between patients and providers.”

Might doctors be happy to receive poignantly personalized instruction? Or might they find it narcissistic and irritating? Either way, the cards are evidently necessary.

The Q Card Project also offers Gender Cards:

The Gender Card is specifically designed for transgender and gender non-conforming people to help them feel safer and advocate for their needs in healthcare visits.

In the past, business cards provided strangers with numbers and names — things which couldn’t be gleaned by simply observing someone. But these days, take nothing for granted. The straight woman you think you’re speaking with may be a pansexual man or both a man and a woman while neither male nor female. That individual you see only one of may be multiple people. Thankfully, there’s a helping hand afoot: Just ask for his//her/their/eir/vis/xyr/hir/(f)aer card.

-ALEX

See more content from me:

State Medical Board Demands Nurses Not ‘White-Splain,’ Be Colorblind, or ‘Weaponize Whiteness’

Health Experts Order Doctors Not to Record Trans Patients’ Actual Sex — It’s ‘Irrelevant’

‘How Dare You’: Obstetrician Is Aghast at the Claim That Men Can’t Give Birth

Find all my RedState work here.

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