Diabetes: an It, a She or a He?

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The beautiful piece by Jess Drexler that @Richard157 posted recently made me notice an aspect I had never thought of.

When she wrote about her feelings, Jess addressed diabetes as a She. It is, of course, a beautiful way to personify it as her doppelganger—but I think it is something else too. I had never thought of D as a She (I am a guy btw), so it made me wonder about it.

We always refer to D as an It at home. But Jess caused me to remember that, for the first few months after diagnosis, it was a He in my mind towards whom I felt great hostility.

Today, it remains an It pretty much always. But there are some rare times, after a particularly hard week or stretch, where it briefly becomes a He again for me in my mind, typically in the form of “this goddamn SOB”…

For my T1D son I don’t think it ever does. I have only heard so far the dreaded “I hate D” sentence twice, a few months into puberty, when we had a really hard time dealing with resulting peaks and lows and we all ran short on sleep. As for my wife, who is the ultimate practical, even-tempered MidWesterner, it is not ever even an It but an it :slight_smile:

So, for us, I think the gender personification of diabetes associates with times of psychological lows, and the gender is always that of the beholder. It makes me think that it might be best to consciously always think of D as an It, and that, for us at least, its gendered personification may be treated a sign of poor emotional health when it ever lasts more than a short moment.

But now I am curious about how others think, feel and refer to D in terms of gender in their mind. Is D always an It? If not, when? Is there a correlation with moments of psychological low? What do you think?

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Definitely it. Personifying diabetes feels very unnatural to me. Though I understand why someone would do that in the context of such a story.

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I’ve never really thought to assign a pronoun. I suppose I would use “it” if I were to discuss it with other people people. I guess I’ve just always thought of my diabetes as a part of me.

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For me also, it is part of me, part of the unique package of strengths and weaknesses I was born with. Sometimes the weaknesses are very frustrating,

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It has always been an it for me, but I have seen a few people use “she”. I have not seen a “he” used.

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Like others, my diabetes is an it, a part of me…it’s something that I have been very emotional about in the past, but less so now. I have some really powerful journal entries from my 20s, and I’ve kept a journal since I was a kid. And, in fact, I think you could probably find some emotional writings about diabetes over at my blog, though I haven’t updated that in forever and don’t remember what I’ve posted. I think when I write about diabetes I tend to write about my reactions and feelings about it, rather than about it as a separate entity to me.

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Although Liam’s devices both have male names “Bob (for CGM)” and “Fred (for POD)”…haven’t thought about the gender of the disease. I would probably say female, though, because they can make your life a lot more hell than a man can. :stuck_out_tongue:

But generally, it’s an ‘It’ to me.

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It’s definitely an IT for me.

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It’s always been an it to me as well. I’ve never really thought to personify it!

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Thats a new word for me, glad i learned something!

My diabetes has always been just a medical condition. A broken pancreas. In first grade, there was a “small” student, called midgets back then. She needed a special desk to sit at, and help sometimes. Somehow i came to conclusion we each had to deal with our conditions to adapt. On occasion I have had the “why me?” conversation, but never referred to my diabetes as he or she. So IT is my answer.

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I wonder if for some the age of onset and the related emotional development and coping mechanisms at the time would have anything to do with it. For me, it’s a medical condition. It’s never been part of me. It’s something that happened to me and I need to manage it, but it’s never risen above a lower-case “it”.

I’ve heard parents struggle with how they each feel about their child’s T1D. One parent says in frustration, “I hate diabetes.” The other parent says, “You can’t hate it. It’s part of her.” I might feel the same way if I was a parent looking out for my child’s viewpoint of their own condition. As the owner of my own condition, it’s probably less complicated.

This question is interesting, though, and reminded me of this article:


Granted, a mental illness which affects decision making, etc, likely requires its own set of coping strategies…whereas our primary focus is physical management. But there can certainly be overlap, I’d imagine.

If it helps you, why not? I don’t see a problem with it. I know people who need everything to be half full all of the time. (They are typically the people who don’t dabble in as much sarcasm as I do, either.) I’m not in that camp. I like to be real about stuff 99% of the time. And if being real means expressing frustration…that’s what I’m going to do. But that’s just me. I could see how that might not help some people cope.

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I actually had a harder time following her story, since thinking of my diabetes as a person was so foreign to me. I never named my car either, but know that many are quite fond of their car’s name and personality.

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