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The letter came from an English professor at a small Midwestern college. His freshman class had been assigned one of my essays, “Merced,” a story about a young woman in the I.C.U. with a mysterious diagnosis. “More than half the students,” the professor wrote, “assumed that you were a man — despite your name. When asked why, many said that your writerly voice was unmistakably masculine: logical, confident, secure, sometimes sarcastic…and, above all, that you are an M.D.”

Click here to read the rest of this story by Associate Professor Danielle Ofri, MD, at the New York Times