Queering Healthcare
Theoretically, queering healthcare would mean we'd have to get rid of everything, right? The science has been built on the idea that there are women and men, and we study some things in men, and we study some things in women, and affirm this false dichotomy for a variety of reasons. There are biological things that need to be taken into account. You have these situations where we've done a study that shows, for instance, that women are more prone to this thing. Is that because of hormones? Or is it because they are treated a certain way, or they're exposed to a certain product that men aren't? Are there other things that could be connected to that very complex identity? Because identity is not made up of just one variable. So if you're asking about someone's identity in a research study, you could get some information, but you're not going to understand that information very well. I think that that's a good metaphor for all patients. You can look at a patient's list of societal identifiers, but the number of variables within those identifiers that could be affecting their health are enormous. At the end of the day, we use these identities as a shorthand to tell us information about our patients, and to some degree that's okay. But you also have to understand that your patients' identities, each one of those words that they might identify with, has 1000 things attached to it that could be affecting their health. So just being cognizant of that complexity. I think that queering the health system is about creating a breakdown between the broad categories that healthcare is built on. It's a very powerful tool to figure things out. For instance, it's important that there's a category called endocrine disorders, but always understanding that there has to be a balance between that and the fact that the individual patient in front of you is more complex than the categories you're putting them into. I think we need to learn to toggle between those two things, between using these broad categories to investigate and having broad ideas about what might work or what might be going on, but for the individual, there is a specific problem that needs to be worked on in a unique way that works for that person.
Queer Representation at UNE COM
The other thing we talked about in the MSPA was that when you have queer leadership, or queer visibility, it makes it safer for queer people, and, I hope, to some extent, it makes it safer for all people of marginalized identities. Obviously, there's an enormous amount of intersectionality, and the fact that I'm white excludes me from understanding a lot of those issues, but my hope is that being able to talk about minority needs openly creates a safer space for everyone. Because it provides vocabulary, and an existing level of conversation about minority needs. I think also queer folks understand the needs of that community in a more complex way. For instance, with the sexual health history taking class, the thing we realized when we were prepping it was, oh, we don't want queer students to have to do this every year, not just because it's a burden but also because it is linked to the over sexualization of queer people. In an experience you have a more complex understanding of what that experience is like so you're able to advocate around it in a different way. Having people around who can say whether the thing you're trying to do is helpful or not helpful is important. As time moves forward, there are going to be more queer students at UNE COM because there's just more openly queer people now. Not that there haven't always been queer people, and that there haven't always been queer students at UNE COM, but there will likely be a lot more and the school and our faculty need to be able to shift towards that reality and keep those students safe as much as they can, as well as prepare them to take care of their patients. That's why it is really important to start talking about these things now.