A Dangerous Gap in Medical Training Leaves Queer Patients Vulnerable

Biology versus beliefs: When will Medicine learn to see all of us?

Cover art designed by the author

The amount of irrelevant things we are taught in school always surprises me. As a thirty-year-old, I still stumble trying to figure out basic life skills. I wish that the essentials of adulthood were taught to us in these educational institutions. There’s so much unlearning left to do.

The trauma of being an unapologetic queer person in a world that stifles authenticity of the self still has its hooks dug deep in me. I’m on a lifelong journey of relearning better ways of living, alongside my therapist, support group, and friends.

I have always been fascinated by biology and even studied dentistry for three and a half years. I was intrigued by the innate nature of living things wanting to survive. A group of inanimate molecules came together under the right conditions to form the first living cells — a fact that sounded magical to my teenage brain. Biology, as a subject, taught me how wonderfully complex all life forms are and allowed my adolescent mind to be empathetic to all living beings

Back then, I found a biology blog that said over 1,400 animal species exhibit homosexual behaviour. This fact slowly helped uproot a lot of self-hate, as I…