CULTURE | LGBTQ+ | UNITED KINGDOM | ADVOCACY & POLICY
LGBTQ+ History Month
WORDS BY HARJAS DHILLON | DHILLON@PROXYBYIWI.COM | 29 FEBRUARY 2024
LGBTQ+ History and Education
The teaching and celebration of LGBTQ+ history is integral to broadening people’s understanding of themselves, the people around them, and society as a whole.
LGBTQ+ history has often been left untold or even deliberately buried, as conservative societies fear the consequences of celebrating and normalising LGBTQ+ existence. Particularly in the realm of education, fearmongers sound alarm bells at the consequences of “encouraging” children to engage in and identify with LGBTQ+ communities. This rhetoric is intrinsically homophobic as it implies that there is something undesirable about being part of or supporting the community. In any case, LGBTQ+ people have always existed, and always will, regardless of education on the topic. A lack of education only serves to push young people into the closet and reduce the support and understanding offered to them by their peers, family and schools. When young people feel unsafe exploring or expressing their identities, this can result in feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression. This can have devastating consequences – Stonewall found that half of LGBTQ+ people had experienced depression and one in eight aged 18-24 had attempted suicide.(i)
School-age children, including teens and pre-teens, experience an important period of learning about themselves and others. Conservative rhetoric claims that children are still too young to know whether they identify as LGBTQ+, but by that same logic they are also too young to know whether they identify as heterosexual or cis-gendered. And yet the amount of heteronormative messaging that children are exposed to is incessant and begins from a very young age. LGBTQ+ messaging and education has been wrongly conflated with being sexual in nature, and therefore inappropriate for children. This view hugely narrows the meaning of LGBTQ+ identity, love, community and history.
Everyone’s journey to understanding all aspects of their identity looks different and follows different timelines and is life-long. Children and adults alike should be encouraged to embrace this journey with openness, curiosity and access to reliable and trustworthy information.
Medicine – Under the Scope
The theme for LGBTQ+ history month this year is ‘Medicine – Under the Scope’, which seeks to highlight the contribution of LGBTQ+ staff to healthcare services, as well as to examine the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community when receiving healthcare.
The LGBTQ+ community’s relationship with healthcare has a long and complex past. In western societies, homosexuality was categorised as a mental disorder and was listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders until 1973. It wasn’t until 1990 that the World Health Organisation removed homosexuality from its own list of mental disorders. The work of mental health professionals and the LGBTQ+ community helped bring this shift in understanding, although there is still much more to be done. Many LGBTQ+ people have reported being subject to discrimination and inappropriate comments by healthcare professionals, and the proportions are higher for ethnic minorities, people with disabilities and those who identify as trans or non-binary. There is a concerning lack of trust, as LGBTQ+ individuals report being reluctant to share information about their identity when seeking medical help, for fear of unequal treatment and invasive questioning.(ii) Access to healthcare is of critical importance as LGBTQ+ individuals are at higher risk of experiencing mental health issues, largely because they are more likely to face harassment, discrimination and rejection due to their identity.
LGBTQ+ people have themselves played an important role in the history of healthcare, including in the UK. The first woman to practice medicine in Scotland, Dr Sophia Jex Blake, led the campaign for women to be allowed to study medicine. She established her own medical schools for women in Edinburgh and London when no other schools were admitting women, and eventually succeeded in changing the law in 1876. Sophia never married and instead lived with her long-term partner, Dr Margaret Todd, until her death. Dr Alan Hart, the first trans man to undergo a hysterectomy in 1917, discovered a method of early detection of TB in patients through use of X-rays. This allowed for early testing before the development of symptoms, and saved many lives at a time when TB was widespread. Dr Hart travelled across the US state of Idaho conducting mass testing, training staff and treating those suffering from the epidemic.(iii) There are many more examples of the contributions made by LGBTQ+ people in healthcare, and there are currently over 32,000 NHS staff in England who have openly identified as LGBTQ+.
The history of LGBTQ+ people and healthcare is rich and multi-faceted – as is the history of LGBTQ+ communities across all areas of life. Sharing and celebrating this history is important not only for supporting members of the community but also to broaden our understanding of our collective past and the people around us.
i. Mental Health Foundation, LGBTQIA+ people: statistics, available here: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/statistics/lgbtiq-people-statistics
ii. Stonewall, LGBTQ in Britain Health Report, 2018, available here: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/system/files/lgbt_in_britain_health.pdf
iii. BPSA, LGBTQIA Historical Healthcare Figures, February 2023, available here: LGBTQ+ History Month - Healthcare Figures — BPSA