Occasionally, when I feel I’ve presented my thinking especially well, I will archive the interaction here. Primarily because I believe in having my flowers when I think I deserve them, but also because it’s a convenient way to make my perspective clear. It doesn’t mean I cannot understand other perspectives, but it does mean this is the one I try to live by and with, which is helpful for others to understand.
That said, the interaction as it occurred on the Discord channel, where I exist but as a single voice giving my own lived experience and thoughts to those who work in domains and disciplines that are finally starting to seek out such perspectives. It is a beautiful thing to see and experience.
Anonymized for obvious reasons.
[Member “A”]: I’m talking at a “Women’s” Health Conference next week.
[Member “A”]: I’m on the LGBTQIA+ panel.
[Member “A”]: We’ve been sent some questions and wondered if anyone here had anything to add?
[Member “A”]: I’ve got many things to say around this area but I appreciate I am only one queer person. The questions:
[Member “A”]: 1) What are some of the most common misconceptions about LGBTQ+ experiences in “women’s health” that need to be challenged?
[Member “A”]: 2) If you could implement one immediate change in “women’s health” services to better support LGBTQ+ individuals, what would it be?
[Yeshes]: Common misconceptions:
• Non-binary human sexual expression ‘has always been only male and female’,
• Everyone has a basic understanding of genomic literature and research on non-binary chromosome reality and what it actually means in downstream human physiology,
• Everyone understands what it is and means to be a member of this community in today’s cultural, political, and societal unrest.
[Yeshes]: An immediate change in health services? To stop labeling them as a gender binary that is demonstrably inaccurate, medically as well as culturally. Health is health, regardless your genomic composition or cultural/identity choices.
[Yeshes]: Upshot: The only reason gender binary exists is to support a power system based on an inherently inaccurate and debunked early century medical theory (eugenics) and of course, the culture and societal preferences across an equally inherently patriarchal power structure seeking to protect itself from perceived threats to both status, authority, and related dominions.
[Yeshes]: References in bibliographies from the following books in support:
[Yeshes]: “Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History” by Philippa Gregory
[Yeshes]: “Sex In History” by Dr. Reay Tannahill
[Yeshes]: This and the plight of all intersectional communities is precisely what I wrote “As Me (Empathy)” to try to express. It’s over in the 🎶-music section. I wrote it so that anyone, no matter how they’re being oppressed, might have something to resonate with during this time of undue and inappropriate oppression by our federal governance, our states, our communities, all the groups who could and should have been first to stand for and with us. Disabled, Neurodivergent, LGBTQIA+ and any other set of humans with this manner of marginalized lived experience in their heads. (edited)
[Yeshes]: Sorry for the flood… this is on my mind a lot lately.
[Yeshes]: To be explicit: If a human tells me they are a woman, then they are, and I should respect that as a declaration of a unique, living mind sharing this world with me. To do otherwise is not only hypocritical, but the antithesis of any purported valuing of the human right of agency, autonomy, and lived experience authority.
[Yeshes]: As disciplined, professional experts in the science of medicine and mental health, is this not the very least of the reasonable expectations?
[Yeshes]: Ok. Done for real. Coffee time. Thank you for being interested in community thoughts. I hope others here will share.
[Yeshes]: (Experience in ‘women’s health’ transcend the context of the medical office and this should be part of the consideration for building a patient journey that is healing for as many elements of the above as possible, as this will likely be the ONLY place to find them for the foreseeable future.)
shakes her noggin to make sure ALL the thoughts have fallen out… coffee…. back later.
[Member “A”]: Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I couldn’t agree more.
[Member “A”]: There is this fascination with binary gender and sex as if this is real, useful and accurate and not based in white supremacy and colonization.
[Member “A”]: Oh this panel is going to be quite fun…
[Yeshes]: Final thoughts…. spool spinning down….
“Why does it matter who I am if you will not accept what I tell you?”
Identity is declared, not assigned, nor classified over the consent and expression of the sentient in any context of that expression. (Is this not the ethical ideal? How to move this needle? Why it matters?)
See how long ‘you’ can last as yourself when you remove the “I” from your vocabulary. Identity is a human right. Prove me wrong. When I speak of my identity, it is my agency and lived experience being presented. It is not for you to agree or disagree with, I am who I am, yes?
It’s mostly a matter of re-framing this to make room for the patient’s right to be who they are.
The straw-men of edge cases kindly consider yourselves parking lot items. This is a foundational construct in search of acceptance and nourishment. I think you will find it a common theme, as I have taken care to speak in the broadest of generalities to hold space for those with other experiences. In this place, of all places, I hope I will not be the only respondent, even as I’m certain to be the most verbose. (#info-dump complete, spool empty, taking a break….. )