, not politicians,” Dr. P. said during a medical school orientation lecture on professional responsibility.person who wears his politics on his sleeve. And, more fundamentally, it was my frustration with divisive politics and its bearings on health care outcomes that made me switch careers from finance to medicine in the first place.
I tried to deflect the remark and start the interview. But he wouldn’t budge. When I asked, “What brings you in today?” he replied, “Do you think that’s natural?” It wasn’t because I wanted to self-identify my sexual orientation among a crowd of medical professionals — although that might’ve been part of it. It was because I was committed to establishing a safe environment for patients who felt particularly vulnerable about their sexual identities. I wanted an explicit symbol over the bridge of my chest for every person to feel welcomed and loved, where their queerness could be celebrated and discussed, and not be pushed aside to the periphery.
The narratives I encountered there were heartbreaking. Elana’s father in Clinton, Mississippi, had poured boiling water down her back when she came out as transgender. Tony’s uncle beat him up and threw him out of the house when his browser history suggested that he’d been watching gay porn. And Liliana, from Macon, Alabama, was repeatedly pricked with insulin syringes as punishment for being lesbian.
While the ER experience was an eye-opening rotation that I truly enjoyed, the following semester I was assigned to an HIV clinic, and it was there that I met Ms. Carter. She gave me a wistful nod and said, “If you’re Black and transgender, your life just doesn’t matter.”