You Can't Hold Us Down

On Friday night, a friend and I ran around Vilcek hall placing fliers on every floor in Vilcek Hall, as well as within the elevators and around the medical center. These fliers advertise this Monday's final seminar in the LGBT Health Certification series. The LGBTPM group on campus is very proud of this achievement, and we have been exhilarated by the unexpected, enthusiastic turnout of peers at each of the certification seminars thus far. 

Nevertheless, I am disappointed with at least one person in the NYU community, though I do not know who he or she might be. Early this morning, I entered the elevator to find that the flier I had posted only hours prior was gone. In the time it took the elevator to descend only a few levels, I found my flier, hand-crinkled into a ball and thrown on the floor. I took the time to check the other elevator, and found a similar tragedy. Taking a brief tour of the building, I found that several of my posters had been torn down. I know that this destruction is not a result of my frugality with scotch tape, as many of these posters were magically crinkled into the same ball and present on the floor nearby. It takes hands to form paper into a ball. Hands and intention.

I do not know who felt the need to pull down LGBT health fliers in the 26th street building, and honestly, I hope to never find out. It is hard to believe that someone who plans on working with patients in the future could possibly imagine a world in which any group is not welcome to a presence, a voice, a fight for equal treatment. Many people assume that New York is a liberal town, and therefore, that being gay in NY is no big deal -- who even cares, anyway?  Same thing goes for California, right? Well, no.

Luckily, the New York Times agrees with the LGBT community. A recent article explains how older gay men tend to have more physical and mental health issues than their straight counterparts, that 1 in 5 of these men is living with H.I.V., and that at least half are living alone, unlike their straight counterparts, as described in a research brief recently published by the Center for Health Policy Research at UCLA.

I assume that the Times is probably bringing up these issues in response to the recent publication of the recommendations by the Dept. of Human & Health Services of the Institute of Medicine for suggested areas of focus among research projects studying LGBT health. It is refreshing to find that the IOM is taking action against these long existing health disparities in the LGBT community, though I have already been witnessing the benefits to the LGBT community based on research and advocacy of supporters and allies. For example, at Callen Lorde Community Health Center, and other clinics across the nation, transgendered individuals are no longer required to gain approval from a psychiatrist before beginning hormone therapy. This breakdown in barriers is allowing more trans folk than ever before to receive the treatments that have long eluded them for various reasons, including cost and lack of social support.

I am wondering who among us at NYU School of Medicine finds such gains in access to healthcare threatening, and I urge him/her to talk to me or someone else who can assist them in understanding whatever it is that might cause him/her to (hopefully drunkenly) rip down a poster that seeks to educate medical students how to better care for their future patients.

In the end, it is just a small minority among a community of supportive, understanding, and open-minded healthcare students that seeks to continue the oppression and resistance to LGBT equality exhibited by former generations. Fortunately, this small minority will not be successful. As Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim once belted, "You can't hold us down!"