Queering Repro

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Why should the LGBTQ+ community care about comprehensive access to reproductive health care? Because complete liberation includes being fully in charge of your own body and ability to plan your family, as Candace Bond-Theriault with the National LGBTQ Task Force tells us.

Reproductive health and the LGBTQ+ community are often talked about separately, but both groups intersect, and oftentimes fight the same battles for the same populations.  Bodily autonomy, the ability to plan if and when you have children, the ability to plan your pregnancy and family without government intrusion, and avoiding societal oppression and discrimination are issues that intertwine the LGBTQ+ community  with reproductive health.

For example, the LGBTQ+ community is too often misrepresented, ignored, or discriminated against in many school’s sexual education programs. While some states are more inclusive than others, sex-ed programs are severely lacking; only nine states in the United States mandate sex education that offers inclusive information on sexual orientation, while three states offer negative information on sexual orientation. Other states don’t mandate that sexual orientation be discussed in sex education at all. 

HIV/AIDS, another reproductive health and LGBTQ+ topic, is rarely discussed in an intersectional sphere. The discussion of HIV/AIDS in the United States that has become explicitly male-centric; the focus on men having sex with other men often leaves other HIV-positive LGBTQ+ community members out of the conversation. Extreme focus on prevention rather than treatment and the ability to live and thrive with HIV is highly stigmatizing. The topic has become queered to the point that many assume that HIV only affects the LGBTQ+ community, and only the males within it.

There are many barriers that exist within the healthcare system that limit LGBTQ+ people from accessing comprehensive primary and reproductive healthcare due to discrimination. This is on top of pre-existing barriers that are present in the United States’ healthcare system, including religious refusals, the Hyde Amendment, and state limitations on access to abortion, contraception, and emergency contraception. There needs to be a broader scope in the consideration of who needs these services. Many assume that birth control and abortion are only needed by cis-gendered women with vaginas, and that may not always be the case. These services are often provided based on a dual-gendered dichotomy rather than an individual’s body and their health needs.

There is also a heavy focus on violence against women, but rarely is violence applied to the context of the LGBTQ+ community. It is no question that there is violence perpetrated against the community, but there exists violence within the community as well.

All of these topics that are applicable to the LGBTQ+ community are intersectional with reproductive health. We need to ensure that LGBTQ+ concerns and reproductive health are talked about together, and this want of intersectionality can be alleviated by both organizations and individuals by restructuring non-profit funding so that newer voices can be heard as well as listening and evaluating individual’s stories before acting.

Links from this episode

National LGBTQ Task Force
The National LGBTQ TaskForce on Facebook
The National LGBTQ TaskForce on Twitter
Candace Bond-Theriault on Twitter
Queering Repro Justice Toolkit
Report: Rethinking LGBTQ Policy Series: Policy Recommendations For Gun Violence Prevention Using A Racial, Disability, And LGBTQ Justice Framework

Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back a podcast on all things repro. I'm your host Jennie Wetter. In each episode, I'll be taking you to the front lines of the escalating fight over our sexual and reproductive health and rights at home and abroad. Each episode, I will be speaking with leaders who are fighting to protect our reproductive health and rights to ensure that no one's reproductive health depends on where they live. It's time for repros to fight back.

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Jennie: Welcome to rePROs Fight Back. On this week's episode we are going to talk queering repro. Helping me dig into this topic, I'm super excited to have Candace Bond-Theriault from the National LGBTQ Task Force here to talk with me today. Welcome Candace.

Candace: Yay. Thanks for having me.

Jennie: Thanks for being here. I'm excited.

Candace: I'm super excited.

Jennie: So reproductive health rights and justice and LGBTQ are often talked about separately, but are they actually separate things?

Candace: Not at all. There is a lot of mythology out there that they're separate and the movements even sometimes see themselves as separate, but we're really fighting for the same thing, right? Like we're fighting for bodily autonomy, the ability to parent the kids that you know we have, or the ability to become pregnant, the ability to have the families of our choosing without governmental intrusion and societal oppression and stigmatization, and really just living for the freedom to be who we are and to reach our full potential. It's the same thing that the reproductive health rights and justice movements are trying to achieve is the same thing that LGBTQ liberation is really trying to achieve. We just might go about it in different ways depending on the, the person that we're centering.

Jennie: Absolutely. And I think also really important is, we also tend to be fighting the same battles with the same people.

Candace: Ha. Yes. Right? Yes. It is this. So we are fighting the same battles, especially if you look at specific policies. We are fighting the same members of Congress. The same media folks who are attacking reproductive health rights and justice advocates are attacking LGBTQ advocates. We have the same opposition in conservative religious voices and media, and congregations are the same congregations who are fighting against our congregations of faith. And we have always had the same opposition. It's really just the mentality of this old world puritanical thinking of what families should look like, who should be in a family, what gender roles are, what social norms are. We're still fighting the same things that, you know, we were fighting in the 1700s in America.

Jennie: So why should LGBTQ people care about repro?

Candace: For the same reason that you care about LGBTQ Liberation. Um, because in order to be fully liberated, you have to be able to decide what to do with your own body and what family looks like for you and what pregnancy looks like for you. And those are all really important aspects of self actualization. And if you can't decide that, how liberated are you? So we need, we really need freedom of reproductive choice in order to achieve the LGBTQ free lifestyle and liberation we really want.

Jennie: Absolutely. I think, you know, one of those places that really started to seeing inclusive programs. And you know, I don't know about you, but when I think back to sex ed, I was given in a school and I don't know if I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but um, I went through k through eight to a Catholic school. So I actually had sex ed from a nun. So mine was um, one, not at all in any form comprehensive, but it definitely was not LGBT LGBTQ positive or inclusive at all.

Candace: Or sex positive for anyone.

Jennie: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, I think that's one place that, you know, you see some states are doing it better than others, but that's one place I think really needs to start.

Candace: Yeah. It's really interesting that you mentioned that because we are actually starting to do a sex ed program.

Jennie: Oh good.

Jennie: The task force, we're super excited about it. We've worked in the sex ed space for awhile, but we actually are putting together this year long project where we're really focusing on Michigan and doing um, sex education that's LGBT inclusive in Detroit specifically. So I'm really super excited about it. But, so my situation is similar. I like my background similar. I went to a private non, nondenominational Christian school from third grade through senior year. And guess what? I got no sex ed. And sex ed was abstinence until marriage. And we, so we were told we didn't need sex education because once we were going to get married, once we were engaged, we would obviously go through marriage counseling and the marriage counselor is supposed to provide you with sex ed. Which also is interesting because I didn't go through marriage counseling. Um, and I don't think that they're supposed to give you sex ed as a part of marriage counseling. Um, so that would, that's the story that we were told, that abstinence only the whole, you know Mean Girls...

Jennie: Oh, thats what I was going to say... Definitely the Mean Girls. You're going to have sex and you're going to die.

Candace: Yep. You're going to get chlamydia and you're going to die. Yes. So that was pretty much, that was like one day of sex ed, if you can call that, that wasn't sex ed. That was just like scaring you into...

Jennie: Scared straight like yeah.

Candace: Yeah. And like there was no mention of queerness or any other type of union other than hetero. So...

Jennie: I don't think so. I'm trying to think if it was negative, but I think when I would have had sex ed, it would have been like early nineties, so like it might not have even just been talked about.

Candace: Yeah. It just wasn't talked about at all. Like it wasn't even like a possible thing at the time of, uh, so it was so, you know, people my age, I just turned 30 and so I had never really had sex ed. Right. Um, and so that's another thing that the Task Force wants to do is to create a curriculum for adult sex ed.

Jennie: That's so important...

Candace: Because I actually never, yeah,.

Jennie: And like some of the things that you hear about now, more like bringing consent into and like making healthy decisions are just things that I never got.

Candace: Yeah, they're foreign, right? Yeah. Just so, just not in our normative cultural vernacular. Like we just don't learn it at all.

Jennie: So then I switched to public school and high school.

Candace: Lucky you.

Jennie: Well, so I grew up in Wisconsin and so it was a rural high school, uh, very white.

Candace: Gotcha.

Jennie: Very, uh, Christian, and there was no diversity of any sort. So I have a friend who has since come out, but like it did not feel like a space where anybody who was LGBTQ could have come out. Like it just wasn't, uh, that kind of space. And you know, I just felt really bad because like when he did finally come out after like he just kind of dropped everybody because it wasn't, didn't seem like something you could do back home. And um, you know, again, without having it as part of that conversation, you don't have an opportunity create that safe space.

Candace: Yeah, I completely understand. And it completely resonates with me to this day. I mean, I don't even, I had talked to two people from my high school, but I also went to a really small high school where I graduated with 45 people, so, oh yeah. So saying that you are still in contact with two is still like, oh, that's like, you know, 10% pretty good. But yeah, there was no space for anything that wasn't quote unquote normative.

Jennie: Right. So you know, even with that, so we talk about making sure sex ed is inclusive. You know, another space that uh, LGBTQ kind of gets left out or focused on in the wrong way is with HIV. Um, we know you'll hear a lot of focus around men having sex with men, but you don't necessarily hear a fuller conversation around LGBT and HIV.

Candace: Yes, yes, yes. And it's so male centric. The conversation around, um, HIV in this country anyways, in other countries, it's completely different. Right. You know how the US looks at other countries, especially African countries, it's all female focused and then like not male focused at all. So, which is fascinating to me. Um, and for someone, I don't do a lot of international health or international repro work. Um, but I see that difference is completely fascinating. And I constantly wonder if it's just a result of the country that you're in, is it or is it an American percept like perception of you know, what's happening here versus there.

Jennie: Just centering men in general.

Candace: Yeah. But anyways, I think that the conversation around HIV/AIDS is particularly problematic when it's really focused a) only on prevention and not on treatment and um, treatment with, you know, living and thriving and um, living with HIV is also not talked about a lot. Um, it's always just this like prevention, prevention, prevention, which is highly stigmatizing, right? Like it's, it's a terrible way to talk about HIV. It's, it, I mean, one thing that's similar is probably talking about like Teen Pregnancy Prevention, right? It's like if you're just talking about prevention, prevention, prevention, what are you saying to people who are in depth having an unplanned pregnancy or who ended up having a wanted pregnancy? Right. Um, so I think that there's a problem of the prevention treatment framing and model and the, what is actually the end goal for various advocacy groups working in those spaces I think is really important to think about and think about before working with certain groups. But I do think that sometimes it just gets so queered that we too often leave out people who have the ability to contract HIV. And we're not even talking about prevention for everyone. Right? Like there's not an equality to talking about prevention and treatment. Um, I really love the work that's done by, um, Positive Women's Network. In, they're out in California. And it's a organization that works for and works with and is run by positive women who have HIV. And they're doing this amazing work around de-stigmatizing it and like how to live a healthy life, like how this is just one part of your life, right? It's like one part of your story and you know how you still have the autonomy to have kids. Shat it means to have kids, um, and be positive. And it's just, I feel like that's a liberating model, um, that other groups should really think about following.

Jennie: That's um, interesting cause you know, like I work a little more in the international, uh, sphere. So I feel like often it particularly coming from us funding context or US work, the focus is almost reversed. Right? It's a lot more focus on treatment and dropping a lot of the prevention, particularly under the current administration. Um, so it's interesting to hear the focus in the US is so much more on prevention and less on treatment.

Candace: Well, at least, I will say that is kind of the conversation that's happening and I am not a def, I'm definitely not in HIV expert.

Jennie: Me either.

Candace: By any means, but that's the conversation that we're having as activists in the both LGBTQ and repro space.

Jennie: Yeah. And I think, you know, it also feeds into thinking about birth control. I think again, you kind of see that woman, straight vagina having women, centric frame and not broadening it to think about kind of the full spectrum of people who may need birth control.

Candace: Right. And who or who may need access to abortion, right? Like it's all the same. Um, we just are so stuck in this dual gendered dichotomy that we can't, like society has not yet caught up to the reality that it's about people's bodies. Right. Like every body is different and it can't be categorized in particular ways, um. Which ends up causing a lot of problems when you know you're a gender nonconforming person needing an abortion and your driver's license says one thing, your health insurance says another thing and you're just trying to get a procedure done and there's all these stipulations and all of this red tape that you have to go through.

Jennie: Finding a doctor who is welcoming and not stigmatizing.

Candace: Yep. And right now we have, you know, the protection of Section 1557 under the Affordable Care Act, which is the non discrimination provision, really preventing physicians, insurers from discriminating against people based against patients based on their gender identity. And you know, we're in fear that that is something that could be tampered with under this current administration. Um, so we're constantly on the lookout for ways that they're trying to chip away at that protection, or a way to confuse that protection because it's really, really simple, explicit that you can't discriminate.

Jennie: I mean, it just seems so basic. You should be able to access the health care you need, no matter who you are.

Candace: Yeah. I mean, I, health care is a human right, right? Yeah, it is. But are there two different aisles here in our country that believe differently. You know, for some health care is a privilege that you, if you have the ability to afford it, have access to it. And if you don't have the ability to afford it, well, sorry, you should've done something to get access to it. Right? Like, that's this thought process that's going on in um, half of our members of Congress's minds, uh, which is just so problematic. And sometimes I'm like, I cannot believe that it's 2018 and we're still talking about health care being a human right. And before the Trump administration started, we were on this, you know, upswing. We were like, we're gonna finally like really consecrate this as something that everyone has.

Jennie: There's less people uninsured.

Candace: Right. We were like, we're gonna work on these amazing issues. We're gonna move fast, like, move, get rid of hide. We're gonna, you know, implement the Each Woman Act. And the next couple years, we're gonna know all these things and then the Trump administration happened. And now we're back to like fighting of what it even means to have health care. Like we're back to square one. Um, which is devastating.

Jennie: So devastating.

Candace: I laugh instead of cry.

Jennie: I know. You know, and this isn't even, this is like before we even get to like religious refusals.

Candace: Yeah. There's so many layers. There's so many layers.

Jennie: So you know, people don't have access to health care for insurance reasons. And so that's even before doctors have the ability to say, actually I don't believe, I don't want to treat LGBTQ people, or I don't want to treat, provide abortion or birth control or whatever. Um, which puts up a whole nother barrier to access basic health care.

Candace: Yeah. And I mean, we know that, uh, and I'm sure you've said on the podcast how many barriers there are already to getting an abortion in this country even though it's a constitutionally protected, right. Um, how difficult it actually is to obtain an abortion. But the fact that there are so many barriers that don't require any type of referral for a physician who doesn't want to, you know, be involved in an abortion for whatever reason, for religious reason, there is no requirement that they refer. There's no even notification requirement in a lot of these provisions in a lot of states to tell a patient that, I'm actually not going to tell you, to notify you that this is an option. That's like what's so scary and devastating to me is very, I find that we don't have that autonomy to choose to go somewhere else because you don't even know what's an option. Right? Like and when you're having something that involves your health, you're putting your trust in that physician. You know, there are held to a high standard as they should be because this is a life and death field, right? Like this is not some other field where your patient can just go look for someone else or go to another pharmacy. It's not, it's a lot of these situations are life or death.

Jennie: Yeah, I agree. I find that one particularly egregious like that they don't even have to tell you it's an option or can refuse to tell you that something's wrong because you might choose to get an abortion or something like that. Like I, I find that particularly egregious.

Candace: Yeah, it's bad.

Jennie: Um, you know, I think I might've talked about this on, uh, the religious refusals podcast, but you know, it never occurred to me that that was something doctors could do is refuse to provide a service to anybody. Like they're doctors. They should treat people.

Candace: You would think. Jennie: Um, and then when I was in college, one of my roommates was going on into a medical related field, um, and was very much like, I'm not going to treat gay people and just my gosh, Whoa, Whoa, whoa, Whoa, whoa. This is something you can do? One you believe that? But two, you can just choose not to treat people. It just was something that never crossed my mind that it was something you could do.

Candace: I didn't know that until doing this work. And I'm sure a lot of people don't know that and don't know that they're not getting the best health care that they could be getting because of just who their doctor is and what their doctor's beliefs about the patient or their perceptions about the patient, how much that actually comes into, um, the care that they receive. It's, it's wild to think about it.

Jennie: You know, another area that's um, still maybe a little further a field is talking about violence. I know the Violence Against Women Act is going to be coming up for renewal sometime in the next year, I think. And violence affecting the LGBT community, um, is also a major problem.

Candace: Yes. Yes. Yes.

Jennie: And I feel like it's left out of the conversation a lot. Like it really focuses on violence against women, but not necessarily focusing on that, that includes queer women or anything else.

Candace: Yeah. So I mean, violence is a rampant issue within the community and you know, against the community, like, uh, of experiencing just so much discrimination in society. We just released an amazing policy paper and policy solution paper on gun violence prevention.

Jennie: Oh, great. We'll make sure to include it in our show notes.

Candace: Um, specifically we just released it about a month ago that gives practical solutions, um, that are intersectional of gun violence prevention. Cause we found at the task force that, you know, the gun violence, the gun violence prevention conversation was like super white, super, let's just say super white. Um, and you know, not inclusive of people of color, not inclusive of LGBTQ folks, didn't have a racial justice, economic justice, gender justice analysis and was missing so many good prevention tools that we could be using. So that's what created, uh, like gave us the desire to really create this paper, uh, to show that there's just so much more out there, um, and so many more intersectional, so much more intersectional research that we need to be doing in order to really prevent problems like violence and gun violence in particular. But similarly with the sex ed, uh, conversation we were just talking about there, it's still a very surface level conversation in this country. And there is, we haven't yet moved to an intersectional conversation, intersectional framing of these various issues. Because you know, sex ed, is so important and yet many of us don't get it or get bad information and it doesn't have a racial justice, gender justice, economic justice lens. And the people that end up working in the field of sex education are usually more privileged, right? Because as a, like my mother was more worried about me just going to school and coming home and being safe. Like that was my primary, like her primary concern um, not necessarily like what my sex ed was. So I feel like not having that perspective in the policy conversations is harming the policy conversations and the policy solutions that we're coming up with.

Jennie: Well, and I think it just shows all just you need to focus on the intersections of all of these things. It's just so important to be having not these siloed conversations that we tend to have. Right? Like I, most of my work's on repro, and so like this is, this is my lane and I stay in it and we need to see that all of this is related. And you know, we've talked, I've talked about this on the podcast before where you can't just focus on, you know, one identity. You have all of these intersecting things that need to be talked about in one conversation.

Candace: Yeah. And I, I think one of the reasons that we haven't gotten to that place yet is how funding is set up.

Jennie: Yeah, absolutely.

Candace: How, as some like to call it, maybe including myself, the nonprofit industrial complex, right, of how it set up, how is funding set up. So like a repro group is you're only allowed to do repro work. You don't have funders from other movements, you know, like, uh, immigration group has immigration money and not money from other movements. Um, so there really needs to be, uh, reevaluation and retooling of how funding works so that intersectional work can actually be done.

Jennie: Great. I think that, uh, leads us to one of the next questions I had, which was what do we need to do to ensure that LGBTQ and repro issues are talked about together instead of siloed separately? So funding is definitely one place to start.

Candace: Yes. So funding is definitely where I would start especially um, if we're talking about advocates who are able to do this work, especially paid advocates, like it's all about the funding, right? And who's able to get it, who has access to it, um, who has been, which organizations have been around for a longer amount of time seem to be getting them, you know, more funding. So it's like restructuring that funding so that newer voices can come to the table. So funding is something definitely that we could work on. I also think listening is like a really important thing to do. And a solution for a lot of our problems is to listen and be introspective and to really sit with and grapple with the big problems and big issues that we keep coming up against instead of just like doing action instead of just going straight to actio, doing more evaluating of the why, the how, the what next, the who are we centering in our work, who is the audience for our work. And you know you can do this from an organizational perspective, but you can do this from an individual perspective too of just taking some time to think. And sometimes I still, so I'm a yoga teacher in training and sometimes I meditate on like repro issues and where, where do I want to see the world going? You know, what does liberation look like? Like how often do we actually sit and think about those questions? Like you know, we all say and we all have the rhetoric down about liberation and justice inequality, but like what does that really mean to you and what it, what would liberation look like? What does it taste like? What does it smell like? Who's there? What does power look like? I think are questions that we really need to think about, be reflective about, so that they can really ground us in the work going forward. Instead of just like go, go, go.

Jennie: That leads me to think of two things is one, looking around the table and seeing who's missing, whether that, who you're talking to or at coalitions, you're part of. Making sure that you're hearing from everybody and pulling people to the table who need to be there, but maybe you're missing.

Candace: Yup. And without tokenizing!

Jennie: Yeah, no, it's making sure that people are actively in these conversations. Um, and then, you know, thinking of like taking the step back and thinking and meditating or just, you know, being introspective on these things. It's so hard right now because everything's on fire and there's so many things that we're having to deal with all at once. But it is important to take the time to like step back and think about what we're fighting for and what needs to be done. And think about ways to kind of bring it all together.

Candace: Yeah. But also like when has everything not been on finer? Like to be honest, like when has, like I cannot think of a time in my activist life where everything wasn't on fire. That has, it's like completely separate from who's in the White House, who's in, you know, the Congress, who's in the state house, who's running whatever company. Like things are always on fire. And I feel like that's something we just have not yet accepted. Like why? Like why can't we get to the place where we accept that things are going to be on fire to do this work, and still take time to think about where we're going because stopping and thinking and being introspective and retooling is actually a really strong form of resistance in a moment like this.

Jennie: So I like to end the podcast with, um, what can listeners do? What can, what actions can listeners take to help further this conversation or to work to make sure that, um, LGBTQ and repro are coming together?

Candace: Yeah. So I would, my first thing would be to listen and to listen to storytellers and to listen to everyone regardless of what they can do for you. So being genuine and listening to people for who they are because everyone's an expert in their experience. And I am really here for paying, especially queer and trans storytellers, especially people who are sharing their stories for a movement or campaign specific reason, um, to be able to give back, um, for that emotional labor that people are giving. I also think that it's really, it's just important to engage in self care. People at my office call me this self care guru because I'm always talking about it. Um, because I think it's such a high form of resistance to take a moment and breathe and care, you know, care for yourself. Um, because we too are the movement, right? Like I feel like sometimes I get, I get, there's this distance created between me and the movement and I'm like, I got to work for the movement. I got to work hard, work hard. And then sometimes I'm like, I am the movement. Like I need to sit down. Like I can't keep if I don't keep going. Like, if I'm just constantly spinning in circles, then what, what movement am am I, how am I contributing? Like I'm not necessarily contributing in my best way. So that's always something that I like to, to say for people because I mean, doing this work is hard, right? Like this work is not easy. Uh, we all come to it from various reasons. A lot of us, myself included, come to it from a place of oppression and suppression and trauma. So doing that healing work is so necessary for ourselves, for our communities, for our movement, and for the future. Like what do we want to create for the future? Um, I'm here for creating black queer feminist futures. And we, what we really need to do to get there is some serious thought because a lot of the tools that we've been using have got us to 2018 with Trump in the White House. So maybe it's about thinking about what other tools we should be using and coming up with creative solutions to really get about the liberation that we want.

Jennie: Great. Well. Candice, thank you so much for being here. This was a great conversation. Um, I hope to have you on again so we can talk about a lot more issues that are facing the community.

Candace: Yeah, happy to be here. Thank you so much.

Jennie: For more information, including show notes from this episode and previous episodes, please visit our website reprosfightback.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at rePROs Fight Back. If you like our show, please help others find it by sharing it with your friends and subscribing, rating and reviewing us on iTunes. Thanks for listening.

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