Reading Guide
1. What do you think the author meant by “It doesn’t take a PhD or a medical degree to figure out that experiencing systemic discrimination is bad for your health.”? What does it mean to you?
2. A common theme throughout the book is invisibility. How does the education of many health care practitioners perpetuate this? What are some examples from the authors?
3. Imagine you are the transman with diagnosed with breast cancer who is not “allowed” to wait in the waiting room because it is “for women only”, how alienated would you feel? Would you have any trust in the health care system to meet or understand your medical/health care needs?
4. In Navidson’s essay, Unlearning: Improving Trans Care by Reorienting Medical and Nursing Discourse, what is meant by socially engrained ideas of gender?
5. Xeph Kalma, in her essay Mind Your Words, speaks of misgendering and dead naming. Why is sharing these experiences important?
6. Have you (or your friends or family) dealt with any of the illnesses discussed in the book? How do the personal stories in the book relate to/differ from your own experience? Did the book make you think differently about any of your own past experiences? Do you think it will change how you interact with the medical system going forward?
7. Health care providers take an oath to “First, do no harm”. Kelly Dunham, in her essay Our Caregiving, Ourselves, how have health care providers not lived up to this oath? What can they do to change/improve the care LGBT+ individuals receive?
8. After reading The Remedy – how would you define heteronormativity? What examples can you think of? How can you combat heternormativity?
