Written by Cindy Veldhaus
Note: This article focuses primarily on the research and health of cisgender queer women. This is largely because I am a cisgender queer woman myself, and this perspective has shaped my career path as an academic. We hope this article inspires researchers with expertise in other areas related to the LGBTQ+ community to connect with the community and share their findings. I think this is extremely important as we work together to reduce the significant health inequalities faced by LGBTQ+ people compared to cisgender straight people.
Photo by Cindy B Veldhuis
To that end, my team and I, along with several Chicago-area psychotherapists (including sex therapists), are hosting an event at Nobody’s Darling, 1744 W. Balmoral Ave., on November 3rd to discuss our research. I’m going to talk about it and answer it. All questions about queer and trans relationships. More information about this event can be found at the end of this article. To help us make sure our research is truly based on your needs, we invite you to join us as our community tells us what’s important to you.
I have never been asked about my sexual identity by a health care provider. Not even New York City’s LGBTQ+ clinics. I’ve been asked about my pronouns, I’ve been asked about my HIV status and risks, I’ve been asked about smoking, and I’ve been asked about health issues specific to queer women, such as depression, intimate partner violence, and suicide risk. I have never asked about your concerns.
what about you? Has your primary care provider ever asked you about your sexual identity? What is your partner’s gender? Is it safe to stay at home? Have they ever told you about the health problems that gay women are more likely to experience than gay men or cishet women? Or anything other than the risk of HIV or sexually transmitted diseases? Is it about health issues that disproportionately impact transgender and non-binary people? I hope you answered yes to some of these questions. But if you can’t do that, you’re not alone.
Photo by Cindy B Veldhuis
For many queer women, it can feel like we’re not fully included in women’s health care, and we’re not fully included in LGBTQ+ health care. We don’t know where we belong, so it’s easy to feel like we don’t belong anywhere. We can discuss the reasons for this for hours, but the essential point is that we are telling gay women that our health care providers have no real interest in our health. Our happiness doesn’t seem to matter.
Before we go any further, let me take a step back and introduce myself. I’m a psychologist, assistant professor, and researcher at Northwestern University. I’m also the principal investigator on the SOQIR study (pronounced “so-queer”). This study stands for “Queer Intimate Relationship Research” (www.soqir.org). My research primarily focuses on the health and relationships of cisgender queer women, transgender, and non-binary people. Because, despite the importance of relationships and health to our communities, there is little research on these topics.
For me, this work is both professional and personal.
The underrepresentation of queer women was a huge issue throughout my childhood and education. This lack of role models had a pretty significant impact on my own identity processes (such as self-acceptance) and my ability to understand what my future holds as a queer woman. It also shaped my career trajectory in a very profound way.
During graduate school, I wanted to focus on LGBTQ+ women’s health, but that wasn’t possible because my department didn’t have faculty in this field. There were HIV researchers, but no queer women’s health researchers. In fact, I have never (have I?) had a single queer female professor or teacher since kindergarten. Until now. In other words, the women’s studies professors were also straight! And I went to college in Eugene, Oregon. I would argue that Eugene is the queer women’s capital of the West Coast. I majored in theater as an undergraduate, so it was helpful to have a lot of male professors who were openly gay, but even so, I didn’t see anyone around me who looked like me. Living a personal and academic life can be very challenging.
That’s why my PhD focuses broadly on women’s mental health, and my postdoctoral fellowship (which essentially requires further training after completing my PhD) focuses on the well-being and relationships of queer women, transgender and non-binary people. The plan was to specialize. There was a professor at UIC School of Nursing whose research focused on queer women. Tonda Hughes. I plucked up the courage to ask Tonda if we could work together, and she said yes (it felt like a dream come true!).
The day before I graduated with my Ph.D., Tonda told me that she was moving to New York City to take a faculty position at Columbia University. She asked me if I wanted to go to New York and Colombia with her, and I said (embarrassingly, this is a quote!) “I’ll go with you everywhere.” I brought a U-Haul to my postdoc because I’m such a stereotypical queer woman.
After years of hope and effort, I finally received the training and support to do the research I had long wanted to do. And maybe, just maybe, I can be that queer female professor I needed as a student.
Photo by Cindy B Veldhuis
Health Checks: Queer Women’s Health Research in Crisis
The sad truth is that less research has been done on gay and bisexual men. Also, sadly, research on queer women is not as advanced as research on queer men. This has huge implications for our health, health care, and how health care workers are educated about the health and well-being needs of their communities and prepared to provide care to us. influence.
Despite the fact that women are more likely than men to identify as LGBTQ+, there is a lack of data regarding the needs and experiences of queer women. According to Gallup data, nearly 60% of all LGBTQ+ people are women. Overall, 8.5% of women in the United States identify as LGBTQ+, compared to 4.7% of men.
What this means is that even though there are a growing number of gay women in the United States, there is relatively little research among us, and opportunities for gay women to share our experiences with researchers. That means almost none. And this, in turn, means that research about queer women is not reaching health professionals, therapists, policy makers, educators, and funders. This also means that we are among those who should provide care for us, develop policies that support our rights and needs, and educate us and the next generation about the lives and livelihoods of queer women. This means there are significant gaps in knowledge about their health and wellbeing needs. experience.
Much of the research we conduct is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). To quantify this, of the 544 NIH-funded studies focused on LGBTQ+ people in 2021, 56% were HIV/AIDS-related. Looking at specific populations, 43% of studies focused on gay and bisexual men, and 30% focused on transgender people (as this was not further disaggregated by gender) We don’t know the percentage of studies that focus on trans women and trans men (specifically), 15% for bisexual people (also not disaggregated by gender), and 7% for lesbian women .
Therefore, overall, there is little research focused on the health and well-being of cis and transqueer women. These data also highlight that much of the research conducted in gay and bisexual men and transgender people focuses on HIV risk. Much less research has been done on mental health, relationships, and physical health outside of HIV and HIV risk among queer men and transgender people, so more research is definitely being done on these communities as well. Masu.
Why is this important? Funding by the NIH and other federal agencies determines what research is done, so the health of various LGBTQ+ communities and various health concerns are underfunded. Homogeneity has downstream effects on what we know and don’t know about health.
As a result, there is still much we don’t know. For example, is menopause different for queer women and trans men than for cishet women? To be honest, we know very little about aging as a whole for queer women and trans men. We know little about how relationships affect our health and well-being. and how the pandemic has affected us.
We also don’t really understand the “why” and “how” of queer women’s health. For example, queer women drink alcohol at higher rates than cishet women. why is that? We suspect this may be related to a combination of LGBTQ+-related bias, sexism, racism, and other sources of oppression/prejudice, but there is a lack of research to know for sure. I don’t know. We all have a hunch about the root causes of these health problems, but there is far too little research to answer these important questions with real data.
Returning queer women’s health and relationships to the priorities of LGBTQ+ health research
Two years ago, I was hired by Northwestern University’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Human Services (ISGMH) to give the institute a new focus on gay women’s health. My goal in my research is to learn more about our health and needs and bring the results back to our communities to give queer women the tools to advocate for themselves.
My research primarily uses qualitative methods. What this means is that I get to sit down with people, ask them questions, and learn everything about them. What a great job! We learn about the intimate relationships between cisgender queer women and transgender and non-binary people (basically everyone in the LGBTQ+ community except cisgender men), and explore all the stressors in their lives and their We want to understand how stressors affect relationships. My team and I have interviewed about 30 couples so far.
The stories we hear range from heartwarming stories of queer and trans love and resilience to harrowing stories of abuse, violence, and rejection. Over and over again, people who participate in our research tell us how grateful they are to be included in our research and how meaningful it is for them to share their stories. But sadly, this is also because most studies do not include queer women, and much of the research on transgender and non-binary people focuses on sexual risk.
I have never fully realized that the simple act of inviting queer women to talk about their experiences can have a potentially profound impact on their lives, and mine. I wasn’t thinking about it. Our research also works in micro ways such as making sure the people we interview feel seen, heard, and valued so that our research can make a real difference for queer women. , is also incredibly important in the larger social way of making visible the lives and experiences of queer women. And hopefully, thanks to our research, my future health care workers will know all about the health needs of queer women.
An invitation to tell me what you think
To introduce our research to the community, we’re hosting an event at Nobody’s Darling on November 3rd from 3pm to 5pm where you can eat, drink, talk a little about our research, and hear from us. We plan to collect opinions. We welcome a team of researchers and therapists who identify as queer and trans and are experts in queer and trans wellbeing.
Tell us a little bit about our research and then open it up to our audience and let us know what you think about our research and what needs in your community that researchers like us should know about. We answer your questions about queer and trans relationships, sex, and mental health, and speak only about the needs and concerns of our community. It’s a combination of City Hall and AMA (Ask Me Anything), with cozy and quirky fall-themed snacks.
Remember, November 3rd is the day we all set our clocks back an hour. What better way to spend that extra hour than to talk about queer and trans relationships over fall snacks? Visit our website (soqir.org) for more information and visit our Eventbrite page (https://www.soqir.org/soqir-panel) for updates and to sign up.
Photo by Cindy B Veldhuis
