Livestrong & Equality

The thing about being gay is that you live in a heterosexual world. The vast majority of the main stream is by for and about heterosexuals. Or you surround yourself and immerse yourself in gay culture, which comes at the price of less diversity in relation to subjects. For example, there's Women's Health magazine, but does it have a sister magazine for Lesbian Health? No. Does Women's Health magazine even acknowledge that women are lesbians, too? Not so much.

So you kind of get used to separating parts of your brain. Like reading Runner's World and understanding it may never include perspectives from the queer spectrum.

Or knowing that you can choose a book with a lesbian love interest or a book about werewolves but you'll probably never find a (really good) book that's both.

And maybe you get to the point where you can see where your concept of what is normal is significantly different than the majority's, because yours considers queers and bisexuals and the transgendered and the handicapped as normal and ordinary, even though, really, that's just because that's how it is in YOUR world.

So one night when a shiny new copy of Livestrong Quarterly arrives in the mailbox and you flip through it while thinking about what to make for dinner and you pause to skim through a story about the affects of gynecoogical cancer treatments on sex and you turn to the next page & see this, big as life in the middle of the page:

And I was just so blown away that a mainstream publication that is not built around LGBT issues would call this out in huge, bold text in the middle of the article. Not hidden away in the last paragraph. Acknowledging the different challenges people in these groups can face when dealing with medical professions. Without making it seem weird or awkward or abnormal.

Well played, Livestrong. Yet another reason Livestropng remains an organization worthy of your support.

Thank you.