Beyond pronouns and rainbow logos

Readiness is…

Well, being “ready” is more than displaying your pronouns or making a rainbow logo.

Knowledge

It’s seeking out, gaining, and holding knowledge — about identities and terms, but also histories and current contexts. Histories and contexts not only of LGBTQ2S+ communities, but other communities too — d/Deaf; disabled; Indigenous; immigrant, refugee, racialized and ethnocultural; rural and remote; and more — because LGBTQ2S+ people are multifaceted and will hold multiple identities that all need empathy and understanding.

Empathy and Humility

It’s having an approach of empathy and humility, and being okay with — or even welcoming — discomfort: a willingness to be wrong, to apologize for and own your mistakes and the mistakes of your organization, and repair.

Accountability

It’s having structures and leadership within an organization that hold us accountable, that listen for and respond to areas of harm; that implement ideas for change — being aware of existing barriers; and having inclusive and respectful paperwork; gender-neutral washrooms, affirming signage, and clear anti-discrimination policies.

Ongoing support

It’s welcoming and LGBTQ2S+ people as researchers, management, and staff, to better integrate these perspectives in to your organization — and supporting them and their communities with fair wages and networked opportunities.

Safety first

It’s cultivating safer spaces; and applying trauma and resiliency informed practices and principles.

One useful tool to check your organization’s current readiness is this survey developed by Mind Map BC (starts at, “Tell us more about your work!”)

Readiness is ongoing

There’s a minimum an organization can strive to before it can say it’s “ready”: if your staff is not willing to acknowledge and respect clients’ or team members’ relationships or genders, for example, there’s clearly some work to do.

Remember: one negative experience can drive someone away from health research forever. For this reason, and for the safety of your team members, it’s very important that we avoid these highly negative experiences.

But, readiness is also ongoing. No organization and no person will be perfectly “safe.” We can all strive to become safer.

One key way to do this is to deliberately shift the way we think of “capacity” in research partnerships: from “capacity building”, to “capacity bridging” — a term coined by Indigenous researcher Charlotte Loppie and team.

This means recognizing the knowledge and skills that all your team members bring to your team — including, and especially, patient partners’ knowledge and skills.

Researchers contribute through their many years of scientific training and experience in research.  Staff have specialized skills and experience in their own fields. Patient partners have experience and skills from their own living and working experiences. LGBTQ2S+ people can contribute experience and skills from their living experience being non-cis and non-straight — that is, when they are willing to share this part of themselves with their teams. This requires spaces that are accepting and respectful, and responsive to and appreciative of these contributions (and don’t ‘tokenize’ them — i.e., only see them as a source of these contributions).

In short, for LGBTQ2S+ people to feel safe to contribute their non-cis and non-straight perspectives, this requires spaces that are actively working towards their safety.

Readiness makes research better

One negative experience can drive someone away from health research forever, but a series of positive ones can build knowledge, activate resiliency and bring opportunities to them — and the people around them.

On a research team, we’re a team. We are coming together, contributing through our own lenses and perspectives. So, let’s make spaces where this can truly happen, where all forms of experience are embraced and cherished.

This helps us continue to learn, as people, and as teams and organizations. And so, it helps us do better research, together.