Being out as lesbian wasn’t simple when Jennifer Potter attended Harvard Medical College within the Eighties.
The curriculum she encountered didn’t embody materials on sexuality. Her coursework didn’t handle LGBTQ well being disparities besides in a unit about HIV/AIDS, which was simply rising on the time, or find out how to present affirming look after LGBTQ sufferers.
The tradition round her didn’t provide a lot reprieve. Though two queer college students had began a membership the yr earlier than she enrolled, Potter was nonetheless the one out scholar in her class. She watched a dean take down a flyer saying one of many membership’s conferences. A classmate audibly prayed for Potter every morning as she walked to her seat within the lecture corridor.
“It was extremely lonely,” she recalled.
