Intersections: Cultures, sexualités et genres

Chapitre 11. The Colour of Queer Health Care: Experiences of Multiple Oppression in the Lives of Queer People of Colour in Canada

11 C H A P I T R E THE COLOUR OF QUEER HEALTH CARE Experiences of Multiple Oppression in the Lives of Queer People of Colour in Canada1 Bill RYAN Shari BROTMAN Amir BARADARAN Edward LEE 1. Thanks to Health Canada, Population Health Fund for funding this research endeavor. Also thanks to Julian M. Awwad and Leah Malowaniec for their contributions. 308 Intersections Much anecdotal evidence and some literature suggest that queer2 individuals from communities of colour3 face significant barriers in accessing health and social services. These barriers take various forms: discrimination, marginalisation, mainstreaming identity politics of the gay movement to reflect a hegemonic “white” concept, lack of accommodation for culturallyspecific expressions of sexualities, alternatives to coming out processes, and limited awareness and understanding among health professionals of specific racialised community health issues. Moreover, there are limited studies that specifically address these issues in Western countries in general. 2. We have chosen to use the term queer instead of gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB), because of the context in which the term queer emerged in academia to challenge the rigid definitions of the existing GLB categories. We believe that because of its quest to complicate the notions of gender, sex and sexuality, this term offers an interesting ground in which “other” perceptions and conceptions of these notions could be discussed . However, we remain conscious of the shortcomings of the term queer, including the fact that it was first reclaimed by “white” North American scholars, therefore failing to fully capture the nuances of the way the notions of sex, gender and sexuality are and have been negotiated outside of that context. For example, the term “TwoSpirit ” was reclaimed by many members of Aboriginal communities in Canada and the United States as an attempt to reflect their unique way of accommodating sexual diversity that existed prior to their colonisation by Europeans (Meyer-Cook, 1998). 3. We have chosen to use the terms communities of colour and racialised communities interchangeably, instead of the term “ethno-cultural communities,” given the risk, in using the term “ethno-cultural,” of erasing the concept of racialisation and thus making it increasingly difficult to address issues of racism. In fact, the term ethno-cultural does not adequately call attention to the multiple identities reflected in the unique terms racialisation, colour, ethnicity and culture respectively. The term “race” is understood as a socially constructed (hence “racialisation”) rather than a biologically constructed concept or category espoused by colonialist epistemologies in which skin colour among other visible, socially selected traits are used to classify groups hierarchically (Christensen, 1996). By explicitly identifying race, attention is focussed on the social, historical and political roots of racist oppression. These terms are typically separated from the terms “ethnic” and “ethnicity” which refer to people who choose to maintain common bonds, such as those of language, ancestry or attachment to geographic location (Christensen, 1996). Culture is a term closely aligned to ethnicity which is shaped by common experiences that lead people to develop values, norms, behaviors and lifestyles in response to social, economic and political realities. The terms ethnic and cultural, with their suggestion in implying agency of self-identification are limited in their capacity to address the ways in which racism, by contrast, operates to define and classify others who have little power to name themselves. Moreover, the term “ethno-cultural” communities includes both people of colour as well as those from a white ethnic origin, whereas the terms “people of colour” and “racialised people” uniquely emphasizes the selected sample of participants in the context of this research. The Colour of Queer Health Care 309 There is little knowledge of health issues affecting queer people of colour, and little information is available on their interactions with the health care and social services system. Such gaps are even more glaring in the Canadian context. The paucity of information on the experiences of health care access among queer people of colour has important consequences. Without adequate information on the experiences and perspectives of queer people with respect to their health and access to health care, it becomes increasingly difficult for health care practitioners and policy makers to adapt services to meet their needs. As a result, the health of queer people of colour continues to be put at risk. This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative study, undertaken in 2001, whose purpose was to gather information about the experiences of queer people...