2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion training in public health: Affective opportunities and challenges


Pamela Lamb, McGill University

The LGBT+ Family Coalition is a Quebec-based community rights organization that aims for the social and legal recognition of families from sexual diversity and gender plurality. For nearly a decade, Coalition trainers have been delivering 2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion training sessions to thousands of educators and public health professionals across Quebec, to help demystify and shed light on the realities of 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities and provide measures for support. This past year, trainers have reported a rise in verbal microaggressions from training participants, such as discriminating or stigmatizing comments or questions directed at the trainers themselves or towards 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities. These testimonies indicate that the rise in anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ rhetoric in society seems to be having a corresponding expression among professionals in health and social services. This theoretical study addresses the social and affective forces that underlie anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ rhetoric. I take an affective-discursive practice approach (Calder-Dawe and Martinussen, 2021) to examine the nature of social and anti-social engagement in 2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion training. I examine how affective-discursive dimensions of social identity are articulated and how they generate feelings of (dis)identification and (un)belonging. The objective of my study is to understand the working of social power through affective/discursive practices (Wetherell, 2013) that mobilize outgroup derogation and ingroup celebration (Van Dijk, 1996). My study foregrounds feminist epistemologies of empathy (Collins, 2000; Meyers, 1994; Tong, 1997), and the importance of feeling as knowledge (Hemmings, 2012). The gap between ways of knowing and ways of being in education and public health—as in everyday life—resonates in issues surrounding what evokes and what inhibits compassionate social action. I define compassionate social action as responding compassionately to the suffering of others in an embodied and inclusive way of caring (Lamb, 2023). The study’s overarching research question is, How can 2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion trainings be developed and implemented in ways that mobilize participants’ individual experiences towards collective capacity for solidarity with 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities? As measures to reduce heath disparities are being integrated into health programs and services (Health Disparities Task Group, 2004), training health and social care professionals on unequal social relations has been seen as key to promoting more equitable health outcomes (Canadian Medical Association, 2013). Yet in 2023, anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ bias is still at the root of inequities that result in a high burden of poor health in 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities (Comeau et al., 2023). Health and social care professionals, policymakers, and educators are therefore key participants in the Coalition’s trainings, as they play a critical role in reducing disparities rooted in anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ rhetoric and policy. However, the affective elements that underlie their professional practice, like implicit biases, can produce barriers to their clinical, legislative, and educational effectiveness. Recognizing what feelings are evoked in anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ rhetoric is critical to understanding why those feelings matter for knowing and acting differently. Attending to the affective-discursive dynamics of 2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion training—such as how it feels for participants to notice and challenge implicit biases—offers ethical foundations for meeting participants where they are at, which can produce a politicized impetus to change (Hemmings, 2012).Moreover, it is imperative for attitudinal and behavioural change, so that educators and public health professionals take compassionate social action to protect and improve the health and wellbeing of 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities. This paper contributes to research in gender and sexuality, and to the sociology of health, by shedding light on how public health professionals’ affective-discursive practices in 2S/LGBTQIA+ awareness and inclusion training may reveal (1) anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ bias corresponding with the rise in anti-2S/LGBTQIA+ rhetoric in society; and (2) personal accountability and shared responsibility for challenging hate and sustaining shared futures.

This paper will be presented at the following session: