Let's be perfectly Queer Podcast

Why Queer Patients Feel Unsafe in Healthcare (And How We Fix It) with Dr Lulu

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Welcome back to Let's Be Perfectly Queer Podcast, your go to LGBT Australian podcast for all things queer.

Why do so many LGBTQ+ people walk into a doctor's office already expecting to feel dismissed, misunderstood, or unsafe?

This week on Let's Be Perfectly Queer, we're joined by physician, educator, advocate and proud parent Dr. Lulu to unpack the realities of LGBTQ+ healthcare.

From growing up in Nigeria surrounded by homophobia, to navigating her own queer identity, raising a transgender daughter, and becoming one of the leading voices in affirming healthcare education, Dr. Lulu shares an honest and deeply personal conversation about bias, allyship, and what truly inclusive care looks like.

Together we discuss:

  • Why many LGBTQ+ people avoid medical care
  • The experiences transgender people face in healthcare settings
  • How doctors can unintentionally harm queer patients
  • The power of asking questions with compassion and consent
  • Dr. Lulu's "Find Me, Feel Safe, Trust Me" framework for affirming care
  • Her upcoming book First Do No Further Harm: Becoming Allies in White Coats
  • Why there is still hope for families, parents, and healthcare providers to learn, grow and become better allies

Whether you're LGBTQ+, a parent, healthcare worker, educator, or simply want to understand how to create safer spaces for queer people, this conversation is full of insight, empathy, and practical ways we can all do better.

🎧 Listen now to hear Dr Lulu's experience... And until next time, stay perfectly queer!




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Much love
Archie & Katie 🌈

Archie:
Welcome to Let's Be Perfectly Queer, a queer podcast creating space to talk about all things queer. My name is Archie and I'm joined today by my special guest, Dr. Lulu.

Dr Lulu:
Hey, Archie, nice to see you again.

So good to see you. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about you because you are a doctor, an advocate who's passionate about helping LGBTQ plus people feel safe, seen, and supported in healthcare spaces. We need more people like you.

Dr Lulu:
I need more people like me. I, yes, I mean, I'm happy to talk about myself, but I'm more, I'm happier to talk about the work. Yes.

Archie:
And that's what we're definitely going to get into that. So before we get into this episode first, though, did you just want to tell the listeners a little bit about yourself so they know who you are? Yeah, sure. I usually ask people how much time you have.

Dr Lulu:
I am born, bred, buttered, and slightly burned in Nigeria, one of the most religious and one of the most homophobic countries in the world. And I can proudly say that with my full chest, as we say back home, that I was raised Catholic. And one of the key notes that I gave is titled bias begins at home.

And indeed it does. And the first thing I heard about the queer community was from an auntie who I loved so much. But the first thing was she said I was going to go to hell. 

And as a very impressionable 11 year old, I took that to heart. I think I was, yeah, I think I was 11. I believed her because it's what kids do. 

And so I took that to heart. And then as I grew older, when I turned 16, I was graduating from high school. I told my dad that I liked boys and I liked girls. 

And he said, oh, it's a phase. And so at 11, I was told I was going to go to hell. At 16, I was told I was a phase. 

And then I went into medical school. And in medical school, they told us that being bisexual was a mental illness. So I had between my aunt and my dad and the medical school professors, I was never going to come out of the closet, which is what happens. 

We have a lot of mixed messaging is what I've come up with now when it comes to just the messages that we get about the queer community. We can talk about that later. So that's who I am. 

When I got married, I, for the most part, was living a heterosexual facing life because I'm actually now I'm pansexual. So being married to my ex-husband, we look like a heterosexual family. But I knew I wasn't. 

I mean, we always know who we are. I did that for 13 years. And the marriage went to the left. 

And then I eventually met my ex-wife, my now ex-wife. And we also were married for 10 years, almost 10 years. I think on the ninth year we split up. 

And so I started noticing a lot of my patients were coming with depressive illness or depressive issues. And I used to talk to her about it. And one day she said, you know, maybe there's something about you that makes the patient come to you. 

I was like, what do you mean? She said, well, maybe they see something in you because you kind of attract them. I was like, OK, well, I don't know. And she said, but do you think you're talking to the right people? Maybe you should be talking to their parents. 

I was like, why? She said, because each story you tell me, you said the child said the parent did this, the child said the parent did that. I was like, yeah, right. But I already talked to the parents. 

She said, yeah, but maybe like a coach. I was like, oh, OK. So I went to coach training school and then got out of that and started working with parents of LGBT plus kids. 

Before my kid told me she's trans, actually, I started working with parents. And after she told me, I was like, OK, I think I need to quit medicine to focus on this more. So that's kind of how that happened. 

And the rest is history. So here I am. I'm a physician.

I'm a life coach. I'm a physician educator first. And I'm a mom of a, I'm a affirming mom of a transgender young adult who actually turned 29 last month. 

And I these days, I mostly work as an educator for physicians because, first of all, doctors tend to listen to doctors. But also, there's a very, almost no representation of education about the queer community in the majority of the medical schools. I think only 16 percent of the medical schools in the U.S. and Canada have any kind of curriculum. 

And that's about five to 11 hours of contact time. But really, the recommendation is 35 to 65 hours. So there's a huge deficit of training. 

So I'm trying to bridge the gap and help fill in the blanks where I can, when I can. So that's kind of the longer shot of it. That sounds amazing what you're doing. 

Archie:
That's incredible. And you mentioned you have a transgender child, which is awesome. Did that in any way change the way you practice medicine and the way you communicate to parents?

Dr Lulu:
Well, I've actually retired from medicine. 

So I retired five years ago in 2021. And my kid told me she's trans in 22. So I haven't really been seeing patients like I used to. 

I'm working more in advocacy now. That said, I do maybe two days a month at one of the clinics here. And I wouldn't say it has changed the way I see, I practice medicine because, you know, when you're a pediatrician, you're always going to be advocating for the child.

What I think may have affected it is right now in the U.S., we have a lot of anti-LGBTQ plus laws and anti-LGBTQ plus rhetoric. So that is feeding the misconceptions and the myths around the queer community. And I'm having to work with maybe what the parents are hearing and what's confusing them because they're not sure and all the things. 

So it's been interesting because I don't really work with parents anymore. I work with physicians. But one of the things I see is that we are all raised by the same society, to the same derogatory terms that the queer people hear is the same things that the physicians hear is the same things that the parents hear in childhood and as they grow up. 

So it's mixed messages because some people hear derogatory terms, some hear nothing at all, some are told specifically you're going to go to hell, you're going to get AIDS, and then some are bullied, you know, so it's a mixed bag. But the majority of people actually in a poll that I did recently said they didn't hear anything about the LGBT community. And I leaned forward. 

I was like, how do you not hear anything about a group of people who make up about 10 to 12% of the population, just the adults? When we start getting to the teenagers, it's 26% of high school youth are LGBT. So if it's 25 to 26%, it's about a quarter of high school kids and about 12% of adults and you hear nothing about them, that may even be worse than hearing derogatory things about them. Because when you don't hear anything, you absolutely have no representation. 

You can't see yourself. And it's like, well, who am I? Why is no one talking about me? Like, am I imagining things? And what people do when they don't know or when they don't hear anything is they fill in the blanks. And then they fill it in with what they're thinking, which a lot of times is incorrect, because it's still influenced by society. 

So it becomes a very interesting story why parents hesitate when their child says, mom, I'm gay, or why doctors even hesitate to see a transgender patient because what they've been hearing about the patients, they've been living with it, you know? And so when you hear a message, you have a thought about it. And then when you keep on hearing the same message, you begin to believe the message. And when multiple people begin to hear the message, it becomes mass conviction. 

We are convinced that this is the truth about it. And then when there's mass conviction, it becomes the culture. So it now feeds the culture. 

So that's why parents will hesitate, even when they love their child. Even when they love their child. What happened with me was I loved my kid, but I was still thinking that, well, I don't want you to be gay because I don't want the world to treat you badly.

But while I was doing that, I became my child's first bully. I was the first person to create an unsafe space for the child. And so I use my lived experience as a queer person who heard the negative messages and also as an adult and a parent of a child to hopefully help people to see that, you know, first of all, they are adult, queer, Black, immigrant, you know, people. 

But also, I can be a pediatrician and I can be queer and I still not know enough and I still be my child's first bully. All of those things can exist until you begin to unlearn and then replace that with the facts. Then maybe, just maybe, we can move forward. 

Archie:
Maybe. Yeah, it's very true. I grew up Catholic as well and there was no representation for me. 

So there was some homophobic stuff, but I really didn't understand it. But when you grow up without that information, you feel wrong. You say, what's wrong with me? Why do I feel this way? Has something happened? Like what's going on? And so the fact that, you know, you've really unpicked all that and why it happens. 

This is why we need representation. This is why we need just information so that people don't feel like, why is there no else like me? And that's so important. And why do you think that so many LGBTQ plus people walk into medical spaces already expecting to feel unsafe or dismissed? So I think it kind of borders into what we just talked about. 

Dr Lulu:
For most of their lives, they have been fed BS, right? About who they are. And then doctors are a composite representation of the society. We're not raised in a different world. 

We hear the same things that the patients are hearing. And truthfully, a lot of LGBT people, I mean, there's studies and studies and more studies that have shown that a good number of them, I think it was like up to 63% of them or so, 26 to 63% of them have experienced harm. They've actually experienced it. 

And so if I've experienced harm from Dr. Archie and I tell my friend who is gay, my friend is either not going to go to see Dr. Archie or they're going to go to see Dr. Archie with like, okay, right, bracing themselves. And then sometimes it doesn't have to be directly done to them. It could be something that they observed, something that they've seen happen, something that they've heard. 

But a lot of doctors, so medicine is paternalistic. So it's like the patriarchy. It's like dominant doctor knows everything.

You are just, I don't know, a means to an end, a way I can pay my bills. Here's what's wrong with you. Here's what you need to take. 

Here's how you're going to feel better. And that's traditional medicine. And studies have shown that that doesn't really work well for LGBT, really for any marginalized people. 

And so they already come in, they're already marginalized, right? They don't get what they're supposed to be getting. Society's not really like treating them right. And then they come in to see the doctor and the doctor is this big burly figure with a white coat and reading glasses and looks like he knows everything, has no emotions, no nothing. 

And you're just like, like shaking in your boots and you can't even really like relax in front of them. So a lot of people, I mean, we're supposed to really go towards joy and freedom, but most people just really would rather go away from pain, right? Even if we're not going towards joy, we're definitely going away from pain. So I think most LGBT people have either heard about other people having bad experiences or they have themselves had bad experiences. 

And I did a poll on threads one time and I asked the people, I said, they have threads, you know, what you struggle with the most when it comes to going to your doctor's office. And they came out and they spoke their minds and they were like, silence, the doctor doesn't listen to me. I felt judged. 

And people can feel, they can read the room, the energy that with which you come into the room, they can sense it. I felt judged. I felt like they had no compassion for me. 

And then when you throw in other things like being Black or being an immigrant or having an accent or being a Muslim or being, you know, disabled. Oh my God. Or having help if you're homeless. 

So all of those things pile up. And a lot of Black transgender women specifically, which is really the group that my child belongs. I mean, they are on live by their partners. 

Archie:
It's just terrible. That's so hard because I'm also transgender. And when I was first going through the first parts of the journey and trying to explain to some doctors, it was very dismissive.

You know, have you done enough research? There was one that still sticks with me. It sticks with me every time. I was like, and I went to male doctors because they were easy to get into.

So then I went to a female doctor thinking, okay, maybe she will be a bit more understanding. And I said, look, here's my pathway at the moment. I don't want hormones, but I need top surgery.

And she's like, what's top surgery? And I explained it all to her. And then she was like, so breast augmentation. I'm like, no, no, no.

Can we please just call it Top Surgery? Cause every time she said that, it made me feel very dysphoric. And she kept writing. And I said, and then I said, I just need you to write a letter for a referral.

And she kept putting breast augmentation. And it was just those, that little thing that then I just, I avoided all doctors for another couple of years. And even though it was hurting me, I was wearing like binders.

It was impacting my breathing, all that kind of stuff. And because of that doctor's experience I had with that doctor, it stopped my whole journey for years, which is, which is sad. I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have that story.

Is there any other subtle ways that you know, or I've heard of that healthcare providers have unintentionally, cause I know she probably didn't do this on purpose. That's just the understanding that she knew, but they've unintentionally harmed queer patients, even when they thought they were being supportive.


Dr Lulu:
I think implicit bias exists.

I mean, if you open people's brains, you will see it in there. One of the many polls I've done, a lot of polls, one of the polls I did recently was to just kind of get a feeling of doctors. I said, I wanted to know, you know, what they struggle with the most when it comes to affirming their patients.

And the number one thing was, I think it was, they were not taught. That was the number one thing that we had. 68% of them said they were not taught.

The second and a very close, I think 58% said their own biases. So the doctors know, I mean, everybody knows. I mean, I think you'll be lying if you say you don't have bias.

So everybody knows that they have biases and then going back to where bias begins. And the fact that if your home is the first place, somebody tells you, don't play with that kid. That's not home.

Don't, we don't talk to people like that. That comes from home, from people you love and trust. So of course it's confusing, right? Even for the doctor.

So, so the first thing was they were not taught. The second thing was that, you know, that they feel like they have bias. And then the third thing was, I think about like pronouns and just understanding non-binary and things like that.

And so I say that so we can build like a background information. So I don't, I'm not, I want to play devil's advocate because I'm also, I'm both queer and I'm a physician and both of them can exist because I'm here. Right.

But I think what I want us to focus on is that you don't know what you don't know. And the difference between a random doctor out there in Oyster Bay and your doctor is that in your doctor's case, you repeatedly try to correct them. And one of the, one of the reasons I left medicine was my kid came back from one of their doctor's visits and said, mom, I'm done.

And I was like, done with what? And she's like, I'm done. And I don't know if my book is here. It's usually not there when I need it.

But she said, I'm done teaching my doctors. She said, I'm done being treated like a second class citizen. I'm done being almost every time I go for a headache or a sore throat, here, somebody's asking me about my genitalia, about my transitioning.

She said, it's just, it's just tiring. And I think there's almost like a novelty factor, like, oh, they're trans. Oh, let me ask them about that.

But they're not thinking about how many people before them have asked them about that. And I'm not trans, but I have a very specific Nigerian accent. And so that's a very miniscule percentage of what it's like for people to always ask you about your gender.

People always ask me about my accent. Like, I'm just tired of it. So now what I do is I lead with, I'm Nigerian, just so you don't ask me, oh, I sense an accent.

Everybody has an accent, but Americans don't believe that. So it's like, that's a whole nother conversation. So I say that to say they don't, they're not thinking about how many people before them have asked that question.

And they keep asking. So that's one. Number two is little things like your office being representative of a diversity of people, like seeing Black people in your office, seeing queer people in your office, seeing people with their pronouns in your office, seeing people with, you know, wearing, I wear these bracelets everywhere I go to because I'm a visible ally.

I wear, this is at the back of my phone because I'm a visible ally. I want people to know that I am. So, but if you go into a doctor's office and everything is just white and blue, and there's no sign of rainbows, nothing showing me, not even the bathroom says gender, you know, unisex or whatever bathroom, little things like that say a lot to the queer person, but maybe not to the doctor.

And so that's why sometimes I want to show compassion for them and at least tell them now, after you've told them and they continue to do it now, that's intentional. That's no longer implicit. That's not explicit.

And one of my friends, Miss Tamara, actually one of the reasons I'm writing the book is she talked about it. She said, you know, she's just, she said, I hate my doctor. I'm like, oh my God, hate is a powerful word.

She's six, five or six, seven. She's a regular, not trans, just a cisgender woman, but she's a lesbian. And she said for 10 years, she was going to a doctor's office for 10 years.

She's been telling them, I don't have carnal sex that way. I'm a lesbian and there's no chance that I can be pregnant. She's also a masculine, but the point is it doesn't matter whatever it is.

And she's told them and she said, every time she goes to the doctor, they always ask her, so do you think you're pregnant? So I want to just say that there are two different kinds of doctors. There's those who don't know truly who lead with vulnerability and transparency. I might get it wrong.

I don't know it. I'm willing to learn. And if I get it wrong, of course, correct.

And then there are some who's like, you know what? I don't want to talk about that. Listen, in a doctor's group recently, somebody said to me, instead of that rope to around your wrist, it should be around your neck. Somebody said that to me about my bracelet.

And at that point, I didn't have these other bracelets with it. It was just this one. So there are people out there who are hateful, but that was in a doctor's group.

Now, I don't know if the person is a doctor or not, but it was in a doctor, nurses, nurse practitioner group.


Archie:
That's disgusting. That is honestly disgusting that a doctor would say that to you. 

And because I spoke about it recently on the podcast, but I have an amazing doctor. I do. He wanted to ask questions about being transgender, but he did ask, he said, do you have the energy 


Dr Lulu:
and the bandwidth? And I think taking permission, because again, for me, I'm a queer woman.

I'm an advocate. I'm a fucking ally. I'm okay with you asking me, but my daughter is not.

And I think the thing about it is you can ask, is it okay if I ask you and if I don't have that, you know, no, no, I don't want you to ask me, because you can also look it up. This is 2026, right? You can also look it up. Now, that said, there are some of us who are in the space of education.

You can ask us pretty much anything, and you can ask me pretty much anything except maybe about my child's genitalia. But also, she's 29, so it's her story to tell at this point, because my story is enough. As her mother, like, I don't have to tell you about the child, because as her mother, I can tell you up to the point of being her mother and that story, and it's enough for you.

If you want any more, you're going to have to find the people who have the bandwidth for that. So I think I like the way your doctor went about it. Like, is it okay if I ask you questions? And you have every, no is a complete sentence.

People forget that no is a complete sentence, and if someone says no, that is it. People are allowed to answer however they like, and it definitely sounds like there is some gaps in the education. As you said, there was a very small, small percent of doctors who have the LGBTQ plus framework as part of their education.

Yeah, it's because, it's partially because of the patriarchy. So medical, so I think it was in 1973 that they removed homosexuality from being a mental illness. I was four in 73.

So it's not a long time. It's in my lifetime. And then I think it was 2013 that they deregulated intersex.

Now, this order of genital differentiation, that's the new term, right? But for transgender, I think it's the gender dysphoria that has now been deregulated to gender incongruence or something like that. So these are happening in the last five to 10 years. We're not talking about something that's like, so it's still new.

Unfortunately, we also have, in the US at least, a government that is actively homophobic and actively pushing transphobia. So even most of the strides that we made in the past, we're losing them now. But I think as a mother of a trans woman, I can never give up on hope.

Then I have nothing else. I have nothing if I give up on hope. So I'm not going to.

I'm going to hold on to hope and believe that whatever goes around is going to come around. And that's all there is to it. Yeah.

Archie:
It just needs the next world leaders to be full of love and acceptance. And then we'll start to see a change again. And you have this framework.

Can you explain to me your framework? Find me, feel safe, trust me?

Dr Lulu:
That's for physicians. Again, at this point, I'm a physician educator. I train physicians, doctor's offices, medical schools, hospital systems on affirming care, not gender affirming care. 

So for doctor's offices, the small entrepreneurs, the small doctor's offices for affirming care, the find me is you putting yourself in a situation where the patients can literally find you. So you're on social media with your pronouns, you're on social media with your pronoun pins and not only doing pride month, you're on social media talking about the fact that you are an affirming practice, like owning it, making posts about it, talking about them in the affirmative language so that people can find you. You are on, I don't know, on lists out there affirming lists or directories. 

You're speaking in panels. You are doing workshops, maybe not extremely, but you're in panels at least. And panels, you're speaking in the positive, like the patients are like, oh, so doctor, do you have, yes, in my practice, we are, we are affirming. 

Oh, your website has an LGBT pin on it. You partner with LGBT plus organizations. You're not just saying it, you're about doing it. 

So that's the find me. When your patient comes to your office, your signage, like one of the offices that I trained recently, the woman, something, something, something, something, but they see trans men there. So I said, well, what's going to happen? So I told him, I said, put, just put, put a parenthesis between the W and the O so that people can read it as women or as men, right? Because you cater to all. 

So, but that was an example of just being visible in the society. And then when the patient comes into your office, do they feel safe? In fact, before they come to your office, do they feel safe? The person who picks up the phone to make the appointment, are they constantly dead naming you? Do they hesitate? Oh, you have a deep voice, but your name is Mary. Can you tell they're like, well, ma'am, I don't know. 

Are you sure that's your name or what? You know, like things like that, like challenging you on the phone, making it look like you don't know what you're saying. And then when they come into the office, do they feel safe at the front office? Do they call their name with respect? Do they, do they, when they say Michelle and you get up and they're like, so it's obvious, like somebody looking at them or, or do they like say, well, ma'am, even the paperwork, even, does he have space for you to put your personal pronouns, the pronouns that affirm you as opposed to, because they're not preferred pronouns, they are personal pronouns, right? Do you have room to put your own, if they are neo pronouns, does the paperwork allow you to be yourself, the words, the way they describe the words, where you have the pain, this is chest versus breasts, things like that. Do they know, are they aware of that by the paperwork on the computer system, the, the entry paperwork and all of those things are all what can make you feel safe or not safe. 

You think, you know what, everything from the front desk, all the way to the back door, when you, when you get in to get your weight and your height, is the nurse aware that you, maybe you wear binders and that's what, that's a binder, or that you call this chest and not breasts, or that you can be pregnant, even though you're a man, like things like that, do they make a big show of, oh, based on their facial expressions, or are they like, sure, I mean, we take care of people like that here. And you're not going to get that out of a vacuum. We have to be taught that. 

So that's what I mean by medical school is not teaching me. It's not just prescription or the dose of hormones. That's the easiest thing, because I can Google that, but the care, the spaces in between, that's what the patient is looking for in safe. 

And then of course, trust me, when they come in to see the doctor, can they in fact trust that you will hold space for them? Or you're not just like, ask and then disregard it. Do they trust that you will send them to other doctors who are also affirming? Can they trust you to send them to a doctor who is affirming? Can they trust that you will not tell, maybe your paperwork, you will not put that you're HIV positive, or they will not put that you are a man who has sex with men, but you're married to a woman. How do you navigate that? Those are the things that makes them trust you and maybe come back, because the queer people are fiercely loyal. 

When they find a doctor that they love, they're not going anywhere and they'll tell their friends. So it's a win-win for you. Your practice can grow very fast because these people are like, I found a doctor who's affirming. 

They'll never leave you. So I want the doctors to understand that the find me, feel safe, trust me, I just made that up because I was like, I need the doctors to be thinking about that. If you're thinking about that, then you go to your office and you make sure that things are in place so that the patient comes and feels safe. 

So it's a little thing that the patient's like, oh my God, doctor, nobody has ever asked me that before. Or, oh my goodness, thank you so much for seeing me. I feel heard. 

I feel seen. And all you said was, tell me more. Or all you said was that thank you for sharing that with me. 

How can I support you? Has anything changed in your sexuality since the last time you came here? And we ask everyone these questions so that we can provide the best care. Really? You ask everyone that? Yes. We ask them, they're never going to leave you. 

And then the person who is homophobic, when you ask them, say, well, why are you asking my pronouns? We ask everyone because we want to provide the best care. They're going to, oh, well, my daughter actually needs to come here because my daughter is a lesbian. You know, something like that. 

So again, it's a gift that keeps on giving. All that framework is just kind of the expectations to be a good human. Right? Okay. 

You would think. But the funny thing about it is with the doctors, when I asked them, so how many of you hesitate to see your LGBT patients? A lot of times, I don't get as many hands. And then I showed them the study that says doctors believe that they are affirming and LGBT people believe that they can't find these doctors, you know? So it's like, what's going on? Why is there a disconnect between what the doctors are saying and what the LGBT people are feeling? So there's a mismatch. 

There's an assumption of affirmation by the doctors. And there's a confirmation. There's no affirmation by the patients. 

Because if you want to hear, you have to ask the patients. And if patients are saying that they're not being affirmed, then they're not being affirmed. No matter what, no matter what you're thinking or how you're thinking that you are in your office. 

Archie:
So that's pretty much it. Listen to your patients. They're the ones who know if they're being affirmed or not.

And let's get to your book before we run out of time. Your upcoming book. Oh, thank you so much.

Dr Lulu:
Yes. It's titled First Do No Further Harm. So it's still, as a matter of fact, I decided I was going to go to the store tomorrow, this book.

I'm going to go to the store tomorrow and make a fake binder with my new book so I can start showing it to people because I don't have the book yet. It's not ready yet. But it's titled First Do No Further Harm.

And really, the subtitle is Becoming Allies in White Coats. And just basically, it's a field guide for helping physicians become safe spaces, safer spaces and provide safe, equitable affirming care. Equitable needed to be there because you have to meet people where they are.

You have to meet or you have to meet people where they want you to meet them. So if it's patient-centered care and it's human-centered care, then the human has to lead. And so I say that because I always come back to the black man who's having sex with men, who is what we call down low in America.

I went to an event last year during the Pride Month. It was a capital pride, was a pride in Washington, D.C. And a friend of mine had a party and there were more than 400 African men there. Most of them had a wedding ring, but they were married to women, most of them.

And they were like, oh, auntie, you know now. I'm like, what, why? He said, no, no, no. Ah, I don't want anybody to know, please.

I don't want to. But that is how HIV is being contracted. And the highest rate of new cases of HIV is black heterosexual women who are married to these men who are having unprotected sex with these men.

And the men are like, no. And it's all because there's so much homophobia. So my book was born out of, I started thinking about it after I went to that event.

And I said, how can I as a physician intercede with other doctors? I feel like patients still trust their doctors. Enough of us still trust some. So how can I equip our doctors so that they can become more visible, so that these patients can get better counsel? Because I can't save everyone.

I'm only one person. But if I can teach one doctor and each doctor has about 2,500 patients, then if I teach one doctor, if I teach 10 doctors, we're at 25,000. It's like, okay.

So I'm like, okay, maybe I can start teaching doctors. Because I was very sad. I was saddened by what I saw.

And they're human beings. And they want to be free and be who they are, but they can't because society basically has them in a chokehold. So the book is titled First Do No Further Harm, because I really wanted it to be around what we are already doing by taking an oath to first do no harm.

And now I want us as doctors to believe that patients are already coming in pre-harmed. So when they come to see you, the first thing I want you to do is not create any further harm. And that patient, that next one could be me or my child.

And so we truly don't want to be harmed anymore. So that's kind of what the book is about. So it's 17 chapters.

And I'm actually on chapter 16 of self-edits today. And that's where I got burned out. I was like, I am tired of editing this book, but it's almost, I've got one more chapter to go.

And so I'm really excited. It's going to be dropping. It was supposed to drop this summer, but it's going to drop in the fall.

And I cannot wait. I cannot wait.


Archie:
It's been so lovely hearing you talk and knowing there are physicians out there like you who are so loud and proud and wanting to make a difference, especially in the culture and the what's happening in the U.S. right now.

You doing this is incredible. I just want to say it's incredible. Thank you so much for what you're doing, because if there were more physicians like you, we wouldn't have what's happening in the world right now.

So it's a massive credit to you. It's been so lovely just hearing all this and knowing that there's an advocate like you, a loud ally out there as well. Thank you.


Dr Lulu:
There are some more physicians. I know a few of them on LinkedIn. They are white.

They are male. They are cisgender. They are gay.

So I will say, from the Black perspective, I think I'm the only one. From the woman perspective, I'm definitely the only one. And from the immigrant perspective, I am the only one.

So when you put it all together, I'm the Black, queer, immigrant physician mom of a trans kid. I'm potentially the only one out of 8 billion. So I want to say thank you to the universe for giving me this assignment.

I don't take it lightly. I fought and screamed and kicked loudly. I did not want this assignment.

I was that parent who hesitated. I was that physician who did not know what I did not know. And I'm still learning.

And I was that queer person who was in the closet for a very, very, very ultra long time. I only found out two years ago that I'm pansexual because I had a crush on this gentleman who turned out to be transgender. I'm like, wait, what? So I went to go look it up.

I said, wait, wait, what does it mean if somebody is attracted to a trans person and a male and there's a pansexual? What is that? And so I am still learning and I'm still becoming. And that's all she wrote.

Archie:
I do love that, you know, you're still becoming and you're still learning. 

It's such an important thing. And everybody listening, you can still learn and become and that people in your lives who may be homophobic and who might not understand right now, there is still hope if they have the right pathway. And, you know, you know, so it's not the it's not the end of the story for everyone.


Dr Lulu:
Exactly. And actually, I'm glad you brought that up before we go. There's a study, there's actually a study that showed that most parents eventually get it.

In fact, they said the parents who are going to get it are going to get it within the first two years. The parents who are going to be affirming usually will become affirming within the first two years. And I want to say that because it's important that the queer people who hear my voice know that don't throw the baby with the bathwater.

A lot of parents who are going to get it will get it within the first two years. Give them grace. We have all fallen short and needed grace ourselves.

I was the parent who didn't get it. I didn't take two years, of course, but I got it within a month. But but everyone is not me.

I have work to do. I wanted to do the work. So I did it.

But parents can get it within the first two years. And so just keep educating them. My kid sent me to the Bible.

She was like, good. And then when she said it's online, it's on Wikipedia, whatever, she sent me the link. So give them grace.

Give them grace now. Not all parents will end up getting it, but some will. That's true.  For those, we have to keep going.

Archie:
So thank you so much for getting in touch. And this has been such a great conversation. 

What you're doing is incredible. Do you have such a gorgeous vibe to you? And I could listen to you just talk about anything all day long. You've just got this energy. 

And so thank you so much. I've learned so much, which I already thought I knew a lot about what's going on in America. But I still you like this still again, there's still so much to learn. 

It's been a great conversation. If our followers want to check out your stuff or find you, where can they get in touch with you? 


Dr Lulu:
Well, thank you for asking. So I'm on social media. 

I like to say I like to hang out more on LinkedIn, but that's not true. I prefer to hang out on Instagram. I have a brand new Instagram page for my practice. 

It's called the Tallulah's Pride Corner. So put the S for the Tallulah's Pride Corner. We need some more followers up there. 

So please, please come find us and follow us. And then I also have a regular page. My personal page is at Coach Udako, U-D-A-K-U, Coach Udako. 

But if you're on LinkedIn, I would love to meet you on LinkedIn. So add Dr. Lulu on LinkedIn. I'm the one and only on LinkedIn. 

Now there's a couple, but they are fakes. You will see my registered trademark on mine because I own the trademark of Dr. Lulu in North America. So that's how you know I'm the real one. 

And also just, you know, you can send me an email, coach at D-R-L-U-L-U.com. If you have a question, if you have a concern, you can send me a DM. If you're homophobic, of course, I'll block you. I mean, hello, that's what I do. 

But if you, if you're not, you can also listen to our Moms for Trans Kids podcast. We have a podcast called Moms for Trans Kids. Moms, the number four trans kids podcast. 

And I have a book called About Your Black Transgender Child, a big fat book. You can, you can check out and let me know what you think about the book and educate yourself and then ask me any questions you have. Thank you so much. 

Archie:
Amazing. I'll put all those links in our show notes so people can find you a little bit easier as well. Been a great conversation. 

Thank you so much for taking the time. It's been eye opening, but in a good and interesting way. And I hope that the listeners have enjoyed it as well. 

If you have, don't forget to rate, review and subscribe and also go check out all of Dr. Lulu's stuff, because I'm sure that you're going to want to keep keep a track of what's going on and what she's doing out there as well. So thank you so much. Thank you everyone for listening. 

And until next time, I hope that we have been 


Dr Lulu:
perfectly queer.