Dr. Trinetra Haldar Gummaraju on ‘Experiences as an intern and medical student’ (edited, in the speaker’s words):

When I started medical school, I was 18, it was the year 2015. You expect that the people there understand human bodies and human minds like no one else.

My very first month in medical school I remember an informal freshers party. This was pre-transition, though I had come out as trans, I had told people exactly who I am.

I am a huge fan of the sari — as a garment, it's my favorite garment to wear. This is something I hear from a lot of queer and trans people as well. We see our parents, we see our family members, pass this piece of cloth down generations. And it's something that makes me feel powerful, it makes me feel beautiful, makes me feel smart.

Because it was an informal setting, I asked my dean if I can wear a sari.

She basically gave me a look and said, ‘This is not a drama.’

And I was like, ‘Okay, so does it have to be a ‘drama’ for us to wear what we want to wear? It's not theater. This is who we are and this is what we deserve.’

She just refused, so I didn’t. But my classmate, a woman, put on a tuxedo and no one said anything.

That's when I realized that medical school is not everything that I imagined it to be, it's a very gendered and binary space, where people in power dictate what is professional and what is not, what is appropriate and what is not.

In the West, it’s perhaps cisgender-heterosexual white male that gets to say, ‘This is professional and this is not’.

In India, it is the ‘upper-caste’, ‘upper-class’, cisgender-heterosexual male that decides, ‘This is what is appropriate for a medical student or doctor to wear and this is not.’

Continued: https://www.pixstory.com/story/navigating-medical-spaces-when-was-the-last-time-you-saw-a-patient-darling-dr-trinetra1652264471/99640