S4 E8 Intimacy Starts with I: Women, Self-Love, and HIV with Michelle Lopez

CW: Mention of abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, incest, molestation

At 24 years old, in the early 90’s, Michelle Lopez was riding a train in New York with her newborn baby and saw an advertisement that spoke to her. It said, “If you’re a woman and you’re enduring substance abuse, homelessness, or battery, call this number.” Michelle picked up a phone and began her new life. Her and her daughter were diagnosed with HIV, and it was her mission to get clean, understand her own trauma, and help others with similar stories.

Michelle, a bisexual Caribbean woman, realized that women living with HIV continue to be ostracized for both wanting and having sex. Michelle knew she had to combat this and teach herself and others about self-love, pleasure, and intimacy. She has spent her career advocating for HIV prevention and treatment, women’s health, mental health, sexuality, and how to unlearn feelings of shame. She says, “I recognized getting clean would give me more power to fight against situations and circumstances and stand up for my rights. I had to learn what it is to love Michelle and deal with the trauma that I endured.” Michelle shares how she utilizes her experiences from childhood to the present to educate others through clinical work, research, and advocacy. Her story is one of empowerment, celebration, and making lemonade with the lemons she was given.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:

Michelle Lopez LinkedIn

CAPTC World AIDS Day Page

HIV.gov

Bio:

Michelle Lopez is a tireless advocate for public health among Black and Latinx communities. Over the last 30 years, Michelle has worked in HIV and AIDS prevention and health care navigation and substance use services. Michelle has served on boards of directors and advised on policy development that impacts the lives of marginalized communities. Michelle is now focusing on research designs methodology to meaningfully engages community members.

S4 E7 Dan Savage on the Magic Question “What are you into?” & Dr. Ina Park on How Providers Can Help

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Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist and podcaster, and Ina Park is a sex positive STI researcher, physician, and author. The two come together in this episode to discuss desire, pleasure, and how to communicate about what feels good with partners and providers. Dan delves into discovering kinks, pleasure as we age, and trying new things alone and with partners. Ina reflects on her experiences as a provider, having conversations with patients around sex and pleasure as bodies, needs, and abilities change.

Dan says that gay people might be better at sex, “not because we’re magic…we use the 4 magic words ‘what are you into?’” Ina explains that honest communication with a partner, a physician, a sex columnist, or a therapist knocks down barriers to explore sex and discover pleasure. The two emphasize the importance of both having providers and friends (with a good sense of judgment) with whom you can discuss sex freely.

This is our first episode of the 3-episode mini-series on pleasure.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:

Connect with Dan: https://savage.love/, @dansavage on Instagram, and @fakedansavage on Twitter/X

Connect with Ina: https://www.inapark.net/ and @InaParkMD on Twitter/X

Learn how to include pleasure in sexual health history-taking from the National Coalition for Sexual Health: https://nationalcoalitionforsexualhealth.org/tools/for-healthcare-providers/video-series

Bios:

Dan Savage is a sex-advice columnist, podcaster and author whose graphic, pragmatic, and humorous advice has changed the cultural conversation about monogamy, gay rights, religion, and politics. “Savage Love,” Dan’s sex-advice column, was first published in 1991 and is now syndicated across the United States and Canada. He also hosts the Savage Lovecast, a weekly, call-in advice podcast that has tens of thousands of paying subscribers for premium Magnum content. Both his podcast and column can be found on his website Savage.Love.

Ina Park MD, MS, is the author of Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs. She is the Principal Investigator at the California Prevention Training Center. She is a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and a Medical Consultant in the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a co-author of the 2021 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines, the country’s premier resource for diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

S4 E6 Family Planning as Gender Affirming Care with Trans and Nonbinary Patients

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Director of Gender-Affirming Care for UC Davis Health, Miles Harris, FNP-BC, advocates for the integration of gender-affirming care with primary care and family planning. He shares that “so much of gender affirming care is not about hormones” and that “it is often so easy as a health care provider to do the thing that someone needs that changes their life.” He breaks down misconceptions: hormone therapy and contraception for trans folks is relatively simple, taking testosterone and not having a period does not prevent pregnancy, and there are no contraceptive methods that are contraindicated due to testosterone use.

He emphasizes the importance of not making assumptions about someone’s body parts or those of their partners, as well as not assuming that people are having types of sex that can result in a pregnancy. In choosing a contraceptive method, he says, “we want to remember that this person is a whole person, more than just their trans or non-binary identity.” This is the last episode in our mini-series on family planning and reproductive justice.

Download the transcript of this episode.

Resources:

Contraception Across the Transmasculine Spectrum Article co-authored by Miles Harris

Guidelines for the Primary and Gender-Affirming Care of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary People UCSF website

National Transgender Health Summit Biannual conference

National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center Online learning from the Fenway Institute

LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory Created by GLMA

Queer Doc & Plume Remote providers of gender affirming care

CAPTC-Related Training and Resources:

S3 E9: Abortion and Reproductive Justice Across State Lines Podcast episode

S2 E2: Speaking Frankly: Supporting Youths’ Choice to Parent with Dr. Aisha May Podcast episode

Reproductive and Sexual Health Considerations for Trans and Non-Binary People Recorded webinar

Turn on notifications to never miss an episode of Coming Together for Sexual Health.

Follow Coming Together for Sexual Health on Instagram and Twitter.

Miles Harris is a trans and non-binary identified family nurse practitioner. He serves as the founding Director of Gender-Affirming Care for UC Davis Health and as an assistant clinical professor at the UC Davis Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. His research focuses on sexual and reproductive health needs of transgender and gender nonbinary people, including contraceptive options for transgender and gender-nonbinary people assigned female at birth.

Reproductive and Sexual Health Considerations for Transgender and Nonbinary People

December 16, 2022

Description

This webinar is presented by Gayge Maggio, FNP-BC, AAHIVS and will focus on the reproductive and sexual health needs/considerations of transgender and gender non-conforming people. There will be a focus on learning to approach sexual health in a culturally sensitive, non-judgmental manner and how to deliver family planning needs and contraceptive options for patients who identified as transgender and/or non-binary.

Objectives

Discuss and perform a culturally sensitive sexual health inventory with transgender patients
Describe how to provide culturally sensitive, trauma-informed cervical cancer screening and the impact of testosterone on testing
Discuss options for contraception in assigned female at birth transgender and gender non-conforming patients

Speaker:

Gayge Maggio (She/They) FNP-BC, AAHIVS

Nurse practitioner working at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City, an LGBTQ+ focused federally qualified health center FQHC

She works as a primary care provider, providing primary care including sexual and reproductive health services, gender-affirming hormone therapy (GAHT), treatment of HIV, and substance use disorder (SUD) treatment

She also works in the FlexCare program, providing walk-in primary care to patients

Resources:

Deconstructing Organizational Transphobia

Zami Hyemingway explores the negative impact of transphobia on clients who identify as transgender or non-binary persons when they access HIV care and prevention, services. Improve your knowledge of organizational transphobia and the ways it is practiced and institutionalized. Explore structural strategies, which incorporate an intersectional approach for naming and combating transphobia within your organization and systems of care, and help to bridge the medical divide for transgender people seeking and accessing services.

Watch all recorded videos from our Structural Interventions for HIV Prevention and Care Virtual Institute.

View video

Building an Affirming Healthcare System

Andrew Miller defines key terminology used within LGBTQ-affirming healthcare, describes components of an LGBTQ-affirming healthcare system, and discusses how to evaluate a healthcare system for LGBTQ- affirming practices and procedures. Andrew is followed by a special message from Admiral Dr. Rachel Levine.

Watch all recorded videos from our 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium

View Video

Ecological Perspectives for Deconstructing Medical Mistrust in Transgender Health

Ecological Perspectives for Deconstructing Medical Mistrust in Transgender Health.

Panel speakers Valerie Spencer, Cecilia Gentili, and Jenna Rapues describe how an ecological perspective can combat the negative impacts of medical mistrust, identify and discuss the tools, actions, and policies needed to create gender-affirming clinical programs, and discuss advocacy efforts to address institutional barriers to gender affirming clinical care and treatment programs. Moderated by Shawn Demmons

Watch all recorded videos from our 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium

View video

An aerial view of the downtown Oakland skyline on a clear sunny day.

Decolonizing Transgender Health

Dr. Sand Chang describes how colonization influences western healthcare systems, and its impact on transgender health care, the importance in decolonizing transgender health, when providing affirming care to transgender communities of Color, and explores strategies in implementing a decolonized framework in clinics.

Watch all recorded videos from our 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium

View video

In Sickness and Health: Exploring the Diversity of Gender in Patient-Centered HIV Care

Panel members Tyree Williams, Octavia Lewis, Levi Maxwell, Marcus Arana and Victor Motherwell explore the diversity of gender identity, discuss the importance of gender identity in the provision of HIV prevention, care, and treatment services, describe how to repair distrust and affirm gender diverse folx in HIV care. They identify tools and resources to foster continued learning and self-reflection.

Moderated by JaDawn Wright-Morgan.

Watch all recorded videos from our 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium.

View video

An Intersectional Look at Providing Transgender Health

Dr. Tatyana Moaton discusses the importance of including transgender people in their own medical care. She describes how an intersectional approach fights medical mistreatment of the transgender community and identifies implementation strategies for ending medical mistrust.

Watch all recorded videos from our 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium.

View video