Lydia Bennett is a pansexual, polyamorous person, as well as a resident physician working in emergency medicine. She spoke about how her identity has and hasn’t played a role in her work.
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Lydia Bennett: My identity, I think, first and foremost, at this stage of my life is probably resident physician, because I, you know, work 50 to 70 hours a week.
I am, [in] just a couple months, I'm going to be attending physician, and so, that's going to become, hopefully, a kind of smaller piece of my life.
It's certainly something that's important to me, and it means that, like, I need to be representing like a semi-professional and accepting and healthy viewpoint at all times, if that makes sense.
You know, I am actually interested in advocacy – physician advocacy and public health advocacy – and so, that's a big piece of what I'm doing right now. I think my queerness ties in nicely to that.
So, when I kind of decided how I was going to represent my personal identity and my sexual identity at work – it's kind of tough because, you know, it's a very professional field and you're not sitting there talking about, like, your sex life.
So, it's not something that I ever decided, like, “Oh, I'm gonna come out at work.” I did grapple with it a little bit because there are some more traditionalist people in medicine, unfortunately.
But the benefit is that medicine has learned to accept people – even if some of the colleagues may have opinions, they know how to keep that to themselves and respect people no matter what, and so, that makes it a lot easier to come out.
"What gets me going back is being able to meet people and help people, and that’s what I wanted when I went into medicine in the first place."Lydia Bennett
There’s probably a lot of people I work with who may not know my personal sexual identity or that I'm polyamorous, but it's just I talk like I normally would.
So, if I'm talking about partners – I talk about my partners. I talk about my girlfriend and my partner at home who's nonbinary, and some people may or may not even catch on that there's like a collection of them.
I did actually have one nurse who heard me talking to another resident from across the room was like, “Lydia, are you polyamorous? Are you in a polycule?” And got really excited.
So, it just, you know, I don't make a big deal of it, but I also don't hide it because it's a nice, open environment that they at least have to pretend to support me if nothing else.
I do think that there have been some patients that get the vibe that I am at least queer accepting, if not queer, just [when I] walk in the room.
And then I do like to wear a little caduceus – the healthcare staff with a snake around it – that is rainbow pride.
And so, I think that they are able to be a little bit more open with me, and there have been a very few occasions when it's come up that like, my personal experience can help someone who's gone through, you know, something stressful, something potentially traumatic, or something very sensitive.
And they need, they need to be able to be open about that in order to be able to take care of them appropriately, and that can be extremely validating and extremely rewarding work.
And so, what gets me going back is being able to meet people and help people, and that’s what I wanted when I went into medicine in the first place.
