We are trans scientists, health-care providers, and advocates, and we were in the room along with a dozen of our peers at the panel Perspectives of transgender women on HIV prevention and care at the International AIDS Society conference (IAS) on July 22, 2019. With 5 min remaining for the question and answer period, we lined up at the microphone. We found ourselves facing a panel of four cisgender researchers (one of whom misgendered a colleague while presenting) and one transgender woman, a Spanish-speaking therapist who was asked to share her personal life story—without simultaneous translation. The irony was not lost on us that each presenter spoke of socioeconomic exclusion and a shortage of professional opportunities as structural drivers of HIV risk and incidence among trans people, in a session excluding trans people from a professional opportunity…
Transgender HIV research: nothing about us without us
By Ayden I Scheim, Max Nicolai Appenroth, S Wilson Beckham, Zil Goldstein, Mauro Cabral Grinspan, JoAnne G Keatley, and Asa Radix, 2019