Dealing with discrimination
Dealing with discrimination was suggested in eight comments. Seeing or being subjected to discrimination is bad enough, but having your complaints or concerns ignored can be even more damaging to both the victim and your service’s reputation.
“I would like to know that all doctors are properly trained in this area and that I will have back-up if I am mistreated – urgently if it affects my access to important medication.”
“Discourage stigmatising language, correct anyone who assumes that bi/pan people are transphobic / only attracted to men and women, shut down any arguments about why people think bi/pan labels are invalid.”
“They didn’t want to talk about it and said it was the first complaint they had had. In actual fact I and others had complained before (…) but clearly our complaints had been thrown away.”
- Public services and institutions should ensure that policies and practices are inclusive of bi+ individuals. This includes non-discrimination policies or codes of conduct that explicitly protect individuals on the basis of sexual orientation, as well as collecting data on bisexuality and monitoring for disparities and inequalities.
- Make bold and proactive statements tackling discrimination, and implement policies to discourage and deal with this.
- Ensure consistent inclusion of all protected characteristics and have a visible complaints procedure to take complaints seriously and act on them.
