The importance of Pride in the veterinary profession

Across the world June marks Pride month, an opportunity remember and celebrate for LGBT+ people and their friends and family. 

In the UK we are marking 50 years since the first Pride parade in London, which was inspired by the Stonewall riots in New York a few years earlier. Then a group of LGBT+ people stood up to the police attacking their community and began a movement that continues today. Through marches, campaigning, and education the movement has succeeded in two important ways: it’s helped to build a community of LGBT+ people, with all the benefits that brings, and it’s driven public argument for ending discrimination against LGBT+ people.  

The term “LGBT+” and its permutations include very diverse groups of people for whom Pride Month means different things. 

Gay and lesbian members of our profession can reflect on recent decades during which their rights have changed to more closely match those of straight people: the right to love openly, to adopt children, to serve in the armed forces and to get married. Most importantly, society and our profession are supportive, most of the time; we are visible and most of us live and work in environments where our existence is, at last, considered ordinary. 

For other members of the LGBT+ community the struggle to be respected and left to live their life without discrimination continues in a very real way. Trans people face huge challenges. Imagine a veterinary nurse who has struggled with their gender identity for years; struggled with themselves, alone, to understand who they are; been isolated until they found a community that understood; tried to “come out” to their confused, worried and sometimes hostile family and friends about taking the huge step of living as the gender they knew they were; navigated a sometimes hostile, often confusing and dehumanising health system; gone through major, painful surgery often at huge financial and emotional cost to themselves; had to fight to have their gender recognised in law; and then, eventually, emerging, stronger, happier, more themselves, to live the life they deserve, often ordinary, just like the rest of us. And imagine how that person feels at work, in our veterinary workplaces, when they don’t receive the support they need; the casual insult from a colleague, the client who stares, the boss who puts off dealing with bullying, the pontificating in the veterinary press about people being ”oversensitive” and “woke”, the microaggressions - exclusion, insensitivity, prurient interest in their lives - all things that most of us would not put up with for ourselves but all things that have happened and continue to happen to our trans colleagues. Moreover, most of us in the UK still live under a legal system where it’s within the law to attempt to “cure” a person of being gay or trans, with hideous consequences for mental health, especially for vulnerable young people. The government’s proposals to end “conversion therapy” in England specifically exclude trans people. Unless we all stand together with them they risk being the victims of a culture war. 

BVLGBT+ began in 2016 with the aims of building a community of LGBT+ veterinary professionals and students, supporting individuals and campaigning and educating within the profession. That year vets and vet nurses represented their professions at London Pride for the first time - it was a very emotional day.  We have hundreds of members across the UK and across the profession; in farm, equine, exotic and small animal practice, in teaching and academia and in industry. Each year (COVID allowing) we march at London Pride and other smaller Pride events, we have an annual members’ retreat weekend and we meet at larger vet events. We support students through our travel grant scheme for attending Pride and work with members’ groups in the vet schools. And, most importantly, we support one another through the networks of friendships we’ve built. 

Pride Month begins for us with our online Global Pride Event on Friday 10 June, when we meet up with PrideVMC in America and the Australian Rainbow Vets and Allies counterparts. The event is free and open to all members and supporters, find out more. 

Then on 2nd July we have our biggest event of the year at London Pride. We start in the morning with reception at BVA Headquarters and then join the main parade in force. Apply for places and for Student Travel Grants on our website.

This year we’re launching a welfare survey of LGBT+ people in the veterinary professions. We’re also beginning a scheme for local LGBT+ groups - watch this space!

To sign up to BVLGBT+ visit our website. Membership is free. Follow us on Instragram @britishlgbt

Tommy Doyle (he/him) MA Vet MB MRCVS graduated in 2001 and is the President of BVLGBT+. He’s a partner in an independent small animal practice in Sussex and Kent. Contact him at [email protected].