Hello and welcome to Outward, Slate's podcast about clear culture, politics, and search

duties you can do in a bar.

I'm Christina Cuddererti, a senior writer at Slate.

I'm Jules Gil Petersen, professor by day, surgeon by night.

And I'm Brian Lauder.

I am a surgeon of words.

I guess I had it, I had it, I had it outward.

So this month, as in I feel like many of our episodes, we kind of accidentally ended up

with a theme.

We are taking a look at two stories about queer health care, past and present.

First, actually, the present, we are going to talk about monkey pox, the virus that's

endemic to central and west Africa and is now spreading basically everywhere else, mostly

among queer men and trans women who have sex with men, will be joined by a sex educator

and health advocate from the UK who's recovering from monkey pox to talk about how gays are

grappling with the stigma and the fear and the government fumbles that seem to recall

the early days of the AIDS crisis and also contain echoes of the early days of the COVID pandemic

in important and disturbing ways.

Then I'm really excited about this segment.

We're going to chat with Iododds who recently wrote a fascinating and just really sweet

piece in the independent about two trans women in the early 2000s who ran a clinic performing

or key activities. That's testicle removal out of a barn in Washington state. I'm so excited to

have Iodon to talk about that incredible history. But first, we have a thought and query for our

...