Sue Perkins, presenter of our much-beloved Great British Bake Off, has long been out of the closet, but one secret she’d been keeping up until recently – that she’s been living with a brain tumour for eight years.
Having spoken about it in her autobiography, she explained to The Sunday Times Magazine that one of the most horrible parts of it is that the mostly benign tumour on her pituitary glad has left her unable to have children. And if this news wasn’t bad enough – regardless of her sexuality, who doesn’t want the option of having kids should they so wish? – the way she was given it was another shocker.
The doctor who gave her the news asked if she had a boyfriend. When she responded that, um, no she doesn’t because, well, she’s a lesbian, he replied, she says: ‘Oh, OK. Well, that makes it easier. You’re infertile. You can’t have kids.’
She explains now: ‘Does a lesbian not have a fallopian tube? Am I not human, and [am] I not somebody who could be a lovely, wonderful mother?’’
‘It really did hit me, as it hits a lot of people, I’m sure, when it’s too late, this is not going to happen… It’s not going to ever be part of my life. And, although I never yearned to physically have my own child, it felt like a bereavement. It really did.’
A recent survey by LGBT charity Stonewall and YouGov, titled Unhealthy Attitudes, found that a quarter of all medical professional staff in the UK have never had any equality and diversity training. Along with that, 60% of health and social care staff don’t think sexual orientation is relevant to healthcare.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.