‘There’s Nothing Clinical About It’: LGBT Health and the Atmosphere of the Clinic

Abstract

ABSTRACT Over the last decade, several former Australian AIDS Councils (turned LGBT health organisations) have opened dedicated primary healthcare clinics for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Operating at the intersection of medical practice and queer politics, these clinics try to enact a type of care that is attuned to the power relations between LGBT people and medicine. Drawing on the concepts of affective atmospheres (Anderson, 2009, “Affective Atmospheres.” Emotion, Space and Society 2 (2): 77–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2009.08.005) and queer feelings (Ahmed 2014, The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g09 × 4q), this article argues that senses of the feelings and emotions of LGBT people evoked by mainstream medical spaces are central to the design of LGBT clinics. This analysisis based on situated interviews with practice managers which examined the affective intent of LGBT clinics. By examining how practice managers consider location, the curation of art and health promotion materials, and the employment of peer workers, this article argues that LGBT clinics are helping to make LGBT health a tangible and meaningful subcategory of public health by designing spaces in which medicine can be encountered within a ‘queer atmosphere’.