Dear Editor As an openly queer clinical academic and medical educator it is a sad truth that I often feel the need to censor the way I present myself to colleagues in medicine and academia. I feel a pressure to change the way I dress, talk, and even describe personal aspects of my identity under the nebulous threat of ‘looking unprofessional’. Nevertheless, I consistently try to push through this discomfort in the hopes of role modelling for others that visible queerness is not antithetical to medical professionalism. Role modelling and representation is just one reason why the inclusion of LGBTQ?+?voices in medical curricula and conferences is of such import. In the UK we know that this is a pressing issue for medical schools (Tollemache et al. Citation2021), and there is no reason to suspect this isn’t a global concern in health education and research. I was therefore dismayed to find such a significant exclusion of LGBTQ?+?narratives from the 2022 AMEE conference in Lyon. Within the 1457 page abstract booklet (AMEE Citation2022) the term ‘LGBT’ appears just 3 times. This would be worrying in itself, however during the conference I experienced and witnessed multiple microaggressions from both fellow delegates and representatives of AMEE chairing sessions, symposiums and panels. LGBTQ?+?inclusion appeared unwelcome in these spaces, even within the sessions labelled under the umbrella of equality, diversity and inclusion. Indeed the more I presented myself outside of a strict gender binary, the more barriers I experienced and the more my contributions appeared unwelcome.
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