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What can you learn from equity-deserving groups? How to be resilient? How to thrive – even in an environment that doesn’t affirm your right to existence? 

What are the challenges, achievements and opportunities for the queer community?

These are some of the questions explored by Maydianne Andrade, a Canada Research Chair in Integrative Behavioural Ecology and the University of Toronto Scarborough’s vice-dean of faculty affairs and equity, in “Queering The New Normal,” episode eight of her podcast, The New Normal.

Andrade’s guests this week are:

• Professor Shelley Craig of the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, a Canada Research Chair in Sexual & Gender Minority Youth and the project director of INQYR (International Partnership for Queer Youth Resilience)
• Professor Jessica Fields, chair of the department of health and society at ����TV Scarborough and the lead for Toronto COVID-19 Action Fund proposal, Impact of COVID-19 on the mental health and vulnerability of sexual and gender minorities living in Toronto
• Poet and alumna Victoria Mbabazi, who graduated in June and will begin her master’s degree in creative writing at New York University this fall

“What really strikes me from talking to young people is that when we kind of think, ‘Oh, things are pretty good now’ – they're not coming from, ‘Things are pretty good now.’ They're coming from, ‘Here's how it actually should be,’” Andrade says.

The New Normal is created in collaboration with a University of Toronto Communications team led by producer Lisa Lightbourn. You can  or . You can also  or .