How we are put to expectations and hopes for the Biden – Harris presidency? Maybe these elections were so painful, maybe we really need to start looking to the future after this black year, maybe there is the desire to finally see some changes (for the better, thanks), but expectations of them are skyrocketing so much so that perhaps it is appropriate to calm down, which then happens as with those films that everyone tells you to see “because it’s really worth it” and when you finally watch them they are just a disappointment. Of course, it must be said that they have accustomed us well so far: Kamala Harris’ empowering speeches, the desire to bring the country back to feelings of mutual respect and tolerance and then, let’s face it, all the people chosen from among collaborators and political positions. Deb Haaland Secretary of the Interior, all the women of the communication team, and then Black people, Latinas, gays, in short, finally a bit of diversity. Just think that, just as we prepare for the inauguration ceremony of the new president, the news has arrived that Rachel Levine will be the first transgender health undersecretary in US history. Obviously, thehype.
Already, Joe Biden has chosen Dr. Rachel Levine, head of health in the state of Pennsylvania, as undersecretary of health. Levine will thus be the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the US Senate, a historic decision that comes as the eyes of the whole world are on institutions that protect public health during the pandemic. “Dr. Rachel Levine,” Biden said, “will bring the stable leadership and essential experience we need to get people through this pandemic – regardless of their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability – and to meet the public health needs of our country at this critical time and beyond. “
The future president called the doctor “deeply qualified to help guide our administration’s health efforts” and certainly not wrongly. Levine, who specializes in pediatrics, has in fact spent the last year as the public face of Pennsylvania’s response to Covid-19. She is 63 years old and has a remarkable career: she is originally from Wakefield, Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard and then attended Tulane Medical School. He has led an adolescent health clinic at Penn State, is president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the organization representing US public health agencies, and is a lecturer in pediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine. . In 2017 she was elected as the Secretary of Health for Pennsylvania.
In addition to being a transgender woman, therefore, Levine is above all an extremely prepared and competent professional. The two things, however, go together and the doctor is certainly not new to discrimination and intimidation, just think that in 2016 the president of the Republican party of Texas Allen West tweeted under a photo of her: “You are in a public bathroom and enter this person comes in. What are you doing? “. But she seems confident that the time is ripe for greater inclusiveness: “With very few exceptions, my being transgender is not a problem,” she told the Washington Post. And anyway, if there are any problems, the (rather effective) answer given by Levine a few months ago after some nasty transphobic insults applies: “I have no room in my heart for hatred and frankly I have no time for intolerance”. Amen.
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