One of the projects that has been slowly unfolding over a series of years has reached an important milestone! We have completed the zine documenting our work together, and it’s ready to share. You can access the 52 page pdf in my proton drive here. (The switch over to proton drive is new, so if you have trouble accessing it, just send me a message at tiffany at groundfireccw dot ca.)
This project was a collective effort between me, my colleague and friend Frankie Hanman-Siegersma, and a group of community members who came together to collectively respond to the grief of a parent whose trans child had died. All of the photos in the zine were taken by people who participated in the project.
This project has taken three years to get to this point, and it’s not quite done yet. Frankie and I are working on a paper for practitioners, but that won’t be finished for a while yet. And the relationships that have grown in this work will hopefully persist for many years.
The zine is meant to document what we did together in a way that might invite other people to also undertake a collective response to grief.
It has been such a significant project – a collective response to grief, responding to a parent whose beloved trans child died by suicide.
Every time I worked on the zine, I ended up in tears. There is so much love represented in these pages, and such a commitment to showing up for community and for each other.
Everyone who was part of this project was willing to say yes to this… I know that’s obvious – of course the people in the project said yes to being in the project – but it really matters.
It matters that even though everyone involved was going through their own stuff, they said yes.
It matters that the parent said yes to sharing their story.
It matters that we all, every single person in this project, made a choice to be involved. And I hope that now that we are able to share about this work, other people will read about what we did together and will find ways to say yes to responding collectively to pain and grief and loss.
What we did in this project is only one possible way to co-create a collective response, and we outlined the steps that we took in a way that, hopefully, will invite readers (community members or practitioners) to find their own specific ways to co-create a response.
Here are the steps that we took:
This project represents a huge investment of time and energy and care.
I have no idea how many hours have gone into it, but it’s a lot. And it has absolutely been worth it.
If you find the idea interesting and there is a collective response that you’d like to organize but you’re feeling a bit daunted by the idea, let me know. I would be really happy to chat with you about how to go about it.
“There are two groups of stick figures, one on each side of the image, with three figures in each. Between the groups are 6 little zines. Text reads: We are not alone. We can imagine our way through this. Together. Zine library project.”
This post is an invitation to join a new project!
This will be a longer-term project, which I’m imagining will grow over the next year or longer, and community members are welcome to join for any part of the project (without an expectation of committing to all the parts).
I’m hoping to create a series of zines, each focused on a different metaphor or idea for getting through hard times.
The first conversation in this project will be a project launch conversation, where we’ll talk about what kinds of metaphors are sustaining us (we’ll make a list, which will become the first very small zine, and we can then use that list as inspiration for some of the zines!).
I think launching a project can be kind of nice, and a way to connect with other interested folks in a low intensity way. We can talk about what sorts of things people might want to contribute and how they might want to be involved, and I think having a whole conversation about what metaphors we’re leaning on might be really heartening right now, even if we don’t dive deeply into any of those metaphors specifically in this conversation.
The project launch will be March 18 5:30-7 pm mountain time / March 19 10-11:30 am Adelaide. If you’re interested in joining, let me know (email is easiest – tiffany @ groundfireccw.ca) and I will send you the zoom registration link. (I have had problems recently with bots registering for some of my community conversations, so since this is a public post, I’m not putting the link in here directly.)
Registration is free, though donations are gratefully accepted throughout the project to support the labour in making it all happen. (These will be processed through Groundfire.)
If you would like to share this invitation with friends and community members, we welcome any and all who might be wanting a space to be not-alone in 🙂
Some of the zines will have an open invitation to contribute (so community members can email a contribution in), many will have a co-writing session scheduled for folks who want to body-double while writing or making art, and some will be created by a smaller group of folks together without an open invite. If you have an idea for a metaphor you’d like to see become a zine for community, let me know!
One zine will be about mushrooms and the metaphors they offer for resistance. I’m co-creating this with a friend, Heather, and we’re going to host a zoom co-work session for folks to come and write or draw and chat about mushroom metaphors, and then we’ll put the zine together. That one is open to anyone to contribute to. The co-writing/art/companionship session will be April 1, 5:30-7 pm mountain time / April 2 10-11:30 am Adelaide. Let me know if you would like the registration link for this, too!
Another one is metaphors of spoon gardening/cultivating/hatching. Credit goes to Danielle for this idea, and they are happy to have it go out into community to become a zine. Christine Miserandino’s spoon theory has been so important in disability spaces, but/and it might feel joyful and possibility-making to stretch that metaphor and reflect on ways that we collectively share spoons, ways that we care for our own and each other’s spoons, ways that we adapt our lives to create contexts of spoonery, etc. – basically, disabled trans wisdom for living a spoonie life not entirely circumscribed by discourses of scarcity. This will also be open to anyone to contribute, and there is no zoom scheduled yet, but I’m thinking maybe in late April.
Another metaphor will be flotation devices, and what keeps us afloat. This will be with a small group, and I’m not sure yet if there will be an open invitation, or if this will be something we create and then offer to community from our small group.
Another metaphor will be about safety nets, and how we weave them together, and none of us can be the whole net.
I am imagining a slowly growing library of zines with different metaphors that might resonate at different times and in different ways for folks, with a range of content (hopefully including some art and maybe even some micro-fiction alongside non-fiction writing, and with narrative invitations for readers to reflect on).
I think it will be a nice project to engage with over the next while, a way to be connected and to share our ideas for getting through these hard times. Maybe I’ll see you there!
This document is, at its heart, about caring for trans community. This care might take the form of quiet friendship, vocal advocacy, public support or private support. It might be as simple as using someone’s pronouns or as involved as advocating for policy change. These actions of care might be understood as solidarity (though you’ll find some reflection on the limits of this framing in this document). These actions of care might be understood as compassion, companionship, connection, as movements towards justice and liberation, as love. They might be personal and private or very public.
This document is about actions of care, whatever they are, however you understand them, towards and with and within trans community, by which we mean, the vast expanse of gender expression and identity that is not cisgender (cisgender is when the sex you were assigned at birth aligns with the gender you know yourself to be).
We are sending this document out into a world that is increasingly hostile to trans community, especially to trans youth, trans women, racialized trans people, and disabled trans people.
This hostility is not new, and no injustice exists in isolation. Hostility towards trans community has always impacted different groups in different ways at different times, and always intersects with other systems of power and control.
Legal protections only go as far as other hostilities allow.
We hope that one action of care that extends from this document and these conversations is an interest in and invitation towards connecting with trans communities across difference, finding each other and caring together.
There are so many communities, including trans people who are racialized, who live in rural contexts, who are incarcerated, street involved, or otherwise disconnected from structural supports and “legitimate” trans identities and experiences. These are communities that governments fail to serve, and that have been left or pushed out of queer spaces.
In times like these, I think we can lose connection with the reality that trans folks and our allies have been supporting each other’s mutual existence forever. And maybe it’s hope-building to know that communities that have had less structural access have developed a richness of resources and conversations, skills and knowledges, networks of mutual aid and care to support one another in getting our needs met. There’s possibility in connecting to and working to strengthen these mutual aid systems because maybe this loosens our attachment to institutions and strengthens our connections to each other.
I hope that disconnected communities will be motivated to repair or build connections, and allow us to orient ourselves towards the movement, honouring the work, knowledges, and lineages in these communities. I hope we can remember that our liberations are collectively bound, and that this isn’t the start of something new but it is an opportunity for connection.
– Aakhil, contributor
Trans community includes people from every community. Every community includes trans people.
This document is a collective action of care extended from everyone involved in this project to every trans person who may come across this document, and we hope that it invites you, beloved reader, whoever you are, to join us in caring and in being moved to action by that care.
“Bearing witness to how many people want to do right and want to make active change and be supportive, it does inspire hope.”
– A contributor, about reading this document. We hope you feel the same.
This document has been shared in the International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. You can also hear an audio practice note about its creation and our hopes for the project here.
Years ago, Lindsey brought up how hard it is to read about their own experiences in the stigmatizing and pathologizing language that the DSM provides. Lindsey experiences ‘dermatillomania’ or ‘skin picking’, and there is very little kind or dignifying information available about this experience. We wondered if we could create something better. It took a while to get this ball rolling, but here we are, and we want to invite anyone with shared experience of this or ‘trichotillomania’ / ‘hair pulling’ to join us in this project.
Light writing on a dark green background says “Community conversation about dermatillomania / skin picking & trichotillomania / hair pulling. June 24, 2023 | 1-2:30 pm MST | Zoom. Facilitated by Tiffany Sostar and Lindsey Boyes” Below, inside a purple staticky circle, says, “Troubling the boundary between the self and the world”
On June 24, 2023, we will be hosting an initial community conversation for people who experience skin picking / ‘dermatillomania’ or hair pulling / ‘trichotillomania’ and who want to talk about these experiences in ways that name and challenge stigma and that expand beyond the pathologizing and limited definitions of the DSM.
The reason we want to host this conversation and create a collective document that takes this conversation forward is that the stigma associated with these experiences is intense, and the language used to describe people who have these experiences is often demeaning and pathologizing. There is little meaningful awareness about these experiences, and because skin and hair are often so visible, people can face judgement and intrusive questions from many directions. These experiences can also be difficult to discuss because of the (valid!) fear of judgement and the shame that can accumulate after years of experiencing the effects of stigma and lack of awareness.
We hope that this conversation will create a space to share community stories in an honouring and dignifying way – to reclaim some ‘storytelling rights’ from the overwhelming power of silence and stigma. That this conversation will be an act of resistance and care.
“Resistance is an everyday act. The work of excavating every tiny artifact of the oppressor that lives in you. Your call to be a balm to every self-inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed.”
We also hope that this conversation will result in a collective document that can be shared, that can be a balm that comes from the insider knowledge of community members who know that this experience is more than just pathology, and who know how to respond in skillful and meaningful ways.
This conversation will be facilitated by myself and Lindsey. We invite any community members who have lived experience to join us. The conversation will be recorded and transcribed, but the recording and transcription will not be shared publicly. Participants will be able to choose how (and if) their contributions are included in the final collective document, and how (and if) they are credited by name, by pseudonym, or anonymously.
The conversation on December 11 was so lovely. It felt good to be in community, speaking about how we try to take care of trans and non-binary people in our lives (for many of us, that includes our own selves).
One participant wrote afterward and said, “it was the most generative convo I have had in such a while and felt so good to be apart of <3!!”
I received the transcript back from Shara (they are always such an important part of this work!) and have started pulling out themes and quotes to get started on the collective document.
The thing I’ve been thinking about most often since is how important relationships are in this work:
Our relationships with ourselves (our own experience of gender, our own learning and unlearning of gender expectations and the gender binary, our own safety as we decide whether to speak up or not in various contexts)
Our relationships with trans and non-binary community (our families, our partners, our friends, our communities, the people we don’t know but with whom we still want to be in solidarity, the safety of those people as we decide whether to speak up or not in various contexts and how we choose to speak when we do, the legacy of trans and non-binary advocacy we join when we act in solidarity)
Our relationships with people who may be acting in alignment with gender essentialism, cisnormativity, or even transphobia (these may also be our families, our partners, our friends and communities!)
And even our relationships with ideas and ideals, values and hopes, curiosities and possibilities.
The original topic was “how we avoid misgendering others”, and I had imagined a conversation about how we’ve unlearned our own cisnormative habits and the skills and strategies we’ve developed for our own internal relationship with gender and gendering. I’d like to talk more about that, still, but in the conversation on the 11th we ended up speaking more about how we respond when we witness misgendering, which is a related (but also very different) thing.
We talked quite a bit about the barriers that get in the way of acting in solidarity, and part of this conversation was bringing some nuance to the idea of what ‘acting in solidarity’ can mean. It is not a binary or a single correct answer – there are always a variety of actions available, and when we determine which action we take, there are many relevant factors. We are always responding based on our position in the specific context, which means thinking about things like – are we the person being misgendered, or are we witnessing someone else being misgendered? what is our relationship with the person engaged in misgendering? what do we know of their values and hopes – if they are someone who cares about not misgendering, then correcting them is almost always the right call, but if they are someone who will become angry, we have to consider what the fall-out or backlash will be, and whether that will compromise our or someone else’s safety. In those instances, other actions, like texting to check in with someone, or finding something affirming to do later, might be the better option. These can be uncomfortable calculations, because it can feel like failure, and I hope that one generative outcome of this work is that we find ways to speak about our desires to be in solidarity and to avoid misgendering and to respond to misgendering with compassion and rigor.
I’m going to get started on the collective document soon, and will be sharing the draft here.
If you would like to contribute, there are many ways you can do this!
I’ve created a little google form for people to contribute asynchronously. You can find that here.
We’re also going to have a follow-up conversation in January, and I’ll share that date once it’s set.
You can also email your thoughts to me, or comment here.
The questions in the form are:
Is there a particular person you are making this effort on behalf of?
What’s important about getting people’s pronouns, names, and gender right?
How did you learn to care about avoiding misgendering?
Who knows that you care about this? (Sometimes we can feel isolated in our efforts, and one goal of this project is to make visible the community around us and the legacy of solidarity that we are part of when we take care in this way.)
How do you practice getting people’s pronouns, names, and gender right? (This can include practices you use for yourself, too! When we avoid misgendering, that includes our own precious trans and non-binary selves.)
What practices do you have for when you get it wrong?
What difference have these acts of care (both for getting it right and responding when you get it wrong) made in your life or the lives of others?
What would you want others to know about avoiding misgendering?
I’ll be hosting a community conversation, along with my excellent pal Zan, on the topic of how we are trying to avoid misgendering (and why, and what difference it makes).
There is so much hostility directed towards trans and gender diverse communities right now, and the actions we take to care for, welcome, affirm, and acknowledge trans folks can often feel small and invisible in the face of so much hostility. But these actions are not small, and our hope is that this conversation will make them more visible, and that by sharing these stories, we can take a stand, together, against transphobia, and alongside trans community members.
This conversation is open to anyone, of any gender, who wants to talk about how they are trying to avoid misgendering.
This conversation will be taking place on December 11 from 3-4:30 pm mountain time (December 12 from 8:30-10 am Adelaide time). You can register for the conversation here.
We will record and transcribe this conversation, and collect the stories into a collective document (probably a zine!) to share with participants and community members, and on the Dulwich Centre’s website as part of this project.
Stories will be anonymized if you prefer, and the transcription will be shared back with conversation participants but will not be shared publicly.
It’s been a minute since I hosted a conversation like this, and I’m really excited for it. But I also want to acknowledge that this conversation is in response to tragedy and trauma. The actions we take to stand with trans and non-binary folks can be life-saving. The effects of transphobia, homophobia, and refusing to support trans and non-binary folks are horrific.
I want to make something that makes care visible. And I want to be in a space where care is visible. It matters that we make this effort.
