Videos from Conference
Transgender Safer Sex and Healthy Relationships Resources
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Gender Minorities Aotearoa, a peer-led transgender organisation, operating within the kaupapa Māori public health framework Te Pae Māhutonga, and The Ottawa Charter (1986). With 1,300+ one-to-one transgender peer support engagements each year, GMA has unique and intimate institutional understandings of the issues and barriers that transgender people experience with regards to relationships, sex, and sexual violence. We will present on eight sexual violence prevention resources which we released in 2020 and 2021; on safer sex and healthier relationships for transgender people and their partners. Our resources were developed over 6 years of intensive work with transgender communities, and had substantial input from many members of our team as well as service users. We ran open submissions, gathering feedback from transgender people on early drafts; which also underwent peer review from our contemporaries at other organisations. The resources include: “Consent: sex and relationships for trans people,” “Triggers: past trauma memories and how to discuss them,” “Signs of an unhealthy relationship dynamic,” “Ending an abusive relationship,” “Active listening: a communication resource,” “Dating a trans person 101: respect,” “It’s your choice: personal autonomy in a relationship,” and “A good argument: fighting without fighting.” They cover many different aspects of healthy relationships and safer sex, with an interlinked structure, providing accessible learning for marginalised people. In many cases, resources did not exist that both covered these issues and were inclusive of transgender people. Where those resources did include transgender content, that content was usually minimal, and contained very little information specific or relevant to transgender people and their relationships. Many existing healthy relationships and safer sex resources use cissexist language, rely on biological essentialism, and trans-exclusionary binary models of gendered violence. Other existing “Rainbow” frameworks within Aotearoa have continued to replicate stereotypes, and are not aimed at, or produced by, transgender people, who are one of the highest at-risk populations for interpersonal abuse. The aim of this project was to create comprehensive, culturally safe, accessible resources, without relying on damaging Western frameworks of gender, binary or otherwise. The resources include basic advice and information on respect, autonomy, trauma, and available options for people in abusive situations, and people who wish to avoid abusive situations.