Maintaining Your Membership

I undertook a thought provoking two day CPD course for working alongside trans and gender questioning people in March of this year. I work in a school for 13-18 year olds and hoped the course would improve my knowledge and confidence when working with young people who were questioning their gender identity.

I entered the training room with my usual sense of apprehensive excitement. I generally enjoy digesting new information, but within fifteen minutes my enthusiasm waned, followed by a sense of anxiety as it dawned on me that being a white, middle aged, heterosexual, cisgender female I was very much in the minority. A fear of being judged rose inside of me, imagining I would be put in a stereo-typical box, based on my appearance and the way I spoke.

This in itself gave me an uncomfortable, but valuable, insight into how gender questioning, trans/non-binary members of our community might feel.

I found some of the group were assertively defensive if the ‘wrong’ terminology was used, which made me clam up. The trainers were open and helpful but didn’t pick up on the behaviour in a way that made me feel safe. It made me wonder how often this happens in society at large, when minorities are not defended against the micro-aggressions of others, especially in a school when teachers don’t pick up on things. However, I was also aware that there was a legitimacy to their anger especially as some of them had felt oppressed and misunderstood for years. They may have worked with therapists, who could have looked and sounded like me, and hadn’t given credence to their issues.

I discussed the training with my supervisor, who helped me to process and reflect on the experience. We talked about one of the exercises where we were asked to explore our own sense of gender, something I have to admit, I had never given much thought to. The training helped me to understand this was probably because my biological and physiological characteristics matched my socially constructed view of gender. I explained to my supervisor that when I started to question why I identified as a woman, I became aware of choices that I hadn’t ever considered were open to me. I could push the boundaries of my ‘female’ self, shocked at how much of it had been defined by familial and wider social constructs. It felt liberating to think I could identify as a he, she or they, whenever it felt appropriate. However, when I was asked to explore being a ‘him’ in the context of my workplace the feelings of liberation disappeared and I became fearful and guarded, concerned how others might view me.

I realised the same would probably be true when I imagined it in the context of family and friends as I would challenge their assumptions and prejudices, in the same way that I needed to challenge my own. Whilst talking to my supervisor it became apparent that problems that were encountered around gender sprung from other people’s attitudes and projections and not just
those of the individual. That might sound obvious but until I came up close to examining my feelings of shame and discomfort, I don’t think I would have realised the extent to which I assumed, and feared, the judgement of others.

A couple of weeks after attending the course, I was working with a fourteen year old boy, who I shall call James, who I had been working with for approximately six months. He had come to see me as he was unhappy, he didn’t have many friends and was feeling on the periphery of his peer group. Part of the work had been to help him explore his sexuality, however on this occasion he told me that he was also questioning his gender. Apart from making me wonder if the course had freed something up in me at an unconscious level, as the timing seemed too much of a coincidence, I felt much better equipped to work with him. Amongst other things, we discussed what he understood to be ‘male’ and ‘female’ traits and what that meant in relation to him.

He told me that he felt he was more sensitive than other boys, he seemed to notice when friends were upset more than other people did. He preferred tennis to rugby, he was softly spoken and was self-conscious about the way he spoke, and so the dialogue went on. We thought about why he associated these attributes with being female and if it could be possible to have these characteristics alongside other aspects of his personality rather than it being an ‘either’, ‘or’.

The work continues, as do these conversations, interspersed with his curiosity about other aspects of his identity, as well as the challenges of family and school life.

Humans are a social species; my own insecurities at the beginning of the training were linked, like James, to a desire to belong and feel connected, in whatever form that might be. As a school counsellor I’m aware that most adolescents have a desire to feel they belong. They are at a time in life when their mind, body and identity are developing and it is perhaps unsurprising that they should question gender. It is vital they feel they can be curious and can challenge and question their beliefs; to explore the ‘internal me’ in a space which is as free as possible from the constraints of external social conditions.

To give them a sense of autonomy without pathologizing. Everyone is unique and should be treated as such, but held within the scaffolding of informed therapeutic practice.

I think both the course and the ensuing discussion with my supervisor helped to free something up within me and in turn the flow of work with one of my clients. Yet, perhaps not just with one of my clients, I hope it’s given me a greater openness to difference. It’s reminded me of the importance of taking a step back and reflecting on who I am, what views I hold and how I present to others. By doing this I hope I am more self-aware which I feel has enabled me to walk alongside the people I work with in a more connected way.