I've got my first invitation to present my research!

I am very excited to announce that I will be presenting my thesis research in a regular session at the 2013 Gender, Sexuality, and the Body Interdisciplinary Conference. Here is what I am presenting:

The Psychological Effects of Demographic Gender Representation

Del Rapier, MA and Shawn Davis, PhD

Abstract

This presentation explores the psychological ramifications for transgender (trans*) individuals when asked to fill out a form requiring them to self-select as either male or female. How do these limitations shape the affect of the trans* client and, therefore, the resulting relationship with the provider?

            Study results overwhelmingly endorse significant adverse psychological ramifications for trans* individuals when asked to fill out a form requiring them to self-select as either male or female. Respondents indicated that when presented with these limitations they have often add additional information on the form to help clarify their gender and over half of respondents indicated having chosen not to provide gender information at all when asked. The results of questions specific to feelings of safety, anxiety and depression show a predominance of adverse psychological effects associated with having to disclose ones gender.

Disclosure of gender not only affects psychological health, but the very relationship trans* individuals have with providers. When trans* individuals do disclose their gender to a provider, they are often faced with bias, discrimination, and ignorance. Almost two-thirds of respondents indicated that disclosing their gender has lead to an awkward or uncomfortable conversation with the provider. Over half indicated the provider did not respect their gender after disclosing. An overwhelming 60.8% of respondents indicated an expectation to educate the provider after disclosure.

Learning Objectives

·     Detail the psychological ramifications for trans* clients/patients of intake forms that limit demographic gender representation too only male or female

·      Recommend alternative methods for collecting demographic gender information in a manner supported by trans* participants

·      Learn ways in which providers can be better advocates for their trans* clients/patients.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the student patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Social Justice Counseling/Therapy

“An active philosophy and approach aimed at producing conditions that allow for equal access and opportunity; reducing or eliminating disparities in education, health care, employment, and other areas that lower the quality of life for affected populations; encouraging mental health professionals to consider micro, meso, and macro levels in the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of client and client systems; and broadening the role of the helping professional to include not only counselor/therapist but advocate, consultant, psychoeducator, change agent, community worker, and so on.” — Derald Wing Sue & David Sue

Thesis Submitted

I have just submitted my first full version of my thesis to my thesis advisor. Hopefully he will get to it quickly and there will not be a lot in the way of revisions. I want to get a final version together as early as possible so we can spend the majority of the Summer Term working on journal articles and conference presentation submissions.