Listen Now

This episode explores our different interpretations and integrations of communities. As a small group of friends who have met through various networks and communities, we take the time to reflect and share some of the diverse experiences that have allowed us opportunities to collaborate, expand, and learn, forms of allyship and growth within our communities and affirmative activities. Using inspirations and reflections, we converse through some of our influential progressions that offer insights into community organizing, intergenerational connections, and the sharing of knowledge and experiences. Discussing community groups such as SAEFTY inspire further reflections upon themes such as representation, planning, allyship, education, criticality, and the effects of representations.

This episode reflects on a year-long journey of working together as queer, non-binary artists, and friends. In this reflection, we explore aspects of friendship, mentoring, allyship, honesty, responsibility, and growth. Sharing space and vulnerability are used as vehicles to talk about trust, confidence, interpretation, and influences as artists and young community organizers. Sahira and Fin recorded several episodes over the year that have been mixed to create this episode. Inspired by the various ways in which conversations, perspectives, and opportunities transition through different spaces and times, Sahira and Fin sought to share different reflections that highlight the unique developments and memories of working together, and working within projects such as ‘Restoring the Circle.’ Themes such as performance, art, academia, tokenization, safe spaces, youth groups, and mentoring are explored. This episode seeks to emphasize and share experiences of capacity building, trust, advocacy, motivation, learning, friendship, and persistence.

Restorative Storytelling was recorded shortly after Restoring the Circle conference and youth symposium events for Trans Youth Canada. As community organizers and participants, we explored frameworks of storytelling to reflect on experiences of learning, becoming, collaboration, family, community, and affirmation. We share our insights on accessibility, internalization, education, developments, and the various capacities of bipoc, queer, and gender diverse “older” youth leaders. Reconnection has allowed us space to discuss the importance of our backgrounds and the influences of the work we do. Vital roles of chosen family, as well as themes of sustainable social mobilization, coping, healing, mental health, growth, and creating accessible communities, are discussed.Sensitive Content Warning: Discussions on sensitive topic areas may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. These topics include trauma, racism, dealing with transphobia, illness including cancer, mental health, and negative experiences with family and members of the public.

This episode features the talks given by Joel Baum and Dianne Ehrensaft, given to the audience who attended a Trans Youth canada event on June 3rd, 2019. Both of these international gender affirmation advocates and practitioners collaborated with trans, Two-Spirit, and, or, gender diverse youth conference leaders to shape their advice to practitioners on providing inclusive resources, frameworks, and practices that support gender affirmation within a diverse Canadian context. Joel spoke mostly from his backgrounds as a straight, cis, white male working with the organization called Gender Spectrum and as someone who trains mainly educators on cultivating gender-inclusive environments. Dianne dove into her experiences as a cis author, educator, activist, clinical psychologist, and founder of three gender identity clinics in California, to talk about gender affirmative models and how they have changed in recent years.

Following the youth panel featured in episode three, audience members made up of trans and non-trans healthcare, education, and, or social, community service providers, were invited to ask questions or offer commentary. This conversation looks at themes such as how to move beyond pathologizing and how to find communities and overall support for gender diverse and trans youth. Encouraging models of collaboration that involve the voices of experience to lead, train, and practice sharing of knowledge is a key focus for this panel. Discussions on redistributions of labour, emotional labour, and allyship in action for everyday life are explored by audience members and the youth panel. Sensitive Content Warning: Discussions on sensitive topic areas may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. These topics include trauma, racism, dealing with transphobia, illness including physical or mental health, and negative experiences with family and members of the public.

This discussion took place during the Restoring the Circle  Conference, on June 3rd, 2019, at Ryerson University, located on the 'Dish With One Spoon Territory.' This youth-led panel addresses barriers to accessing care and connecting with communities as Indigenous, Black, racialized and trans young people. This panel sought to centre the space, and the voices, of young trans folks to create intentional conversations about various critical feminist ideologies, anti-racist frameworks, perspectives on intersectionalities. Discussing lived experiences and needs of trans, Two-Spirit, and, or, gender diverse youth communities, and youth-led models of care within this panel seeks to expand perspectives and learning. Best practices that service providers can engage in, definitions of key terms, discussions on how to share the space, and the importance of paying attention to diversity, different lived experiences, and personal preferences are discussed.Sensitive Content Warning: Discussions on sensitive topic areas may be triggering or upsetting for some listeners. These topics include trauma, racism, dealing with transphobia, illness including physical or mental health, and negative experiences with family and members of the public. 

In this episode, we reunited with some of the many voices in Restoring the Circle’s organizing team to reflect on our collaborations and explorations as community organizers. We look at how Restoring the Circle and Trans Youth Canada has evolved or transformed, and how we hope to approach future projects within similar or different frameworks. Reflections on our ideas of space, positions, and growth as trans and gender diverse youth are shared. The youth on this episode converse through their insights upon working with service providers, guests, cis folks, and each other in ways that seek to do no (or reduce) harm, and challenge oppressive binaries.

Creating, occupying, and sharing spaces are themes explored by community organizers and advocates, who support gender-affirming practices. These folks discuss how to cultivate meaningful collaborations between adults and youth, as well as gender diverse and non-trans people. Diverse ways of teaching, building communities, and engaging in educational spaces are shared.