For transgender clients, societal stigma often leads to adverse formative experiences rooted in gender experience and expression, potentially resulting in early maladaptive schemas related to disconnection and rejection. Schema Therapy offers a powerful avenue for healing through emotionally corrective experiences. However, many therapists have not been supported in recognising how social and cultural factors, such as cisgenderism and heteronormativity, impact the therapeutic needs and opportunities for healing when working with marginalised communities. This influence extends well beyond individual and family-of-origin issues. This underrepresentation of LGBTQIA+ therapists may also create therapeutic blind spots and biases, potentially affecting treatment effectiveness. This paper describes the aims and impacts of a half-day Schema Therapy Workshop on adapting the modality for trans clients. The purpose of this workshop was to explore treatment approaches that actively challenge biases and incorporate social and cultural factors into every facet of therapy, from formulation to treatment implementation. This paper reflects on how we aimed to fulfill this purpose, the lessons learned, and potential ways forward by reimagining Schema Therapy through a queer lens to enhance its therapeutic potential in the mental health care of clients with diverse gender identities.
Gendered safety work is a response to gender-based violence (GBV) where harm is caused through the reinforcing of problematic gender norms, or through actions against others based on their gender identity or sexuality. Traditionally masculine, or male-dominated, workplaces often have a culture that lends itself to sexual harassment and GBV. To prevent the threat and experience of GBV, individuals report altering their behaviours via 'safety work'. The aim of this study was to explore the perception people have of their engagement in gendered safety work in the context of traditionally masculine workplaces. Reflexive thematic analysis and social constructionist epistemology were adopted; 13 in-depth interviews were conducted. Participants identified as working in a traditionally masculine workplace, and as currently or previously aligning with womanhood or femininity. Four themes were identified: workplace gendered safety work; burden of responsibility; deprivation of independence; and gendered workplace culture. Notably, participants reported making personal sacrifices to ensure their safety at work, for example downplaying their expression offemininity to avoid sexual harassment and avoiding confrontation to ensure job security. Findings allowed further development of our conceptualisation of safety work and its gendered aspects.
More than half of adult women experience some form of gendered abuse in their home (Fanslow & Robinson, 2011). Recognising patterns of abuse embedded in and through white heteronormative coupledom can be difficult. Speaking of felt unease and danger can be fraught particularly in the absence of explicit physical abuse, stereotypically understood as domestic violence. As researchers, we have heard many stories of women's endurance of abuse by someone they love. Women we speak with have often expressed the desire for their stories to be shared so that other women may see themselves in such stories, recognise danger in their experience of abuse, and become safer in their lives. In this paper, we share one woman's story of coercive control in her relationship in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. We provide an orientation and coda for her story, gifted to us in the hope that others may recognise more quickly the entrapment of coercive control.
Attuned to a note of peace and dignity, this project joins a chorus formed through the voices of researchers dedicated to transforming the wicked problem of gender-based violence located within the precarious and inequitable material conditions of daily lives that are manifest in and through gendered structural and social power relationships of domination and subordination. Situated both within a psychology discipline in Aotearoa and a collaborative community response to family violence with Sahaayta and Gandhi Nivas, the project stories a process of narrativity as a research practice of response-ability (Haraway, 2016), responding to a call in the violence sector to tell and hear stories differently to transform possibilities for ethical responses. As a mode of bearing witness to the pain of living through violence, the project addresses issues of fragmented and siloed knowledges and responses to gendered violence by remembering and re-telling a moment of response to a woman and her partner-a creative re-telling process that demonstrates how stories are sites where power dynamics can be recognised and challenged (Sonn & Baker, 2016), transforming the way we understand and respond to violence and distress.
Femininity is often reductively conceived of in feminist research as oppressive and synonymous with the experiences of cisgender heterosexual women, excluding the wealth of diverse LGBTQIA+ lived experiences of femininity. To exclude gender and sexually diverse voices in the context of a social issue they are central to, is in great misalignment with community psychology values. Thus, the current qualitative research explored gender and sexually diverse understandings and engagements with femininity. Fourteen gender and sexually diverse people shared their valuable insights and personal experiences via semi-structured interviews. Individually and collectively, the depth and complexity surrounding participant experiences was apparent, as was the clear value femininity held. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, several main and sub-themes were identified; a theme whereby normative and alternative conceptions of femininity were defined by participants, and where engagement with femininity was identified by participants as a journey including stages of separation, ordeal and meaningful return. The current paper interrogates a notable gap in critical feminist literature by centering LGBTQIA+ experiences of femininity, untethering femininity from gender and/or sexual orientation with the overall aim of fostering greater gender inclusivity and equity for feminine people in future research, intervention and practice.
