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By Dr. Jem Tosh (they/she) I find that there are a couple of main reasons why misgendering hurts me so much. The first, is that each time it happens it brings up decades of memories and hurt where I have been ridiculed and received hostility for my gender. Every little slip of 'women like us' or 'your female body' cuts like a paper cut on a body deeply bruised and full of the chronic pain from a lifetime spent living in cisnormativity and intensifying transphobia. The second is that it can signify that while someone may be using the correct pronouns for me, they haven't actually changed how they see me or what they think of me. I'm still thought of as a 'woman' or 'female' who sometimes uses they/them pronouns, rather than seeing me as a nonbinary person with a nonbinary body. This may be why it hurts more when misgendering happens in inclusive and critical spaces, where people are making an effort to be an ally to nonbinary people. It happened recently, quite a few times, at Psygentra. The space I created as a nonbinary person. I didn't want Psygentra to become yet another place that I felt unwelcome or like I wasn't truly accepted as my whole self. So I sent out an email reminding people of my gender, name, titles, and pronouns, as well as some suggestions for how to be a better ally to nonbinary people for those who are already doing the work. I got so many positive responses about the email that I decided to make it into a blog post so that more people could read and share it. No Apologies Needed Because the best apology is changed behaviour. If you feel bad, worried, or sorry, you can use that energy to commit to doing better in the future. Mistakes happen and they can be a reminder that we have more learning (and unlearning) to do. Also, when we start apologising profusely, we can make the focus about us and the person who has been harmed by our error can be expected to console or comfort us. Sometimes in these moments, it can become about alleviating our guilt so we can continue feeling like a 'good person', rather than sitting with that discomfort and learning from it. Tips on Being an Ally to Nonbinary People Don't just memorise pronouns, you have to change the way you think about gender. Practice with other allies talking about the person you are trying to support, using the correct pronouns and gender terms (or practice in front of a mirror if you would rather work on it alone). Practice saying 'nonbinary person' and 'genderfluid person' until you get used to it. Apply this to their whole being - if they are nonbinary then so is their body. Don't expect androgyny. Femmes can be thems. Create space for us to talk about the violence that targets our communities. Let us grieve Two Spirit, trans, and nonbinary people lost through violence, abuse, and hate. Being an ally is not an identity, it's ACTION. How you feel about trans and nonbinary people is not doing the work of dismantling transphobia and cisnormativity. Attend our May 7, 2024 Reading and Research Group on Trans and Nonbinary Embodiment. Watch Psygentra's short lecture on Autism and Gender Nonconformity. Download our articles on 'What is Genderfluidity?' and 'Six Mistakes Academics Make When Writing About Trans People' from our online bookshop. Please do not use the terms female or woman to describe me. I'm nonbinary and genderfluid. I've worked hard to create a space where dismantling the gender binary is at the heart of everything we do at Psygentra, and as we expand and more folks find a sense of belonging here, I will stand strong on this boundary. Because if we can't make Psygentra - a critical, creative, and compassionate community, founded by a nonbinary person - safe for me, how can we possibly expect to be safe anywhere? As more hate and violence target trans and nonbinary people, it becomes even more important to have spaces that accept and celebrate us. Please don't make me feel unwelcome in the home I first created for myself, and the only space I can work without hate. My titles are: Dr. or Mx. My name is Jem Tosh (the longer version of my name is my deadname) My pronouns are: they/them and she/her. I use them interchangeably. Jem

by Dr. Jem Tosh Trigger warning: Brief mention of abuse (incl. s*xual abuse) and examples of upsetting events in academic settings. Academic trauma is when harm or distress occurs in an education context. It spans from Kindergarten to University. It can include bullying by peers or teachers, being shamed for being different, your educational needs being dismissed or mocked, or not getting the support you needed at the time. It can also be when trauma from a person's home leaks into the school environment, like experiencing neglect at home and being ridiculed at school for not having the food, clothing, or things that you need (and that everyone else seemed to have). Memories that fill people with shame, sadness, and anger from negative events in the past (like being laughed at during a presentation, being shouted at by a teacher, having a supervisor that doesn't respect your boundaries, to emotional, physical, and s*xual abuse) can show up in the present as chronic anxiety, writer's block, a very loud inner critic, imposter syndrome, procrastination, people pleasing, panic attacks, and avoiding the spotlight or opportunities for promotion (i.e. a general 'fear of success'), or its counter, an immobilising fear of failure. Academic trauma is when harm or distress occurs in an education context. It spans from Kindergarten to University. It doesn't really matter what part of my work I'm focusing on - my research, teaching, publishing, or therapy - the toxic environment of academia frequently comes up, as does a long history of painful memories from earlier education experiences. For the neurodivergent folks, it was being labeled as 'lazy' or 'too much', or 'a loner' or 'weird'. For queer, trans, and nonbinary people it can be experiences of being bullied for who they are, or for spending most (or all) of their education in the closet and never feeling safe enough to be themselves. For disabled and chronically ill people, there can be a history of rigid and unaccepting structures that expect everyone to be able to move, sit, and communicate in the same way - and often condemnation or punishment for those who don't. It can be a particular assignment, exam, or moment where you felt not good enough, not loved enough, not supported enough, or invisible. It could be times when you felt like the attention was too much, too negative, or too aggressive. [It] can show up in the present as chronic anxiety, writer's block, a very loud inner critic, imposter syndrome, procrastination, people pleasing, panic attacks, and avoiding the spotlight or opportunities for promotion (i.e. a general 'fear of success'), or its counter, an immobilising fear of failure. These traumas aren't always in the distant past either. Bullying in academia - of students and staff - is widespread and in a lot of cases, normalised. This makes it much harder to be able to see it for what it is, and all too often academics and students blame themselves. I remember my first bullying experience in an academic setting as an adult and reaching out to a colleague in desperation. I shared what was happening (which was textbook bullying in the workplace) and was told, 'That's what academia is, get used to it'. Not helpful. And while there's plenty of advice on how to leave a harmful environment (join a union, make a plan, find somewhere else to work, etc.), there's less advice or awareness about the support that can be needed afterwards, to heal from that trauma and to stop it from becoming a barrier in the rest of your education or career (e.g. with EMDR), and how to reduce the chances of it from happening again (e.g. boundaries and having a great support network). In addition to supporting unions and working to create better working (and learning) conditions for all, there needs to be more support for those currently in toxic education environments and for those who have escaped them but never had the chance to heal from those experiences. If you would like to know more about how I go about healing traumatic memories, you can read more about my therapeutic work here. Resource If you are currently studying at university and are feeling low or unsupported, you may find the following affirmation video helpful. Please note that you may find the video triggering or emotional if you have waited a long time to hear these things said to you. For a copy of the transcript to check for triggering content before listening, visit our resources page here. More Reading: Surviving Academic Bullying: Stories and Resources for Targets Bullying in Higher Education: An Endemic Problem? Academic Bullying Is Too Often Ignored: Here Are Some Targets' Stories Complaint! by Sara Ahmed The Caring Professions, Not So Caring? An Analysis of Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy.

An Interview with Jem Tosh on Imagining an Alternative Psychology in the Context of Othering, Transphobia, and Sexual Consent By Dr. Güler Cansu Ağören Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Fakültesi, Bilim Tarihi Bölümü Original version published in Turkish in Feminist Tahayyül, English version republished with permission. Also available as an article in the Journal of Psychology, Gender, & Trauma. Jem Tosh is a nonbinary psychologist who specializes in gender and trauma. They are a member of several international psychological societies; the author of books entitled, Perverse Psychology (Tosh, 2014), Psychology and Gender Dysphoria: Feminist and Transgender Perspectives (Tosh, 2016a), and The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture (Tosh, 2020), as well as numerous articles and blog posts. In their work, they follow a critical approach that suggests that psychology and psychiatry can be understood as social institutions that function to normalize power hierarchies and social oppression, and they developed this critical approach in new and important directions by analyzing the definitions and explanations of these disciplines to sexual violence, femininity, sexual desire, and gender nonconformity. After practicing within the confines of academia for a period of time, Jem ventured beyond the established boundaries of mainstream psychology, even though their work had already transcended those confines. Thus they established the platform called Psygentra. Psygentra can be defined as an initiative with a different psychology claim, a psychotherapeutic understanding based on the interaction of experience and expertise, and a contextual research logic based on intersectionality in the fields of gender and trauma. [Güler Cansu Ağören] First of all, I am grateful for this interview Jem. I have been working in the field of history and philosophy of psychiatry for a decade and have been teaching psychology from a critical perspective for half a decade now and I find it very important that critical perspectives like yours are heard by a wide audience. Because regardless of the strong and pressing nature of the questions posed by critical psychology/critiques of psychiatry, it seems to me that the mainstream approaches tend to resist a radical transformation and preserve an individualistic, reductionistic core, depoliticized under the mask of objectivity. This eventually results in an authoritative tone over subjects’ experience of oppression and social power. What is the relationship between critical and mainstream approaches in psy disciplines in your experience? [Jem Tosh] In my experience there is a disjuncture between what people say and what they do, when it comes to incorporating critiques from critical psychology and other critical perspectives within psychology (such as feminist, queer, and trans psychologies). Stemming from the position that the individual is ‘good’ and therefore harmful or oppressive actions are incongruent with how they view themselves, there can be this disconnect between that self-perception and their engagement with problematic discourses, structures, and practices. [GCA] Is this something like: "I'm a good person. Transphobia, homophobia, sexism etc. are bad. Therefore I cannot be transphobic, homophobic, sexist, etc.”? [JT] Yes. For example, when I was analysing and protesting psychiatric treatments for transgender youth that positioned cisgender conformity as the only psychologically ‘healthy’ outcome (Tosh, 2017a), I met psychologists and psychiatrists that passionately agreed with my critiques. However, when I spoke to them about their therapeutic practice, they were using the very approaches that I was describing as harmful. When trying to address this contradiction, the most frequent response I received was those individuals being adamant that they were ‘not like that’. No matter how many examples of comparison I offered between their practice and that of reparative therapy, they would not alter their perception of themselves as ‘good’ and their practice as ‘inclusive’. The consequence of this, is that if they already view their work as incorporating those critiques, and are unwilling to reflect on how their practice may still be harmful, then there can be no change. For in their view, ‘the work’ (i.e. the critical, reflective, transformative, or revolutionary ‘work’) is either already done or was never needed in the first place. [GCA] In other words, it could have been thought but not succeeded. I think there's also some kind of pressure for political correctness here. In a liberal political environment, where it is unacceptable to be "exclusionary", the key factor for individuals or experts to refer to definitions such as "inclusive" may be to declare that they exhibit the minimum necessary in political and ethical awareness. It's important to realize that this can act as a buffer that prevents the development of debates about what is needed for real transformation. [JT] There is an interesting analysis here around multiple competing meanings applied to the terms ‘affirmative’ and ‘inclusive’, that include performative allyship (Kutlaca and Radke, 2022) and a redefining of reparative practice. In creating a binary of ‘reparative’ and ‘affirmative’ with the former being associated with negative connotations of being harmful and outdated, and the latter as inclusive and progressive, it can become desirable to be defined as ‘affirmative’. To become ‘affirmative’, it can be easier to simply change the definition of the practice, rather than change the practice itself. This semantic loophole, then, replaces the dismantling of structures and discourses within psychology and psychiatry that support reparative approaches (such as cisheteronormativity). ...it can be easier to simply change the definition of the practice, rather than change the practice itself. This semantic loophole, then, replaces the dismantling of structures and discourses within psychology and psychiatry... Another example is from within feminist psychology. I often meet feminist psychologists who define themselves as ‘trans inclusive’. At its core or most basic premise, being trans inclusive means including trans people. Yet, when I discuss their practice of trans inclusivity, I hear examples of feminists working on projects that address violence against women and girls that do not include trans women or trans girls. I listen to reports and projects on gender violence that do not include Two-Spirit, intersex, trans, or nonbinary people. I review papers that add a sentence or two about trans people, but frame the rest of the paper in gender binaries and/or pathologise gender nonconformity. I read the work of feminist psychology authors who reference my own critiques of trans and nonbinary exclusion and pathologisation, only to be told when I meet them in-person how frightened they are of sharing a public washroom with a trans person, because they have uncritically accepted the harmful ‘trans predator’ narrative from trans exclusionary discourses (Sanders & Stryker, 2016; Schilt & Westbrook, 2015). [GCA] In Psychology and Gender Dysphoria (Tosh, 2016a), your analysis of the history of this discourse was striking. Although the trans exclusionary discourse maintains that this is a determination that corresponds to a social reality based on people who pose a threat to women's spaces, you say that the narrative “trans people are predators” has existed in the history of trans exclusionary discourse and (ironically, considering its place in today's trans exclusionary feminist discourse) it also contains misogyny as well as transphobia. Because, historically, the display of masculinity by a person assigned as a woman or their declaration of being a man is not met with such hate. On the other hand, being a woman is so devalued that the possibility that "a man might want to be a woman" is considered astonishing, and it is thought to represent the situation of a man who only aims to access women's spaces for sexual gain. The same astonishment and effort is not experienced in the case of trans men. I think the issue here is also related to grievability. When such transphobic discourses somehow center the embodied experience of fear and discomfort experienced by ciswomen, it suddenly becomes “hard to oppose on a feminist ground” for some. However, trans women who are excluded from women's spaces also have an embodied trauma experience. Thus, this discourse cannot be articulated or sustained without positioning ciswomen as more grievable, more valuable, and more legitimate as the basis of public regulation than trans women, that is, without creating a new gender hierarchy. I don't want to bring the subject to a point like "whose feminism is more feminist", but for a radical social change potential, it seems important that feminism should look beyond the male-female dichotomy and aim to shake all possible gender hierarchies. Have you ever offered your criticisms to feminists who were driven to uphold the claim of inclusivity but fell short? Criticism of feminism itself is a very important factor shaping the history of feminism. [JT] When I address the exclusion of genders that are disproportionately impacted by violence from research on gender violence, or of the incoherence of work that briefly mentions trans people only to marginalise them elsewhere, I experience hostility. I note this disjuncture between their promotion of a narrative of trans inclusivity (such as ‘I share my pronouns’) but the explicit exclusion of trans and nonbinary people from their feminism. When these issues are raised, I have been removed from discussions and projects. So those attempts to be ‘trans inclusive’, when presented with the changes needed to move in that direction, most often I (as the only non-cisgender voice on the project) am removed. It is an act that literally excludes a nonbinary person and continues the status quo of the original (cisnormative) structure. Yet the attempt, despite its failure, becomes another pillar that upholds a performative and illusory, ‘we are trans-inclusive’ narrative. An example of this, is when I am invited to join a mainstream psychology space with the aim of ‘making it more inclusive’. Here, the space is again framed as ‘good’ for making the effort to initiate necessary change, but the ‘effort’ becomes labour that is passed onto the marginalised group they are aiming to include (in this case, a bisexual and nonbinary psychologist). Rather than introducing change to the organisation or group (led by or in consultation with that marginalised community), what happens is that marginalised person enters an oppressive system that was designed to exclude them and may be hostile towards them, which can result in bullying, harassment, and violence, as well as trauma and distress (Tosh and Golightley, 2016; Tosh, 2023a). If we also consider the context of academia and the threat of violence to those teaching critical perspectives, particularly around gender and race, such as the recent stabbing of a professor and two students in a gender studies class at the University of Waterloo, or the 1989 mass shooting at the École Polytechnique de Montréal where the perpetrator claimed he was ‘fighting feminism’, then we can begin to appreciate the kind of hostility and violence marginalised individuals and groups can experience when trying to bring critical perspectives into the mainstream. ...the starting point for trans-inclusive work should be the acceptance that there are aspects of transphobia and trans exclusion in mainstream psychological practice - because if individuals and organisations haven’t taken the time to make those meaningful structural changes, then their practice is most likely based on the longstanding status quo, which is trans exclusion and pathologisation. Individuals and groups who label themselves as ‘good’ or ‘inclusive’ should be dismantling oppressive structures, retiring harmful practices, and creating spaces that welcome everyone. Those are difficult and time-consuming tasks that can often require accepting negative feedback and investing in those marginalised communities. It is much easier to bring in an individual who is different in the hopes that they can make the organisation different, or to make small efforts that have more immediate visibility (such as sharing on social media on Trans Day of Visibility). However, those smaller actions won’t change the oppressive systems if the people think they are already ‘good’ and that if any further work needs to be done, it needs to be done by someone else. Therefore, the starting point for trans inclusive work should be the acceptance that there are aspects of transphobia and trans exclusion in mainstream psychological practice - because if individuals and organisations haven't taken the time to make those meaningful structural changes, then their practice is most likely based on the longstanding status quo, which is trans exclusion and pathologisation (Tosh, 2014; 2016a). In these attempts to incorporate more critical perspectives, that cover only a brief selection of my own personal experience of the barriers to initiating change in psychology, there has been less focus on the dismantling of oppressive structures (such as the colonial gender binary and gender ‘norms’ produced by psychology) or the creation of alternative therapeutic/healing systems that exist outside of these structures. This is because the default in psychology is the dominant discourses and oppressive structures, like cishetnormativity and white supremacy, which is due to the the long history of mainstream psychology being predominantly defined by cisgender, straight, white, men. A psychological revolution requires more than a self-defining as ‘good’ or ‘inclusive’ to change that. Like the rainbow-washing of organisations that change their logos for Pride while enacting anti-2SLGBTQAI+ policies, so too can declarations of inclusivity without the action to back it up be a way for people to feel like it is not their responsibility to change. [GCA] The mainstream depoliticized approaches of psy disciplines are preferable for economic and political institutions, but I believe what renders these approaches as sustainable in psychology is the “normal science” being practiced based on politically charged concepts and theories that are neutralized through the objective science discourse. Do you think psychology requires a conceptual revolution for a fundamental transformation? [JT] I agree that a lot of political concepts can become sanitised and individualised within psychology, as approaches that promote ‘objectivity’ (over transparency and reflexivity) attempt to single out the issue under study, such as to remove ‘confounding variables’ in positivistic discourse, but doing so can strip the phenomena from its social, historical, and cultural contexts and the complexity and interconnectedness of human experience and subjectivity. A psychological revolution requires more than a self-defining as ‘good’ or ‘inclusive’ to change that. Like the rainbow-washing of organisations that change their logos for Pride while enacting anti-2SLGBTQAI+ policies, so too can declarations of inclusivity without the action to back it up be a way for people to feel like it is not their responsibility to change. Psychology has had conceptual shifts that have generated significant changes within (and outside of) the discipline, such as the crisis in social psychology (Parker, 1989) and the (arguably ongoing) depathologisation of queer people. Perhaps what is also needed, Cansu, is a revolution that incorporates not only a conceptual change but a structural one too. In my work I argue for a dismantling of oppressive structures (such as patriarchy, rape culture, and ableism) and a decentering of dominant discourses and groups. For instance, inviting trans people or people of colour into predominantly cisgender and white spaces keeps them on the periphery and whiteness and cisgenderism at the centre of the mainstream or the default position. To subvert that default requires a dismantling of longstanding structures that are at the very foundations of psychology, because marginalised perspectives were excluded from the creation of those ideas and practices for the majority of the discipline’s existence. In other words, you can’t fix a racist or transphobic structure by adding a little ‘inclusion’ in later on. For example, you can’t ‘add in’ nonbinary genders to the psychology of gender (or feminist psychology) without also addressing the colonial gender binary that underlies much of that work. The foundation is rooted in those problematic and harmful discourses and they need to be addressed for change to happen throughout the entire system. It requires a restructuring of the current hierarchies so that those who have been voicing critiques are heard because their perspective is valued, rather than critiques from marginalised groups being dismissed because of the very marginalisation that they are addressing. Another example of this would be when mainstream psychology training tries to incorporate critical perspectives, such as introducing a course on the psychology of diversity, but leaves the rest of the degree program unchanged. So, there are harmful theories, concepts, and practices taught throughout the program (such as, in my own teaching experience, colleagues teaching that ‘transsexualism’ is a ‘brain disease’ and bisexuality is ‘just a phase’) being taught in parallel to critical perspectives (such as affirmative approaches, trans and queer psychology, and critical psychology perspectives on depathologisation). [GCA] In other words, while criticisms or marginalized approaches introduce claims that will shake the entire discipline and the basic research process, what happens most often is that these approaches are kept at arm’s length without touching the boundaries of the mainstream. Even when criticism seems to be covered, there is no real dialogue and interaction between the mainstream and criticism. [JT] Yes. The result is that the critical perspective is positioned on the fringe, as an ‘extra’, or only relevant in specific settings and the main focus of the training and the mainstream concepts remain relatively unchanged. This doesn’t mean that these critical interventions aren’t important or worthwhile, or that no change occurs, but that there is a difference between an intervention in the short-term and the longer-term goal of dismantling structures. The work needed to create comprehensive and lasting change can’t stop at changes to a problematic system, instead of dismantling the problematic system itself. For example, the long-term goal wouldn’t be to have a ‘nicer’ form of patriarchy, transphobia, or white supremacy, but for these oppressive structures to be dismantled. Including critical race theory (as one currently highly targeted perspective that is being silenced through book bans and other attempts at erasure) in a discipline that promotes white supremacy elsewhere, or including trans psychology and then pathologising trans people, shows that more work needs to be done in those areas. ...you can’t fix a racist or transphobic structure by adding a little ‘inclusion’ in later on. For example, you can’t ‘add in’ nonbinary genders to the psychology of gender (or feminist psychology) without also addressing the colonial gender binary that underlies much of that work. Here’s a final example of this boundary between ‘adding in’ changes and dismantling the underlining oppressive structure. In one of my trainings on gender inclusivity in medicine, I was asked a question that often came up when talking about trans and nonbinary people - ‘what do I call them?’. This started a discussion about name changes and pronouns differing from what was recorded on the medical forms and paperwork. It may sound like a basic and simple question, and my answer was a very simple, ‘Ask them.’ If you are not sure what pronouns a person is using or what their current name is, then asking for clarification can be the best way to get the most accurate and up-to-date information in most contexts. However, this seemingly simple question revealed a more fundamental problem that represented a greater structural hierarchy that needed addressing first - that the doctors felt the need to be the most knowledgeable person in the room. In their role they were positioned as as expert and admitting to a patient that they did not know something as basic as their name, gender, or pronoun, felt like a betrayal of the role required of them. It was a redistribution of power, from a medical system that has the power to ‘assign’ gender, to asking the ‘patient’ for that information was an inversion of a key foundation of the discipline and profession. For some doctors, being the expert was so core to their perception of the role that it felt like a failure - that they had failed their patient by not already knowing their name, gender, and pronouns. So, on the one hand we can ask people what their pronouns are in a tokenistic and ‘check box’ kind of way, or we can do the revolutionary and transformative work of addressing the power hierarchies and structures that made that intervention necessary in the first place. [GCA] Yes, while the doctor-patient hierarchy is maintained in the first, this hierarchy is challenged in the second. [JT] I talk about this more in my book The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture (Tosh, 2020) with regards to consent and refusals. For marginalised groups, refusals can be ignored or dismissed because their voice and experience is not valued in psychology, due to their pathologisation and the normalisation of their mistreatment. Therefore, what is required for revolutionary change in psychology, is a dismantling of the ‘norms’ that position those as pathologised in the first place, so that those who have already been creating psychological theories that incorporate and explain social oppression and its impact, are acknowledged. [GCA] As you mentioned consent, we shall note that an important direction for your work is sexual violence and consent. I would like to articulate a bit on the contextual perspective you developed over these issues. Do you think consent can ever be valid in a context that involves any sort of power hierarchy? [JT] It depends on the context, power inequalities, and individuals involved. This combination can be very complex, in that rather than viewing a singular or linear power hierarchy as a kind of vertical distribution between those who ‘have’ power and those who do not, I draw on intersectionality theory from black feminist scholars that conceptualise power and oppression as a complex matrix of multiple intersections that includes representations (e.g. discourse) and structures (e.g. institutions), which impact individual, social, and societal levels (Crenshaw, 1991; Hill-Collins, 2000). Within this framework, individuals hold positions of relative power and oppression simultaneously, such as the privilege that comes from being a cisgender man in patriarchy, but also the marginalisation of being a black man existing in a racist white supremacy, and/or a working class man under capitalism. These positions shift and transform in fluid ways as the context and culture changes. When we also consider other axes of power and oppression, such as sexuality, disability, and sanism (i.e. the oppression of people who have been ‘psychiatrized’ or have a psychiatric diagnosis, Perlin, 1992), it becomes even more complex again. ...on the one hand we can ask people what their pronouns are in a tokenistic and ‘check box’ kind of way, or we can do the revolutionary and transformative work of addressing the power hierarchies and structures that made that intervention necessary in the first place. I conceptualise consent as having the ability to participate in and to withdraw that participation, from any aspect of an encounter, at any time during an encounter, and for any reason (including no reason at all). For example, rather than talk about ‘consent to sex’, it is about questioning, ‘what is sex’? What sexual acts or activities will be included at this time and do all participants consent to all of them? This can be more common in BDSM and kink communities, where discussions around sexual differences and preferences and consent are relatively more clearly-defined and transparent than in other sexual cultures (Barker, 2013). Using these kinds of discussions it becomes easier to see how a person could consent to some aspects of a sexual encounter but not all, and therefore some parts of a sexual activity could be consensual while others are not (such as, the form of sexual assault known as ‘stealthing’, where one partner consents to sex with a condom and the perpetrator covertly removes the condom during intercourse, Ebrahim, 2019). ‘Sex’, in this definition, can be both consensual and non-consensual at the same time, because there is an appreciation that sex is not just one thing, and that something can begin consensually and become nonconsensual. An interaction can have multiple instances of assent or consent, but only one instance of resistance or withdrawal of that consent is required to either stop the consensual encounter, or for it to become coercive. In my research on constructions of consent, in a rape culture, the opposite can be the dominant discourse. Many instances of resistance, such as saying ‘no’, trying to leave, crying, or physically fighting off a perpetrator, are disregarded for any instance of consent, which then becomes used as ‘evidence’ that the entire interaction was ‘consensual’. This erasure of resistance draws on a contractual form of consent and assumes that once consent is given, it can be applied retroactively and cannot be retracted (Tosh, 2016b; 2023b). Part of dismantling rape culture, then, is subverting this discourse to recognise that as soon as consent is withdrawn, if the other person or people do not stop, then it is violence, regardless of their prior consent or parallel consent to other aspects of the interaction. Having a fluid and multifaceted definition of consent, that can change moment to moment (due to a wide variety of factors including contextual, embodied, and subjective changes), and that exists simultaneously with nonconsent, allows for people to change their mind during sexual activity and for the confusion and conflicted feelings that can occur with sexual assault or domestic abuse - because it can often be the case that some elements of the sexual activity and/or relationship are consensual, while others are not. This replaces the binary of consent/nonconsent that can be used to discredit rape victims and survivors (e.g. in legal discourse), where perpetrators and rape apologists think that by showing any evidence of consent or assent they have provided ‘evidence’ that rape did not occur. In the definition that I have outlined, instances of consent do not erase instances of coercion. It is at this intersection, where power can be fluid, multifaceted, and contradictory, and consent can also be fluid, multifaceted, and contradictory, that I believe valid forms of consent can occur in a power hierarchy. Consent occurs in the boundaries between bodies and selves. I draw on feminist theories that challenge individualistic perspectives, highlighting the interconnection and ever-changing boundaries of embodiment and self (Battersby, 1999; Braidotti, 2002; Haraway, 1999). That rather than self-contained selves in a solid boundaried body, relationships and communities are made up of interconnected selves, and boundaries of embodiment are constructed and reconstructed through intersections of organic and technological matter, as well as through experiences like sex and illness (Moss and Dyck, 2003). Rather than viewing consent as something that a disconnected or independent person ‘gives’ or ‘takes away’, it becomes (1) a fluid dialogue between interconnected bodies and selves that also have (2) fluid and changing boundaries, in a context of (3) multiple and fluid power hierarchies. This space of potentiality is where consent is constantly being reaffirmed, negotiated, or challenged (Tosh, 2020). This level of complexity can be neglected in overly simplistic binaries of consent/nonconsent and powerful/oppressed. It is at this intersection, where power can be fluid, multifaceted, and contradictory, and consent can also be fluid, multifaceted, and contradictory, that I believe valid forms of consent can occur in a power hierarchy. In these complex and fluid interactions, power hierarchies can be subverted and they can be a key site where anti-oppression work occurs. It will depend on whether or not those in relative positions of power (such as affluent individuals, non-disabled people, or cisgender and straight men) choose to use the greater opportunities to abuse that power, or work to dismantle that oppressive structure (e.g. classism, ableism, and cishet-patriarchy) through their own gendered experience by taking action to equalise those relationships. Like in my other examples, this will include both elements of seemingly small changes, such as taking an active role in contraception as part of the patriarchal culture is to place this burden on the bodies of women and femmes. It will also include that larger task of dismantling the underlying structures that created that inequality in the first place, such as the patriarchal ideology of men’s ownership and control over femme and women’s bodies, and that men’s bodies require no such oversight or intervention (Chesney-Lind, 2019). Other examples would be equalising sexual pleasure for partners, to counter dominant and longstanding psychological constructions of women’s sexuality as passive or ‘naturally’ frigid and men’s as active and ‘aggressive’ (Tosh, 2014; forthcoming). For marginalised people, or those at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression, these sites can offer opportunities for resistance. From defining their own sexual boundaries, structures (e.g. monogamy, polyamory), and sexualities (e.g. demisexuality, bisexuality), to subverting power dynamics in interpersonal and sexual relationships, these acts of resistance can contribute to interpersonal and social change. For instance, women initiating sexual relationships in cultures where this is predominantly positioned as a man’s role, and decentering the role of ‘penis-in-vagina’ intercourse as the dominant definition of ‘sex’ to include a greater range of (queer and straight, partnered and solo) sexual activities, both contribute to the dismantling of cisheteronormativity. The limits of consent in this context are where: (1) power imbalances are significant and/or unchangeable, (2) boundaries of bodies and selves are undefined/blurred and/or unequal, and (3) discussion and decision-making is one-sided. For example, in the case of childhood sexual abuse, discursive and structural power imbalances exist that make consent between adult and children impossible (Bell, 1993) - such as the child’s complete dependence on adults for survival, which results in a particularly harmful and extra level of betrayal trauma when abused in this way (Freyd, 1996). Childhood sexual abuse within families is one example of undefined/blurred boundaries, where the child can be framed as ‘a physical part’ or ‘extension of’ the abuser due to a biological connection (more so if the abuser gave birth to the child), making it difficult for the abuser to recognise the child as another person with their own embodied and subjective experiences. While the child’s self and embodiment may be interconnected with others, it is not the same as their family members, nor is it inseparable from them (this is in addition to significant differences in neurological, social, and sexual development). Due to this dependence on adults, and an enmeshed sense of self and embodiment with family, dialogue is heavily weighted in favour of the adult family member. This is one example where childhood sexual abuse is a lack of consent in a power hierarchy. I talk about the constructions and intersections of power, pleasure, and consent in definitions of sex and sexual coercion more in my paper ‘Celebrity “Rape-Rape”: An Analysis of Feminist and Media Definitions of Sexual Violence’ (Tosh, 2016b), my chapter ‘No Body, No Crime? (Representations of) Sexual Abuse Online’ (Tosh, 2017b), and my third book, The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture (Tosh, 2020). [GCA] Another context that may be understood better when viewed from a contextual perspective to sexual violence is the wedding night context. This is I think relevant to the experience of many in Turkey, regardless of their gender. It is common for men to experience a pressure to perform in this context whereas similarly saying no does not even occur as an option to many women. Furthermore, in some traditional settings there is an expectation to exhibit proof of intercourse and prior female virginity to family by displaying clothes covered with blood, introduced as vaginal blood caused by penetration. Of course, in some cases partners may have different experiences, but I expect it is not uncommon for both partners to experience sexual violence in this context, even when there is given sexual consent or “erection” which is incorrectly attributed to consent. How do you think focusing on the context can help us identifying the “perpetrator” and the survivor(s) or the extent of the act that is to be framed as violence? [JT] Thank you for this question and the specific example from Turkey. I answer it drawing on my work on coercion and consent but without direct lived experience of Turkish culture (I do discuss my own relationship with traditional cultures and discourses around gender and sex during ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland - see Tosh and Dempsey, 2020). This example, of the expectation of sex during the wedding night, is the kind of complexity I was referring to in the last question on consent. Here we have multiple structural and institutional influences, such as the institution of the family and/or religious institutions that can impact on both individuals’ ability to consent. This will depend on a variety of factors, such as how important their family relationship is to them, how important traditional practices are to them and their family, and what potential consequences there are for dissenting from these expectations, such as social ostracism, family rejection, or violence. In addition to these structural and institutional influences, there is also the impact of gender and different gendered expectations within a context of cishet-patriarchy and the institution of marriage. These include discourses that conflate women’s lack of sexual experience with ‘innocence’, ‘purity’, and ‘honour’ (but not mens) (Moslener, 2015; Ozyegin, 2009), psychological discourses that frame men’s sexuality as ‘naturally’ violent or aggressive (Tosh, 2014; forthcoming), and in some contexts, where women are expected to ‘obey’ their husband or the expectation that part of the wife’s role is to sexually satisfy their husband. It is in this context that violence can occur against the wife, where there is an expectation of intercourse that has the potential to be physically damaging, and where instances of resistance (such as crying, bleeding, and so on) could be read as further ‘evidence’ of virginity - that their body is being forcibly changed through this ‘new’ experience. This coincides with more general discourses in a rape culture that frame first experiences of penetration as ‘normally’ painful (Thompson, 1990). These constructions are harmful and perpetuate the myth that sex ‘should’ be painful for (‘virtuous’) women, which can be tied to further problematic misinformation, such as the myth that the size of a vagina correlates to the number of sexual partners (Braun & Kitzinger, 2010). For the husband, in this example, while there is not the same emphasis on bleeding, there is potential for violence. You are right to say that an erection can be incorrectly attributed to consent. There can be many reasons for that biological reaction, including fear (Fuchs, 2004). Sexual assault can also include what is known as ‘compelled penetration’ - where an individual is forced to penetrate someone else. This can be through threats of violence, emotional blackmail, manipulation, abuse of power, and so on (Weare, 2018). Being forced to penetrate a wife on a wedding night, due to threats and/or pressure from others in this context of normalised compulsory intercourse, in addition to being forced to make that penetration result in bleeding, could result in sexual trauma for the husband and be an example of nonconsensual intercourse via compelled penetration. Another important aspect here, that you mentioned, was that for some women they did not even think to refuse this sexual activity on a wedding night. This silence around the possibility of resisting the tradition, or of subverting it, is due to a lack of available subject positions in these discourses. Like ‘don’t say gay’ laws, silence disempowers and perpetuates the status quo. Not knowing that sexual refusal is an option, is a feature of discourses that frame penetration and heterosexuality as compulsory, which are also tied to problematic ideas of sexual ‘health’ and ‘normality’ (Tosh and Carson, 2016). In terms of creating opportunities for valid consent in this context, and of subverting these oppressive structures and discourses, there are possible individual acts of resistance (such as using prior collected menstrual blood to be given as ‘evidence', removing the pressure for potentially painful and/or damaging intercourse on the wedding night), as well as dismantling the oppressive structures that create this expectation in the first place, such as decentering heteronormativity and ‘penis-in-vagina’ sex that I mentioned before, as well as including the option to not have sex - in relationships in general and on a wedding night. [GCA] You are currently working on a second edition of Perverse Psychology. Do you have anything that you are doing significantly different in this edition? Queer activism, movements like #MeToo, or the unfortunate rise of trans-exclusionary feminist discourses… A lot happened since the first edition. Have any of these developments affected your approach or raised new questions to think about? [JT] You are right, a lot has happened since the first edition. It was written during 2013-14 and over the past decade there have been many significant developments related to both aspects of the book - sexual violence and gender nonconformity. The original argument of the book still stands, which is a result of a comparative and genealogical discursive analysis of psychological constructions of sexual violence (e.g. ‘the paraphilias’) and gender nonconformity (e.g. the diagnosis of gender dysphoria), but what the new edition offers is an expanded and updated analysis. The book will be much longer to accommodate updates based on key events over the last 10 years as well as new analyses. Yes you are correct, this includes the impact of the #MeToo movement on sexual violence discourses, particularly within psychology, trans-exclusionary discourses within feminism, as well as new constructions of gender nonconformity, such as the controversial (and highly criticised) ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’. ...what the new edition offers is an expanded and updated analysis. The book will be much longer to accommodate updates based on key events over the last 10 years as well as new analyses. The other difference, is that when I started writing Perverse Psychology I often had to explain to people what the word transgender meant whereas now there is a proliferation of polarising discourses around trans and nonbinary people. The language has changed and the way we talk about gender diversity and nonconformity has changed. There will be an update of the language throughout the book (including the removal of the contested term ‘transgenderism’, see Tosh, 2021 for my discussion on how that term became included in the book) as well as an updated version of analysis based on the developments within my own work, particularly a greater focus on intersectionality. The other big difference is that when the first edition was published, I wasn’t ‘out’ as queer, nonbinary, or a survivor of sexual abuse. Having since written about my lived experience in my academic work, I feel that I can be more open in my research and reflect more on how that community and experiential knowledge extends and is interrelated with my academic and theoretical knowledge. [GCA] Maybe we can talk about Psygentra at this point. What makes Psygentra a different practice of psychology? [JT] Psygentra was set up after a conscious decision to step outside of mainstream academia and psychology to create something different. Rather than trying to break into mainstream spaces and take up tokenistic roles where significant time and energy can be spent existing in a structure designed to exclude you (Tosh and Golightley, 2016; Tosh, 2023), I decided to create a space where those typically on the periphery of academia and psychology are at its centre. The aim, then, is not to ‘include’, where people are invited into an already existing space that is oppressive or exclusionary for them, in the hope that they will change that space and make it more inclusive by their presence, but to build a community around them instead. So rather than have a psychology defined through the lens of a colonial gender binary, we have a space defined at its foundation as gender diverse. In doing so we dismantle and decentre that colonial gender binary and position marginalised genders at the forefront. We don't structure or plan things that assume marginalised experiences are in the minority (e.g. being queer, racialised, neurodivergent, disabled, and so on), we design the organisation around the lives and needs of those excluded by other systems. Psygentra is also an organisation that is founded and run by survivors of violence and abuse. This means that rather than have a constructed boundary between psychologists or psy professionals, and those who experience trauma and it's long-lasting effects, we position those who have experienced trauma as both survivors and experts (Tosh and Dempsey, 2020). This subverts the standard hierarchy in pathologising psychologies. We also include critical perspectives in our work around surviving and healing from sexual abuse (such as non-pathologising and feminist work), as well as keeping a critical lens on the profession itself, such as addressing sexual abuse that happens within psychology (Tosh, 2020). [GCA] I think areas like Psygentra are needed in many parts of the world. Congratulations to you and your team, Jem, for this initiative that I think is vital to many people. I hope your approach will be inspiring for those who practice psychology in Turkey. I would like to thank you once again for this interesting and important interview. References: Apaydın, Ç. (2022). Onarım Terapisi ve Zararları. [online] Erişim adresi: https://madalyonklinik.com/podcast/onarim-terapisi-ve-zararlari/ (Erişim tarihi: 20 Temmuz 2023) Barker, M.J. (2013). Consent Is A Grey Area? A Comparison of Understandings of Consent in 50 Shades of Grey and on the BDSM Blogosphere. Sexualities, 16(8), 896-914. Battersby, C. (1999). Her Body/Her Boundaries. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, pp. 341–358. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bell, V. (1993). Interrogating incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law. London: Routledge. Braidotti, R. (2002). 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(2017a). Gender Nonconformity or Psychiatric Noncompliance? How Organised Noncompliances Can Offer a Future Without Psychiatry. In M. Morrow & L. Haling Malcoe (Eds.), Critical Inquiries for Social Justice in Mental Health, pp. 255-284. University of Toronto Press. Tosh, J. (2017b). No Body, No Crime? (Representations of) Sexual Violence Online. In E. Rees (Ed.), Talking Bodies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Embodiment, Gender and Identity, pp. 137–162. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Tosh, J. (2020). The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture. London: Routledge. Tosh, J. (2021). Is Psychology Perverse? Psygentra, https://www.psygentra.com/post/is-psychology-perverse Tosh, J. (2023a). Carving My Own Space for Critical Psychology in British Columbia. Psygentra, https://www.psygentra.com/post/carving-my-own-space-for-critical-psychology-in-british-columbia Tosh, J. (2023b). Dystopian Futures and Virtual Rape: How New Technologies Revolutionise Violence. Psygentra, https://www.psygentra.com/feminism-virtual-violence-event Tosh, J., & Carson, K. (2016). A Desire to be ‘Normal’? A Discursive and Intersectional Analysis of ‘Penetration Disorder’. Intersectionalities: A Global Journal of Social Work Analysis, Research, Polity, and Practice, 5(3), 151–172. Tosh, J. And Dempsey, F. (2020). Sexual Abuse and Surviving with(in) Psychology. In D. Lee & E. Palmer (Eds.), #MeToo: Survivors of Sexual Violence as Counsellors and Psychotherapists, pp. 64-82. Wyastone Leys: PCCS Books. Tosh, J., & Golightley, S. (2016). The Caring Professions, Not So Caring? Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy. In B. Burstow, (Ed.), Psychiatry Interrogated: An Institutional Ethnography Anthology, pp. 143-60. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wallenfeldt, J. (2023). The Troubles: Northern Ireland History. 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by Dr. Jem Tosh Every now and then I get asked for introductory guides to gender diversity for families, allies, and folks trying to understand their own gender experience. While some have approached me through my research work, saying that they found my books helpful and affirming, my books are mostly written for an academic audience so they are less accessible than others that are available. Below is a list of books that provide information on what gender diversity is, descriptions of personal experiences, and reflections on the current context of being trans and nonbinary when hostility and transphobia can be frequent occurrences. These texts answer common questions, provide advice on how to thrive, are affirming, and centre trans and nonbinary voices. Gender: A Graphic Guide by Meg John Barker and Jules Scheele Is masculinity 'toxic'? Why are public toilets such a political issue? How has feminism changed the available gender roles - and for whom? Why might we all benefit from challenging binary thinking about sex/gender? In this unique illustrated guide, Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele travel through our shifting understandings of gender across time and space - from ideas about masculinity and femininity, to non-binary and trans genders, to intersecting experiences of gender, race, sexuality, class, disability and more. Tackling current debates and tensions, which can divide communities and even cost lives, Barker and Scheele look to the past and the future to explore how we might all approach gender in more caring and celebratory ways. Trans Like Me by CN Lester A personal and culture-driven exploration of the most pressing questions facing the transgender community today, from a leading activist, musician, and academic. In Trans Like Me, CN Lester takes readers on a measured, thoughtful, intelligent yet approachable tour through the most important and high-profile narratives around the trans community, turning them inside out and examining where we really are in terms of progress. From the impact of the media's wording in covering trans people and issues, to the way parenting gender variant children is portrayed, Lester brings their charged personal narrative to every topic and expertly lays out the work left to be done. Trans Like Me explores the ways that we are all defined by ideas of gender -- whether we live as he, she, or they -- and how we can strive for authenticity in a world that forces limiting labels. Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon In Beyond the Gender Binary, poet, artist, and LGBTQIA+ rights advocate Alok Vaid-Menon deconstructs, demystifies, and reimagines the gender binary. Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Beyond the Gender Binary, Alok Vaid-Menon challenges the world to see gender not in black and white, but in full color. Taking from their own experiences as a gender-nonconforming artist, they show us that gender is a malleable and creative form of expression. The only limit is your imagination. How to Understand Your Gender: A Practical Guide for Exploring Who You Are by Alex Iantaffi and Meg John Barker Have you ever questioned your own gender identity? Do you know somebody who is transgender or who identifies as non-binary? Do you ever feel confused when people talk about gender diversity? This down-to-earth guide is for anybody who wants to know more about gender, from its biology, history and sociology, to how it plays a role in our relationships and interactions with family, friends, partners and strangers. It looks at practical ways people can express their own gender, and will help you to understand people whose gender might be different from your own. With activities and points for reflection throughout, this book will help people of all genders engage with gender diversity and explore the ideas in the book in relation to their own lived experiences. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource By and For Transgender Communities There is no one way to be transgender. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a revolutionary resource - a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender people, with each chapter written by transgender and gender expansive authors. Inspired by Our Bodies, Ourselves, the classic and powerful compendium written by and for cisgender women, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is widely accessible to the transgender population, providing authoritative information in an inclusive and respectful way and representing the collective knowledge base of dozens of influential experts. Each chapter takes the reader through an important issue, such as race, religion, employment, medical and surgical transition, mental health, relationships, sexuality, parenthood, arts and culture, and many more. Anonymous quotes, testimonials, art and poetry from transgender people are woven throughout, adding compelling, personal voices to every page. In this unique way, hundreds of viewpoints from throughout the community have united to create this strong and pioneering book. It is a welcoming place for transgender and gender-questioning people, their partners and families, students, professors, guidance counselors, and others to look for up-to-date information on transgender life. Trans Affirmative Coloring Book by Theo Nicole Lorenz If you're transgender, non-binary, or another gender under the wide and wonderful trans umbrella, this book is for you. With ten coloring pages celebrating trans identity, beauty, and relationships, the Trans Affirmation Coloring Book is a reminder to treat yourself kindly, because who you are is amazing. Also, everyone in this book is trans. The Trans Affirmation Coloring Book is also available as a free download at gumroad.com/theonicole The Trans Self-Care Workbook by Theo Nicole Lorenz If you're transgender, non-binary, or any other gender under the wide and wonderful trans umbrella, this book is for you. A creative journal and workbook with a difference, this book combines coloring pages celebrating trans identity, beauty and relationships, with practical advice, journaling prompts and space for reflection to promote self-affirmation and wellbeing. Drawing on CBT and mindfulness techniques, the book covers topics including body positivity and neutrality, coming out, euphoria and dysphoria, building new friendships and navigating relationships with your friends and family, and is the go-to resource for anybody who has ever felt the pressure to conform to a singular definition or narrative. Theo Nicole Lorenz's heart-warming and empowering illustrations of trans people will provide reassurance that you are never alone, and are a reminder to always treat yourself kindly. Growing Up Trans: In Our Own Words edited by Lindsay Herriot and Kate Fry Growing Up Trans shares stories, essays, art and poetry created by trans youth aged 11 to 18. In their own words, the works illustrate the trans experience through childhood, family and daily life, school, their bodies and mental health. Together the collection is a story of the challenges, big and small, of being a young trans person. At the same time, it’s a toolkit for all young people, transgender or not, about what understanding, acceptance and support for the trans community looks like. In addition to the contributed works, there are questions and tips from experts in the field of transgender studies to challenge the reader on how to be a trans ally. Growing Up Trans came out of a series of workshops held in Victoria, British Columbia, to bring together trans youth from across the country with mentors in the community. The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook: Skills for Navigating Sexual Orientation and Gender Expression by Anneliese Singh Resilience is a key ingredient for psychological health and wellness. It’s what gives people the psychological strength to cope with everyday stress, as well as major setbacks. For many people, stressful events may include job loss, financial problems, illness, natural disasters, medical emergencies, divorce, or the death of a loved one. But if you are queer or gender non-conforming, life stresses may also include discrimination in housing and health care, employment barriers, homelessness, family rejection, physical attacks or threats, and general unfair treatment and oppression—all of which lead to overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness. So, how can you gain resilience in a society that is so often toxic and unwelcoming? In this important workbook, you’ll discover how to cultivate the key components of resilience: holding a positive view of yourself and your abilities; knowing your worth and cultivating a strong sense of self-esteem; effectively utilizing resources; being assertive and creating a support community; fostering hope and growth within yourself, and finding the strength to help others. Once you know how to tap into your personal resilience, you’ll have an unlimited well you can draw from to navigate everyday challenges. By learning to challenge internalized negative messages and remove obstacles from your life, you can build the resilience you need to embrace your truest self in an imperfect world. Dr. Jem Tosh (they/she) is a Doctor of Psychology, a Chartered Member and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, a Full Member of the Canadian Psychological Society and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. They are the author of several books, including Psychology and Gender Dysphoria: Feminist and Transgender Perspectives (Tosh, 2016).

by Dr. Jem Tosh (Content warning: discussion of transphobia, racism, ableism, being 'outed', one brief mention of su*cide) I'm currently working on a new online course on how to write your first book and get it published, and in the section on addressing fears there is a fairly large section on fear of criticism. Experiences with or fears around receiving harsh feedback abound in academia, especially for early career academics and those starting out their publishing career. I often find myself providing advice and support in this area, such as sharing my story about the time I received two negative reviews and I sent the editor a 17-page response on why those two reviews were wrong. Not only did they accept the piece to be published, they offered me a larger word count to expand the original analysis even further. Harsh feedback doesn't need to be the rejection it appears to be, sometimes it can be your opportunity to shine. I received two negative reviews and I sent the editor a 17-page response on why those two reviews were wrong. Here is some of my general advice around receiving harsh reviews in academia, with a focus on experiences of marginalised writers, but each case is unique so please take what feels useful, get extra advice on what you're not sure about, and disregard what doesn't feel relevant to you. Is this feedback or is this hateful and/or unprofessional? First off, let's take a moment to check whether this is even something that you should be dealing with. It's an important role for the editor of any publication to review the feedback they get and evaluate whether or not it is appropriate. They should stop hateful and unprofessional reviews at the door - but they often don't. Why? This can be a combination of (1) a lack of time, as editing can be another form of unpaid academic labour in an already overburdened profession, (2) a lack of awareness of what is harmful as the paper is not in their own area of expertise (or they may share the harmful views of the reviewer), and (3) due to the promotion of the problematic concept of 'objectivity' in psychology and academia more generally. This can lead to some editors feeling that their role is to take a step back and allow all feedback to be considered. They may also struggle to find appropriate reviewers due to academics having high workloads and precarious employment that means unpaid academic labour is getting harder and harder to accomodate. Unfortunately this can lead to trans authors receiving transphobic reviews, black authors having to read through racist reviews, and disabled authors spending time responding to ableist comments, and so on. It adds an extra layer of unpaid labour - one that is emotionally draining and full of microaggressions and outright hostility - that is not only unnecessary and harmful, but disproportionately impacts on marginalised academics. First off, let's take a moment to check whether this is even something that you should be dealing with. Strategies: (1) Remove the hateful comments from the document and focus only on helpful comments (if there are any) and explain to the editor why those changes were not made to the paper/chapter, (2) Request an alternative review stating that this reviewer has been unprofessional, inappropriate, and/or in breach of professional guidance, (3) Withdraw the piece and add that publication to your list of spaces that are unsafe for marginalised authors. This can feel scary for some, but there are thousands of places you can publish, and even if something feels really important (like a special issues) there will always be other opportunities. You don't need to force yourself to publish in a space that feels unwelcoming or unsafe. Is the feedback really upsetting? One of the worst pieces of feedback I received about my work was when a reviewer stated that they didn't know how to evaluate my analysis without knowing my personal identity and social positioning. While I appreciate the importance of reflexivity in research, the assumption that it is necessary to know whether I'm cis or trans when I'm talking about psychology and gender nonconformity (and that enforcement of another binary onto a nonbinary author) shouldn't be at the forefront of a review - the argument and analysis I am making should be the focus. I strongly believe that no author should ever be put in a position where they have to disclose personal information, either about who they are or what they have survived, to have their work published or fairly reviewed. This pressure to be 'out' in a transphobic context, one that comes with risks of exclusion, discrimination, rejection, and violence, should be taken into account when making requests about people's own personal experiences with gender and with which lens they are approaching material for analysis. I had stated that I was drawing on trans inclusive feminism but that wasn't enough. My personal information was seen as an imperative part of the work. I felt sick. It was like they didn't know whether my work was of value or not until they knew what kind of person I was. I see this too often in hostility regarding gender neutral pronouns and androgynous appearance - "But I don't know how to treat you, until I know 'what' you are" betrays the speaker's unequal treatment of people based on their gender. My gender shouldn't make my work more or less valid. My 'academic coming out' felt non-consensual, something that I think is abhorrent in a feminist space and one that includes a focus on violence, abuse, and consent, and the (*Link discusses su*cide) well-documented harms of forced 'outing'. I made a decision to be 'out' because I couldn't bear to receive this kind of feedback again, but I strongly believe that no author should ever be put in a position where they have to disclose personal information, either about who they are or what they have survived, to have their work published or fairly reviewed. I have also received reviews that told me 'most Irish people are alcoholics' in my work on anti-Irish discourses in Britain - as an Irish author. These hateful and harmful reviews can lead to emotional pain and distress that needs support and healing. So, in addition to working on feedback regarding the publication, marginalised folks can also need to consider how else to support themselves in this current (and problematic) publishing context. Feedback doesn't need to be about your identity to be upsetting, harsh reviews can bring up other difficult emotions that can stem from childhood experiences, like feelings of rejection, failure, and not being good enough. These are also areas where extra emotional support can be helpful. Strategies: (1) Get support from friends, family, local organisations, or your community, (2) Reach out to a therapist to work through particularly upsetting aspects of the review that are bringing up other memories or difficult experiences for you, (3) Work on your professional boundaries and decide what you are comfortable sharing and in what context. Is the feedback potentially helpful but communicated in a hostile way? Sometimes a helpful point gets lost in a sea of hostility. This can make it difficult to ascertain whether it's a genuinely useful point or just something that pisses you off. In one review that I received that was very problematic, there was one point that was very useful, and after I leaned into that piece of criticism, my work improved significantly. The problem was that I really didn't want to take advice from this a**hole. It can be useful to reflect on your reaction to the hostility - is it that the point is valid but it hit a nerve? Is the reviewer writing in a very blunt way and you needed this communicated more softly because you're still learning or feeling insecure about your work or writing? Does the reviewer have a chip on their shoulder and you're getting the brunt of that because of the anonymity that the review process provides? This process of separating the content of the review from the form it takes can take time and multiple perspectives. It can be like the review becomes another text to analyse. Strategies: (1) Get a second opinion - if only the harsh reviewer mentioned it, maybe they're wrong, (2) Put the review away and come back to it later when your immediate response to the hostility has dissipated, (3) Ask a friend, colleague, or supervisor to paraphrase the feedback to you so that you can work on it without having to filter out the hostility yourself. This should be easier for them to do because it is not personal to their work, and you can reciprocate at a later time. Is the feedback just useless or unhelpful? Sometimes you get the awful experience of pouring your life and soul into a great qualitative paper that you're really proud of, only to get ridiculous comments that literally make no sense from a quantitative reviewer. Other times it can be that the piece was sent to a student who is still learning about the topic and the feedback just isn't all that helpful. This can be frustrating because you have missed out on an opportunity to get quality feedback to improve your work, and it can be time-consuming to read through and respond to comments that really don't mean a whole lot. On the plus side though, while potentially boring and irritating, this kind of harsh feedback shouldn't be too upsetting. Strategies: (1) Ignore the useless comments and explain to the editor that those comments were not responded to because they were irrelevant and reflected a lack of understanding of the methodology, (2) Request an alternative review from a qualitative reviewer, (3) Submit the piece elsewhere, to somewhere that has more experience with your methodology, (4) Laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Preventative Strategies Check Out the Publication's Reputation Ask people who are doing similar work to you what kind of experiences they have had with that journal or publisher. This is a key way of finding out what happens 'behind the scenes' and what publications like to appear inclusive and supportive, but can actually be quite hostile or exclusionary. Others working in the same area can also recommend alternative publishing spaces that they have had good experiences with. Recommend Reviewers You can send editors suggested reviewers - just make sure that they aren't your best friend or office buddy. You want the feedback to be useful to make your work even better than it already is, but at the same time you don't want it reviewed by someone who is just going to waste your time because they are unfamiliar with your topic or methodology. You can also explain to the editor why the reviewer choice is important - such as your paper discussing a polarising topic that can attract hostility in the profession. Test the Water Try submitting something smaller and shorter but with the same focus. Perhaps a book review or a short letter to the editor. If you get hostile responses or the perspective isn't appreciated, it's unlikely that a larger submission will receive a better response. It doesn't have to be like this. We need: Clear guidance on appropriate communication when reviewing Editors filtering unprofessional, hostile, and/or hateful reviews (and reviewers) Editors not sending out unprofessional, hostile, and/or hateful articles for review An emphasis on constructive, supportive feedback Authors, Reviewers, and Editors to be paid for their labour Need more advice or support about a harsh review? You can book a one-to-one consultation with me below.

by Dr. A. Edwards *Content warning: discussion of medical gaslighting, violence, neglect, and s*xual abuse. I had an unusual experience this week. After many years (decades, actually) of not being believed by doctors and having my pain dismissed as either unimportant or not 'real', someone finally believed me. What was more amazing, is that I didn't even need to convince them. I had a medical professional complete an assessment and examination, and in doing so, they saw via test results and X-rays the result of violence and neglect that I experienced in childhood and adolescence (and some violence from adulthood too). It was this beautiful moment where we both looked at the documentation, that showed the extent of the injuries, as well as how the lack of treatment had led to a wide range of chronic health issues and unrelenting pain. For the first time in my life, I felt seen. What I also liked about this experience, was that it showed the messy interconnectedness between violence, abuse, trauma, and chronic illness. Despite a wealth of research and lived experiences showing the connections between sexual abuse (particularly childhood sexual abuse) and chronic pain and illness (Daphna-Tekoah, 2019), survivors' physical manifestations that continue years after an assault is often overlooked. My X-rays, charts, and images explained what was thought to be inexplicable, and documented what had previously been discarded as unbelievable. It was a profoundly healing moment for me. To be believed without any doubt because they had come to the conclusion through their own investigation and analysis. They didn't need to take me at my word, and it wasn't my word against someone else's, because my body did the talking. It was this beautiful moment where we both looked at the documentation, that showed the extent of the injuries, as well as how the lack of treatment had led to a wide range of chronic health issues and unrelenting pain. For the first time in my life, I felt seen. It was also healing because I wasn't pathologised either. There was an anger in the room of the injustice of a child being hurt and uncared for. My pain and injuries, and the chronic health issues that they had led to, were not framed as 'illness' or a result of lifestyle choices. I wasn't fat-shamed or told to walk more or try yoga. I was told that my health was in the state it is because I had been hurt and no-one had cared for me. It was because when I had tried to reach out for care as an adult, I hadn't been believed by multiple doctors and healthcare systems. That all my attempts to improve my own health had been sabotaged by underlying and significant injuries that needed to heal - and they couldn't do it on their own. It was non-pathologising and trauma-centred care. The other moment that stood out to me was when I was told that I needed ongoing care - not treatment for a condition - but care for my hurt body, and care that was long overdue. What I also liked about this experience, was that it showed the messy interconnectedness between violence, abuse, trauma and chronic illness. It's rare that my visits to a health professional are so validating and psychologically therapeutic. It inspired one of the poems in my poetry collection, published by Psygentra, called All The Things I Can't Say: A Collection of Poems About S*xual Abuse. Poetry has been found to help survivors gain additional insight and understanding about their sexually abusive experiences (Daphna-Tekoah, 2019), and writing this collection has been an incredibly healing experience for me as well. Here's a little preview of that publication, and the full poem about this experience of being believed. believe by Dr. A. Edwards Small room and closed in but light shining through I wait in silence for the letdown Of the next unexplained pain and unknown cause As he studies the images of my broken body I wait again for the diagnosis that never comes And instead he turns to me with a shaking voice I’m so sorry his eyes have tears that cry to me That he knows from the breaks and the bends of my bones He knows what they did without me saying a word What a wonderful thing it is to be believed. "A fearlessly open, cathartic, and validating read." - Dr. Jem Tosh, Series Editor "It's visceral, powerful, angry, tender, and beautiful." - Krista Carson, Centre for Writing and Publishing "...an introduction to the messy feelings of surviving." - Dr. A. Edwards is a psychologist and a survivor of sexual abuse. They use art and creativity in healing sexual trauma.

by Dr. Jem Tosh Originally published by the International Society for Critical Health Psychology. Republished with permission. "Critical psychology? Oh that sounds so negative, let's call it 'reflective psychology' instead!" This was the first response I received when I told a psychologist that I was starting a PhD in critical psychology. It was a weird combination of toxic positivity and misunderstanding about what critical psychology actually is. It was a failure to acknowledge that it's a particular space and perspective 'within' and 'without' psychology's disciplinary boundaries (Parker, 1999). So you can't really go around renaming it just because you don't like the sound of it. 'Critical' doesn't only mean to critique and evaluate something, it also means essential. Evaluating and analysing psychology itself is vital for its existence, development, and to ensure that past harms aren't repeated and present harms are stopped (such as conversion therapies). For those unfamiliar with critical psychology, it can be assumed that it is the kind of 'critical' that is associated with constant negative criticisms. This misconception can result in valid critiques of the harms the profession produces and propagates being dismissed as unrepresentative or 'radical' perspectives from a pessimistic group. I learned early on that this career choice would require some educating and advocating as I made my way through my training (and beyond it). I also noticed though, that more often than misunderstanding, there was fear. 'Don't speak out, keep your head down' This was the response I received from caring and concerned mentors and colleagues as I was studying. It became more apparent the further into my career I got, that the farther you are from that narrow constructed 'norm' of psychology, the more likely you would come across difficulties ranging from being excluded from the profession to bullying, harassment, and even assault (Tosh, 2020; Tosh & Golightley, 2016). This didn't start when I decided to study critical perspectives, because my existence as 'different' was considered problematic as soon as I started studying psychology. Sitting in lectures listening to harmful and oppressive narratives about people like me, year after year, and having to repeat them to pass examinations and enter into the profession, meant that finding critical perspectives in psychology (e.g. critical psychology, feminist psychology, queer psychology etc.) was a breath of fresh air. Finally there was a space that found these concepts as problematic and troubling as I did - and was speaking out about it and working towards making change in the profession (and more broadly as well). For example, one of the contradictions that I struggled with early on in my career was the silencing of topics considered 'taboo'. I was told to hide my research posters because the content was deemed 'too upsetting' for students because the presence of the term 'sexual violence' was thought to be 'depressing'. This perspective overlaps with approaches that can be taken regarding sexual violence that occurs on campus - silence and secrecy (Brown and Mangan, 2019; Caron and Mitchell, 2021). I got tired of trying to carve out a space for myself and others in mainstream psychology, with all the energy and effort that entails, to receive either hostility, tokenism, or performative allyship. As a survivor of sexual abuse myself, and an academic psychologist who has researched sexual abuse for almost two decades, this focus on 'positive' topics and the erasure of violence was intolerable to me. I needed critical perspectives that addressed and confronted these important issues - including dismantling and deconstructing those norms and structures that are central to our lives and society, but that can also create a context for abuse to thrive. So that fear that others held and that view of critical psychology as pessimistic didn't resonate with me. It was hopeful and optimistic that this profession could change and could do better. What was more frightening to me, was a profession that refused to look at itself with a critical lens - one where people were afraid to challenge it or question it for fear that their career would be impacted or they would suffer the same exclusion I had been warned about. I wanted no part of a psychology that allowed violence and abuse to continue unquestioned because it didn't want to face the discomfort of acknowledging that these things exist, and sometimes they can be too close to home (Tosh, 2020; Young & Hegarty, 2020). 'So what are you going to do about it?' This was the first question I was asked at an academic conference. I had just presented my undergraduate dissertation and was faced with this challenging question. It was asked in the spirit of academic activism. Now that I had done this research, what was I going to do about it? It showed me the important connection between research and action, but it also inspired and empowered me to make changes in psychology and academia when I came across situations that I found to be harmful or oppressive. It was in this spirit of action and change that was directly tied to critical perspectives and research that appealed to me. I found a welcoming and critical space initially at the Manchester Discourse Unit. When I moved to British Columbia, Canada I began carving out my own (virtual) critical psychology space at psygentra. Our motto is 'doing psychology differently' because I was tired of spending so much of my time justifying my own existence in mainstream spaces, rather than doing the critical work that I wanted to do. I was tired of being the Diversity Representative in a profession that has a long history of pathologising diversity. I was tired of teaching about queer and trans psychologies next to colleagues teaching that those very communities, identities, and concepts were 'abnormal'. I got tired of trying find a space for myself and others, with all the energy and effort that entails, to receive either hostility, tokenism, or performative allyship. For all our research and expertise in mental wellbeing and preventing abuse, we have managed to create some toxic work environments that can put the wellbeing of staff and students last... I wanted a space where those positioned on the outside of psychology were at the centre. I wanted to dismantle the classism and ableism of academia and psychology, where we're expected to 'publish not perish', work long hours beyond our contracted obligations, and encouraged to compete with colleagues for funding, promotions, and more. For all our research and expertise in mental wellbeing and preventing abuse, we have managed to create some toxic work environments that can put the wellbeing of staff and students last (Meeks, Peak, and Dreihaus, 2021; Morrish, 2019). Psychology is not a homogeneous space though. It has a longstanding history of dominant perspectives that Other a wide range of groups and individuals, and of foregrounding some perspectives and silencing others. Yet even in my own experience there is contradiction and complexity. For each space that told me to hide my work on sexual violence, there were those who awarded it. There have been discussions about sexual violence that occurs within psychology on the front page of professional publications (e.g. Young and Hegarty, 2020) and meaningful engagement with the dual position of being both a survivor of abuse and a professional working with other survivors (e.g. Lee and Palmer, 2020). For each person who told me to 'keep my head down', there were more who joined my academic activism. At psygentra, the focus is less on what we do and more about the kind of space we are creating. It's a counter to that unrelenting productivity and competitiveness of academia. It's a dismantling of white-centred and rigid ableist norms such as hard deadlines and hierarchies. We promote slow scholarship and crip time instead (Mountz et al., 2015; Samuels, 2017). It's not just about accessibility and inclusion, it's about dismantling the barriers that make accessibility and inclusion an issue in the first place. It's about creating a space for those who feel on the periphery elsewhere to know that they are at the centre of everything we do here. If you want to get involved, you can join us at one of our Reading and Research Group sessions where we talk about critical and feminist psychologies, discourse analysis, violence and abuse, gender and sexuality, and more. Learn more by watching one of our online lectures in the Lecture Library, and sign up to our email updates to be notified of upcoming events, groups, lectures, publications, and online courses. References Brown, S., & Mangan, K. (2019). ‘Pass the Harasser’ Is Higher Ed’s Worst-Kept Secret. How Can Colleges Stop Doing It? The Chronicle of Higher Education. Caron, S., & Mitchell, D. (2021). “I’ve Never Told Anyone”: A Qualitative Analysis of Interviews With College Women Who Experienced Sexual Assault and Remained Silent. Violence Against Women, 28(9), 1987-2009. Lee, D., and Palmer, E. (2020). #MeToo - Counsellors And Psychotherapists Speak About Sexual Violence And Abuse. Monmouth: PCCS Books. Meeks, K., Peak, A., & Dreihaus, A. (2021). Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Among Students, Faculty, and Staff. Journal of American College Health. Mountz, A. et al. (2015). For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance Through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 14(4), 1235-1259. Morrish, L. (2019). Pressure Vessels: The Epidemic of Poor Mental Health Among Higher Education Staff. Hepi Occasional Paper 20. Parker, I. (1999). Critical psychology: Critical links. Radical Psychology, 1(1), 3-18. Samuels, E. (2017). Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 37(3). Tosh, J. (2020). The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry, and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture. London: Routledge. Tosh, J., & Golightley, S. (2016). The Caring Professions, Not So Caring? Bullying and Emotional Distress in the Academy. In Psychiatry Interrogated: An Institutional Anthology, pp. 143-160. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Young, J. and Hegarty, P. (2020). Psychology Has a Sexual Harassment Problem. The Psychologist, 33(6), 40–45.

by Dr. Jem Tosh Writing books is my favourite part of my job. It's why I have written and published three books in six years (with four more on the way!) and why I eventually set up my own publishing company. The most frequent reason I get from those who haven't taken the leap yet is fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism... Whether it's that novel that you've been thinking about for years, finally publishing your PhD thesis, or a compilation of your life's work - it's common for people to dream about writing a book, but less common for that dream to become a reality. The most frequent reason I get from those who haven't taken the leap yet is fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism... The list goes on. I have a little blue sign on my desk that I see every time I sit down to start my work. It says, 'Do it because they said you couldn't'. Let all that criticism and doubt from others fuel your determination to achieve your dream. Often they've been told over the years that they are not good enough. Either from parents when growing up, school teachers, or from the constant barrage of critique from within academia. It can be easy to begin to believe that you can't write a book because others have been telling you that 'you can't' do things your whole life. Don't let it stop you. I have a little blue sign on my desk that I see every time I sit down to start my work. It says, 'Do it because they said you couldn't'. Let all that criticism and doubt from others fuel your determination to achieve your dream. Prove them wrong. When I was at school I had several teachers tell me that I 'couldn't write to save my life'. I was advised to study topics that involved little to no writing at all (I took art, maths, and computer studies). When I went to university to study psychology, I was confronted with this challenge and this fear. Most, if not all, of the assessments were written - essays, research reports, book reviews, and so on. How could I succeed in this profession if I lacked the basic skills needed to pass the course? Simple - I learned how to write well. I utilised every resource the university had on academic writing and I hassled my poor lecturers after every assignment, asking for feedback on how to improve. The result was finishing with the Best Overall Degree from my graduating class and an invitation to publish my award winning undergraduate dissertation. All I needed was a little help and a push in the right direction. So, if you've been wanting to write a book for some time but feel insecure or doubt your ability to do it, maybe all you need is a little help and guidance. You can check out my online lecture on How to Write Your First Book and Get It Published and you can also book a one-to-one consultation with me if you would like more personalised advice and support. I look forward to reading your book soon.

by Dr. Jem Tosh It seems that I've been a very bad enby this year and Santa has decided not only to give me COVID for xmas, but also messages from an abuser. Sorry Santa, I'll try to be better next year... In case you're in the same situation, or worrying about possible contact, here are some of the things I do to try and prevent this. It's not always possible, as determined abusers can find ways around any boundary, but it will make it more difficult for them. This advice is for those who are already away from and safe from their abusers, and those who have already put a no contact boundary in place. If you are currently being abused or are unsafe due to an abuser, please reach out to your support network and do what you need to do to be safe. 1. Block them across all social media. Don't just unfollow or unfriend them - they can still contact you that way. This isn't fool proof and they can set up other accounts under false names. Another option is to take a break from social media at times when you feel there is a higher risk of them reaching out to you. 2. Block their email* and phone number too. Block them on every platform you can think of, because once you block the main routes of access, they can get more creative in contacting you. 3. Temporarily remove or disable the 'contact us' page on your website. You'll see that happen on psygentra.com from time to time... 4. Make all your social media accounts private. Even after you block them, they can set up other accounts and follow you or look at your page. So make your page private and vet everyone who wants to follow or friend you. 5. Make it clear to others that you are no contact with this person. Let them know that if they help the person get around your boundary, that you will go no contact with them too. Don't tolerate enablers. 6. Restrict information to those who may share details of your life with your abuser. They don't deserve access to your life and they could use that information against you or to contact you. 7. Keep your location private. Only share it with those you know and trust - and who understand the situation and the risk involved. 8. Let your support network know about the risk. This can include family and friends (and chosen family), therapists, support workers, local organisations that you get support from and so on. Let them know it could happen and what support you need if it does. One thing that friends and family can do is intercept or delete messages for you, so that you never have to read it. 9. Have a plan ready in case it happens. How can you take care of yourself and any emotions that come up? Who can you reach out to for support at that time? Do you need another location you can go to? What else might you need to feel better and be safe? * If they haven't emailed you yet, you might need to set up a filter that automatically deletes their messages when they arrive.

by Dr. Jem Tosh (translation by Sandrine Poulin) Il y a quelques mois, j’ai rejoint le comité sur le leadership, la diversité et l’inclusion de la Section Femmes et Psychologie de la Société Canadienne de Psychologie. Après quelques discussions internes sur la volonté d'augmenter la diversité de la section, SWAP a fait circuler un un appel aux individus qui voulaient s'impliquer dans cette initiative. À la suite de mon expérience positive avec la Section sur la Psychologie des Femmes et des Égalités de la British Psychological Society, j’ai cru qu’il s’agirait d’une excellente occasion d’effectuer un travail similaire au Canada. Nous nous sommes rencontré·e·s régulièrement pour discuter des divers projets possibles et le premier que nous développons (basé sur les discussions qui évoluent au sein du comité et de la rétroaction des membres) concerne le mentorat. Nous avons parlé de la façon dont il peut y avoir de nombreux obstacles à la psychologie et au milieu universitaire, en particulier pour les groupes marginalisés, et comment le fait d’avoir le support d’autres personnes qui travaillent déjà dans ces environnements pourrait fournir de précieux conseils et guider les gens. Le but étant que le mentorat féministe pourrait peut-être encourager davantage de personnes (en particulier celles qui sont généralement exclues de la profession) à trouver un espace et à s’épanouir dans la psychologie féministe. Nous prévoyons donc que notre premier projet soit une nouvelle plateforme (principalement) en ligne où les gens peuvent lire les profils des membres SWAP qui sont disponibles en tant que mentor·e·s. Les membres peuvent également créer leur propre profil en tant que mentoré·e pour faire savoir aux autres ce qu’ils et elles recherchent, ce qui les intéresse, etc. Il y aura des forums pour parler aux autres membres et vous pourrez contacter les individus que vous aimeriez connaître ou demander à être un·e mentor·e. … le mentorat féministe pourrait peut-être encourager davantage de personnes (en particulier celles qui sont généralement exclues de la profession) à trouver un espace et à s’épanouir dans la psychologie féministe… L’autre élément clé du projet est les pods — ou groupes. Étant donné que certains programmes de mentorat individuel peuvent rencontrer des difficultés en raison de contraintes de temps (et de charges de travail élevées) ou que le ou la mentor·e possède une partie, mais pas l’entièreté, de l’expertise dont vous avez besoin, avoir un groupe de soutien peut être une alternative intéressante. En effet, vous pouvez bénéficier du soutien de l’ensemble du groupe ainsi que partager votre propre expérience et vos connaissances. Dans les groupes en ligne, vous pourrez partager des informations comme vous le feriez sur d’autres espaces sociaux en ligne (comme Facebook) et organiser vos propres réunions ou rencontres en personne ou virtuellement (selon l’emplacement des membres et la disponibilité du groupe). Pour commencer, nous créons quelques pods sur la base des commentaires des membres SWAP (qui pourraient inclure des groupes comme les membres PANDC de SWAP, les membres francophones de SWAP, les personnes qui souhaitent entreprendre un doctorat féministe, faire publier des recherches féministes, les membres 2SLGBTQAI+ de SWAP, comment obtenir une promotion, etc.). Si vous souhaitez obtenir plus d’informations, être invité·e à l’événement de lancement du programme de mentorat ou avez des suggestions pour d’éventuels pods, rendez-vous sur ce lien (Anglais) ou celui-ci (français) et entrez votre adresse courriel. Vous n’êtes pas encore membre de SWAP ? Si vous êtes déjà membre de la Société Canadienne de Psychologie, vous pouvez vous inscrire ici. (Si vous n’êtes pas basé·e au Canada, vous pouvez vous inscrire en tant que membre affilié·e international·e.) Vous êtes déjà membre et souhaitez faire connaître le projet à vos étudiant·e·s, collègues ou département ? Voici une affiche à imprimer et à afficher dans votre département/bureau ou à partager par courriel: Vous n'êtes pas psychologue (et vous ne vous formez pas non plus pour en être une) mais vous recherchez une communauté de psychologie féministe ? Vous pouvez rejoindre le groupe de lecture virtuel mensuel gratuit de psygentra.

by Dr. Jem Tosh Mentoring website is now live - go to www.swap-cpa.ca A few months ago I joined the Canadian Psychological Association's Section on Women and Psychology (SWAP) Subcommittee on Leadership, Diversity, and Inclusion. After some internal discussion about wanting to increase the diversity of the Section, SWAP circulated a call for those who wanted to get involved in this initiative. Following on from how much I enjoyed working with the Psychology of Women and Equalities Section of the British Psychological Society, I thought this would be a great opportunity to do some similar work in Canada. We've met regularly to discuss possible projects and the first one we are developing (based on ongoing discussion within the subcommittee and feedback from members) is around mentoring. We talked about how there can be many barriers to psychology and academia, particularly for marginalised groups, and how having support from others who are already working in those environments could provide valuable advice and guidance. The aim being that perhaps feminist mentoring could encourage more folks (particularly those typically excluded from the profession) to find a space and to thrive in feminist psychology. So we are planning our first project to be a new (predominantly) online platform where folks can read profiles of SWAP members who are available as a mentor. They can also create their own profile as a mentee to let others know what they are looking for, what they are interested in, and so on. There will be forums to talk to other members and you will be able to contact those you would like to get to know or ask to be a mentor. ...perhaps feminist mentoring could encourage more folks (particularly those typically excluded from the profession) to find a space and to thrive in feminist psychology... The other key part of the project is the 'Pods' - or groups. As some one-to-one mentorship programs can struggle due to difficulties with time commitments (and high workloads) or the mentor has some but not all of the expertise you need, having a supportive group of people can be a useful alternative. This is because you can draw on the support from the whole group and share your own experience and knowledge too. In the online groups you will be able to share information like you would on other social online spaces (like Facebook) and organise your own meetings or meet-ups either in person or virtually (depending on group members' location and availability). We are creating a few Pods to start with based on SWAP member feedback (these could include groups like BIPOC SWAP members, French speaking SWAP members, those wanting to start a feminist PhD, getting feminist research published, 2SLGBTQAI+ SWAP Members, how to get a promotion, and so on). If you would like more information, would like to be invited to the mentoring launch event, or have suggestions for possible Pods - go to this link (English) or this one (French) and enter your email address. Not a member of SWAP yet? If you're already a member of the Canadian Psychological Association, you can join here. (If you're not based in Canada, you can join as an International Affiliate). Already a member and want to let your students, colleagues, or department know about the project? Here's a poster for you to print and display in your department/office or share via email: Not a psychologist (and not training to be one either) but looking for some feminist psychology community? You can join psygentra's free monthly virtual Reading Group.

by Bidushy Sadika Interview originally published in the Section on Women & Psychology, 48(3), 25-28 - the newsletter of the Canadian Psychological Association's Section on Women & Psychology [SWAP] (a.k.a. the feminist section). Republished with permission. Hello everyone, Happy Spring! I hope you all are enjoying the warm and beautiful weather. Welcome to the Spring 2022 edition of the Section of Women and Psychology (SWAP) newsletter. This edition includes the second part of my conversation with Dr. Jem Tosh. I had the honour and privilege to interact with them in winter. Dr. Tosh's work exceptionally exemplifies the intersection of psychological and feminist knowledge to challenge the prevalence of violence and trauma amongst queer, trans, and nonbinary persons. To engage in this work, Dr. Tosh founded Psygentra, an organization that specializes in psychology, gender, and trauma. She has authored the following books, The Body and Consent in Psychology, Psychiatry and Medicine: A Therapeutic Rape Culture, Perverse Psychology, and Psychology and Gender Dysphoria: Feminist and Transgender Perspectives. Without further delay, let’s hear more from Dr. Tosh about their journey as a psychologist with a focus on decentering dominant narratives (i.e., heteronormativity, cisgenderism, and white privilege), promoting inclusivity, and advocating education on important issues such as violence, trauma, and gender nonconformity. - Bidushy Sadika, SWAP Assistant Newsletter Editor Do you have any comments on your experience as an editor for the Psychology of Women and Equalities Review (POWER)? Specifically, how does your editorial position allow you to make significant contributions in the field of feminist psychology? I started when I was a PhD student and I would say there are a couple of helpful things with that. Firstly, it really demystified the process of publishing. For a lot of students, publishing sounds very frightening – it feels a bit impossible. There's imposter syndrome of feeling like your work will never be good enough. Being able to see how the system works really helps with that and I've always encouraged any students I work with to publish early, to really feel the fear and do it anyway - and to not take the feedback personally. It allowed me to be able to open up spaces for discussions around the experience of transgender and queer people. It also allowed me to bring in a bit more activism into academic spaces and publishing spaces. We had commentaries about protests. We had commentaries about conversion therapies. So, it definitely allowed me to reach out to people and say, “Hey, you're doing important work. Do you want to write about it?” And the initial reaction would be like, “Oh, I'm not an academic” or, “I'm not good enough to write something” but I would respond like, “No, no, we'll work with you. We’ll find a way for you to be able to get this work recognized and for other people to hear about it”. There's an intersection of gender and race and gender nonconformity. It's a very marginalized group, they are not well represented within feminist psychology. I organized a protest around psychiatric treatments and the pathologisation of transgender youth during my PhD, and the one thing we really wanted from that was not to let it be forgotten, not to have it be just this one thing that happens on a day and people forget about it. So, we wrote about it a lot and we took the conversations that we had at that protest into academic spaces, into clinical spaces, into professional spaces and made people listen to those issues. Being an editor meant that I was able to get those kind of pieces into places that wouldn't typically be accepted or sought out. I continue to do that with Psygentra. I will point out that I left that publication when I moved to Canada in 2014. So, it's not a current position. [I'm currently editor for psygentra's Journal of Psychology, Gender, & Trauma] What perspectives do you think are still missing from feminist psychology? I would say it's getting there, but we have more work to do around including more genders and not being so tied to the colonial gender binary. There is a lot of feminist work that focuses on violence on women and girls, which is fine to focus on that, but not if you assume they're the only gendered groups that experience violence in that way. I also see a lot of work on violence against women that excludes trans women and it doesn't really acknowledge that trans women, especially black trans women, experience disproportionately high rates of violence, both sexual violence and murder. That's clearly a very important area we need to be talking about as feminists. There's an intersection of gender and race and gender nonconformity. It's a very marginalized group and they are not well represented within feminist psychology. They don't have a voice, but they're exactly the kind of people that we should be centering and foregrounding in our work and research to subvert current power hierarchies regarding gender and race. It can be difficult for nonbinary survivors or psychologists to feel like feminist psychology is a space where they can do work. The same with nonbinary survivors. If everything's in a very binary framework, it can be difficult for nonbinary survivors or psychologists to feel like feminist psychology is a space where they can do work - whether that's academic work, research work, activist work, or community work. If everything's very binary, where do I fit? How do I engage in these conversations that exclude me from the beginning? What I try and do at Psygentra and what I like isn't about adding people in, it's about decentering. There are two ways that people can exclude others and that's either very explicitly in a very hateful homophobic, transphobic, sexist, racist kind of way, or those ways that just never really considered you in the first place, the kind of erasure exclusion. Both are problematic and they are in feminist psychology and feminist psychology spaces to varying degrees. So, we need to work at not only being more inclusive. I'll say that because what I try and do at Psygentra and what I like isn't about adding people in, it's about decentering. We should decenter whiteness, we need to decenter heterosexuality and cisgenderism so that there isn't one group in the middle and everyone else is on the outside. What does the future of feminist psychology look like to you? I hope feminist psychology’s future is one that is really vibrant and includes many voices from different genders. At the minute it feels like we're spending so much time in these polarized debates of trans exclusion or trans inclusion, and it takes up so much time and energy from the other more important work that we could be doing. For example, a lot of trans health research focuses on access to gender affirmation treatments, but there's a significant number of trans people that have little chance of getting that because they're experiencing financial and housing insecurity. So much so, that accessing healthcare can seem impossible. There are many other areas where more research and representation is needed, yet we’re having these back and forth debates that we've had before. We had them during the second wave and it's not new. I feel it does hold the whole discipline back from what we could be achieving. We could be dismantling the colonial gender binary together and opening up for more possibilities for people to thrive. I think that would be a much more important task to do. How can we incorporate more diverse perspectives into our own work as a researcher or clinician or teacher? It would be having a look at whose voices you're promoting, such as in your citations, like if you're talking about trans and nonbinary people make sure that you're including trans and nonbinary authors and not just cis people who are writing about them. Just like when talking about racialized communities, you would want to make sure that you're centering Black folks, Indigenous folks, and people of color in those conversations (including black trans authors, Two Spirit perspectives and so on). Similarly, with disabled people, who are you citing? Is it predominantly pathologising or medical discourses, or are you listening to and giving space to disabled academics? Who are you giving voice to in your work? As well as collaborations and bringing in guest speakers when you're teaching. This is important because one of the things I noticed when people teach about trans topics, is a lot of students have never seen or met a trans psychologist or an nonbinary psychologist, or even just reading about a trans person thriving in a psychology text. They're always framed as having significant ‘mental health problems’. Inviting a trans psychologist into the classroom (or hiring them to teach the course) can be really powerful for those students to see. We don't just write about these people, we work with them, they're part of psychology and the profession. So, that's important. We could be dismantling the colonial gender binary together... The other thing that I've noticed a shift in, since I've been working in this area, is that originally no one was writing about it and then cis people started to try and give voice to trans issues, which is really important. But what I see now is a lot of cis people leading projects about trans people, getting the funding for it, getting the publications and the promotions and trans academics can't get a foot in the door. So, they're on the project, but they're not the principal investigator. They're getting paid by the hour to do data collection or something. So, there's something again about hierarchies and the difference between speaking with someone and speaking for them. For me, that’s the difference between including someone tokenistically and dismantling the systems that excluded them in the first place. Again, that fits into feminist psychology about looking at power in different situations. Read Part One Here. Connect with SWAP: Twitter Facebook Canadian Psychological Association Website - SWAP Check out the SWAP Newsletter for the Emerging Canadian Feminist Scholars Profile Series, recent member publications, awards, job postings, book reviews, and more. To contribute to the SWAP Newsletter, contact the editors: Jenna Cripps, Newsletter Editor jenna.cripps@mail.utoronto.ca Bidushy Sadika, Assistant Newsletter Editor bsadika@uwo.ca