An Empowerment and Support Group for Transgender Youth Living in Iowa

Zoa Glab, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL (USA)

This poster describes an empowerment and support group for transgender youth living in Iowa, where recently gender-affirming care was banned. The group will be open and conducted virtually and will draw on models of empowerment and mutual aid. The group will incorporate the sharing of lived experience between members of the transgender community. This poster aims to provide a model for group work with transgender people living in environments that are actively harmful to them.

View Poster PDF


Presentation Description:

The population of people under 18 identifying as transgender in the United States is rapidly increasing in recent years. However, state and federal legislation is directly targeting transgender youth by forcibly limiting what bathrooms they can use, what competitive sports they can play, and whether they can access gender-affirming healthcare. In Iowa, Senate File 538 was recently signed into law, banning Iowa doctors from providing puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormones, or gender-affirming surgery to transgender people under 18 years old (Human Rights Campaign). People already accessing this care in Iowa have six months to discontinue. This ban will have significant repercussions for Iowa’s transgender youth community, which is already subject to multiple and intersecting stressors like increased bullying and a lack of access to mental health care.  The purpose of this planned group is to empower and support transgender youth living in Iowa who wish to start or continue accessing gender-affirming healthcare as part of their transition process. Specifically, this group will be an open, virtual, common-identity group drawing on models of empowerment and standpoint theories. The group will follow E. Summerson Carr’s model of empowerment as a cyclical and continuous process and will emphasize the evidence-based importance of sharing lived experience for transgender individuals.  The goals of this group are to support transgender youth living in Iowa in their chosen methods of transition and the stress that accompanies living and transitioning in an environment that is actively trying to harm transgender people. The group aims to promote mutual aid and inspire individual and collective action within this community. It is hoped that these practices will create meaningful, positive change for group members individually and within their larger surrounding environment. As more and more states impose restrictions on the humanity of transgender people, this group hopes to create a model for group social workers to support transgender youth and create opportunities for mutual aid.

References:

  • Carr, E. S. (2003). Rethinking empowerment theory using a feminist lens: The importance of process. Affilia, 18(1), 8–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109902239092
  • Human rights campaign condemns Iowa Senate for passing two discriminatory bills; urges house to vote down bills. Human Rights Campaign. (2023, March 7). Retrieved April 21, 2023, from https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-condemns-iowa-senate-for-passing-two-discriminatory-bills-urges-house-to-vote-down-bills
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