COMMUNITY & ADVOCACY
Advocacy Work
We are committed to using our privilege to advocate and to impact change in our communities, and in our city.
Mair’s research project explored the narratives of people who identify as having a non-binary gender identity. This is an important study, filling a gap in current psychology and health literature, because it expands the conversation on transgender and transsexual populations to include people who identify their gender outside of the binary of female and male.
Eight people participated in open-ended interviews telling the story of their gender identity. The collaborative narrative method was used in this research, chosen specifically because of its focus on keeping participant voices intact. This in-depth method involved unstructured interviews and collaborative thematic readings of interview transcripts by participants and researchers to identify common experiences shared by people belonging to this population.
Some of the major themes explored are threats to welfare, compulsory conformity, the body including gender affirming procedures (surgery/hormones), gender performance, coming out as trans/genderqueer/non-binary, community support and intersectional analysis.
Read Mair’s research study, XWHY? stories of non-binary gender identities.
mj contributes her professional and personal experiences in order to raise awareness about queer and trans issues in religious environments. She voices an urgent need for change in response to the distress that many people experience as a result of oppression within certain religious communities.
mj has been interviewed by the CBC , The National Post , The Province, The Vancouver Sun, The Ryan Jespersen Show, and Real Talk about her team's work with religious trauma, as well as her experiences as a queer alumni of Trinity Western University (2005) and her subsequent work as a therapist within her own queer community.
mj speaks specifically to how her experiences of oppression inform her therapeutic work with folks struggling to find ways to affirm themselves, and their LGBTQ2S+ loved ones. Her sharing prompted further participation in research studies that address an urgent need for increased dialogue and connection in certain religious environments.
mj and her team regularly provide competency training around these issues for therapists, groups, companies and organizations.
BUILDING COMMUNITY
“We can learn from our own wounds and those of others, because all wounds instruct and most wounds can heal. We can learn how to survive and heal. Had I waited with my teaching until I was fully healed — that is, fully aware of my wholeness — I would not have written a book, given a single lecture, led a seminar or workshop. The point is not to wait for healing, but to be aware of where we perceive ourselves as wounded or incomplete.”
We operate within the unceded traditional territory of the Skwxwú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), Xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waututh), Lheidli T'enneh, and the K'ómoks Peoples.
While TheGS was birthed in East Vancouver, we now provide services to communities all across British Columbia and are able to support clients from all over the province including but not limited to: Vancouver, North Vancouver, New Westminster, Burnaby, Richmond, the Fraser Valley, Hope, Princeton, Sea to Sky, Pemberton, Whistler, Squamish, the Gulf Islands, the Sunshine Coast, Vancouver Island, the Okanagan, the Kootenays, the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast, Yellowhead, up the Alaska Highway, the Stewart-Cassiar, and Haida Gwaii.