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Episode 7

In this podcast episode, Tatiana Ferguson discusses various types of violence that gender and sexually diverse children and youth may face, including structural forms of violence. Tatiana also describes the challenges in balancing the protection of children and youth with their agency, realities, and needs.

Lastly, Tatiana offers recommendations for service providers to better support children and youth, including holding gender-inclusive trainings, ensuring that children and youth have safe spaces to share their gender identity and sexual orientation, and engaging children and youth through technology.

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Guest

Tatiana Ferguson is co-founder of the Black Queer Youth Collective and a leader in Equity and Inclusion. Her work has informed multiple public policies on Sex and Gender Inclusion, Racial Justice, and Immigration. She has also made several television appearances as part of a national public education campaign. Since immigrating to Canada from the Bahamas, Tatiana has been honored for her contributions to Queer and Trans Activism and she is actively involved in several projects and initiatives promoting the health and wellbeing of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in Canada. Tatiana is passionate about social justice and helping to create systems of support for equity seeking groups.

Host

Dr. Linda Baker is a Psychologist, Assistant Professor – Standing Appointment, and the former Learning Director of the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children (CREVAWC) at Western University. During her time with CREVAWC, Dr. Baker led the Learning Network and the Knowledge Hub. The Learning Network translates knowledge on the continuum of gender-based violence and the Knowledge Hub facilitates a trauma- and violence-informed community of practice with Canadian researchers and practitioners conducting innovative intervention research. She has over 25 years of experience in the mental health and justice systems, working with and learning from children, youth and families dealing with experiences of violence and trauma. Her direct service experience inspires and informs her research and commitment to knowledge translation through resource development and publications, knowledge exchange activities, and workshop presentations. Dr. Baker has co-authored numerous publications/resources related to intimate partner violence exposed children and families, including Walk Proud, Dance Proud: Footprints on a Healing Journey; Helping Children Thrive: Supporting Woman Abuse Survivors as Mothers; and Helping an Abused Woman: 101 things to Know, Say and Do. Her most recent work focuses on the application of intersectionality to research with and services for children exposed to IPV and the evaluation of IPV training programs. Prior to her current roles, Dr. Baker was the Director of the Centre for Children and Families in the Justice System (London Family Court Clinic). She participates regularly on faculty teams delivering Domestic Violence Institutes throughout the United States for the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and Futures Without Violence.

Transcript

00:00:15:21 – Linda

Hello, and welcome to today's episode of the podcast, Little Eyes, Little Ears: Centering Children and Youth in Gender-based Violence Work. This podcast is from the Learning Network at the Centre for Research and Education on Violence against Women and Children at Western University. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance work to support children and youth in contexts of intimate partner violence.

00:00:42:16 – Linda

I'm Dr. Linda Baker, and I'm pleased to host today's episode with our guest, Tatiana Ferguson. Tatiana Ferguson is the co-founder of the Black Queer Youth Collective and a leader in equity and inclusion. Since immigrating to Canada from the Bahamas, Tatiana has been honored for her contributions to queer and trans activism, and she is actively involved in several projects and initiatives promoting the health and well-being of 2SLGBTQ+ individuals in Canada. Tatiana, thank you so much for being here with us today to discuss supporting gender and sexually diverse children and youth. I wonder if you would start by just sharing a little bit about yourself with our audience.

00:01:38:03 – Tatiana

Yeah, hi. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation. And yeah, I'm looking forward to this discussion. So, for some of you who may be familiar with my work and those who are just being introduced to my work, I'm Tatiana Ferguson, I'm an equity and inclusion specialist.

I co-founded the Black Queer Youth Collective back in 2017 in response to a need that emerged in youth programs around creating programs that were culturally responsive to Black queer and trans youth. This work has since went on to inform multiple public policies. I've worked at all three levels of government, including on the Toronto For All Action Plan and Toronto For All public education campaign around trans youth.

So yeah, there's a lot of discussions and discourse that I have thoughts and perspectives on supporting Black youth and LGBTQ youth more broadly in the GBV sector.

00:02:44:06 – Linda

Well, that's exactly what we want to hear, your perspectives today. So again, welcome. I wondered if you would start us off by talking about some of the specific types of violence that gender and sexually diverse children and youth might face.

00:03:03:23 – Tatiana

You know, so I think over the years there is a variety of violence. I think the most common would be homophobia, biphobia, transphobia. But that plays out in a variety of ways. We see bullying happening in school. There's sexual assault and harassment of queer and trans women. There's fetishism and objectification. And then there are social and systemic issues that impact this demographic.

00:03:32:15 – Tatiana

So, discrimination in relation to employment and challenges with accessing education and skills development. So, there's a, I think, a variety of issues that impact the queer and trans community. I even think that the language has evolved so much. Organizations are, I think, adapting to a new demographic that have emerged, which are non-binary youth, youth who are rejecting the notion of gender binaries and are kind of identifying in ways that that's most authentic to themselves, but that have kind of created more issues because our system is very gendered.

00:04:22:11 – Tatiana

There are women washrooms and men washrooms. There are designated sporting activities for women and men, and we see a lot of this play out in sports. I'm not sure if this demographic watches sports, but we know that trans inclusion in athletics have been a big debate, a heated debate, and a lot of the violence that young children and youth experience is really based on their lack of ability to fit into these gendered categories. Yeah, I think those are some of the main issues that come to mind when I think about challenges that affect LGBTQ youth.

00:05:03:10 - Linda

And as I listen to you talk about some of those issues and forms of violence, I can't help but think about what's happening in so many jurisdictions right now where school boards and personnel are advocating that some of the programs and options that youth may have had, such as expressing a name they want to be known by or a pronoun they want to be known by that, that schools are saying no, that that's maybe not okay without a parent's consent. Do you have thoughts about that?

00:05:45:19 – Tatiana

Yeah, I think when it comes to informed consent, as well as I think the protection of children and youth, it’s twofold. There are legal obligations for parents and guardians, but a lot of the children and youth also desire to have agency, desire to have autonomy and a voice for themselves. So, when I think about how parents can dismiss queer and trans identities because it does not fit their personal preference, it I think creates a hostile environment for those young people, it creates an environment where they don't feel seen, where they don't feel heard.

00:06:25:15 - Tatiana

And of course, we understand this affects their mental health. This affects their wellbeing, their ability to socially connect, their desire to be within that home at times, not to blame parents for their actions, but it also can lead to abuse. And this is where we see children being punished for who they are and how they express themselves.

But I also understand the perspective that some parents and caregivers may feel that, you know, these young people are making decisions that are not well-informed, where, in fact, I'm sure a lot of young people have thought about some of the decisions that they're making in their lives in terms of how they express their gender or the names they choose to use for whatever reason or the pronouns that they feel to use and how affirming those things can be for them due to some of the conversations that they're having in absence of their parents, and more so with organizations like BQC and other school-based programs.

00:07:36:10 - Linda

Right, right. And the danger being that there isn't any safe place, potentially not the home, not the school, not a community program where they can truly express their identity and their forming identities.

00:07:52:10 - Tatiana

Yeah, I think one of the dangers is that. I think a lot of what I've seen happen is kind of an identity crisis, that happens where folks are one way at home, one way at school, one way in their social circles, whether that be at the school program or community-based program. But having to I guess, form these different parts of themselves and not present their whole self has created some distortions in terms of how they connect with other folks in community.

00:08:28:07 - Linda

Almost having to take on different roles as opposed to just the authentic reality of who they are. Very challenging.

We've been talking about the different types of violence in terms of structural violence, discrimination, suppression of their identity in certain settings and I'm just wondering, how does this fit in with the youth who's also experiencing intimate partner violence in the home?

I'm wondering about the situation where the young person is living in a home context with adults, and there's intimate partner violence happening between the parents or the parental figures and how that might play out or impact a youth who's nonbinary, for instance.

00:09:36:09 - Tatiana

Yeah. Okay. I think that's interesting. Kind of like how are folks responding to witnessing violence at home. I think we're seeing this manifest in a variety of ways. For queer children and youth, some of them adopt these toxic behaviors. So, if there was an abusive male figure in the home, they themselves may kind of adopt a mentality that that can be viewed as very toxic or abusive, and therefore they perpetuate that same type of violence with their partners, because that's kind of what they know.

And similarly, there may be individuals in the home who witness their parent, in most cases, a female parent, be abused and it can make them become defensive or it can always put them on guard so they're not able to let their guard down, to be open to relationships. They’re kind of always open on defense, because there's this need to defend themselves.

00:10:55:23 - Tatiana

They're always in this fight mode, which have of course affected a lot of people. And we know that when violence, when parents are experiencing violence, sometimes their children are subject to the violence and it affects them.

00:11:16:05 - Linda

Right. So, there's the exposure to experiencing the violence that one parental figure is doing to another parental figure. But then there's also the potential which we know happens all too often, where the abusive adult is also abusive towards the youth or the child.

00:11:40:02 - Tatiana

Yes, exactly. And it kind of creates this normalization of the abuse where for some they may, as I mentioned, they may become defensive all the time because that's what they're used to, that's what they're exposed to, that's kind of their reality for the most part. And then for others, they kind of respond to that negatively. And sometimes we see some of the outbursts that folks are having because they feel helpless, they feel hopeless, they feel no one understands them.

And a lot of that stems from just witnessing the violence and also being silent. If we're talking, like I said earlier, about how children's voices and their agencies are being policed in school and other social settings.

00:12:31:11 - Linda

And I would imagine that there would be youth whose identity might be used by someone who is engaging in abusive behavior like an adult in the home to target that youth in a way to try to disempower and control in a coercive way that young person.

00:12:57:09 - Tatiana

Yeah, we know about the bullying. I don't even know if it's fair to call it bullying, but the responses or the things that some parents and caregivers may tell a young person, especially when they're trans and for a lot of individuals, like I said, if we're thinking our youngest youth, they're not involved in intimate relationships, but they may have expressions that go against some of the societal norms.

00:13:28:23 - Tatiana

So, it can be I'm a feminine young man that's suspected to be gay, but they've not formed any relationship or even identify as a gay person, like I said, because the language is changing. Even gay men, young men, are rejecting this notion because I would say that history. So, there are terms, there are some folks who embrace certain terms in different communities and others who reject it because it's kind of connected to some of the violence they may have experienced in the home by their adult caretakers or in the school among their parents.

00:14:11:00 - Tatiana

But regardless of that fact, we're still seeing that, a lot of the response itself, is it's created a lot of confusion for young people where they aren’t able to form meaningful relationships so that's how the witnessing of that violence affects them very personally. Or in fact, they kind of perpetuate the violence because they consider it a norm and it also creates other issues where if a person is not used to being abused and you try to bring that mentality into the relationship, it's going to create tension, further creates isolation, a disconnection for these young people forming healthy relationships with each other.

00:14:57:19 - Linda

Right. Tatiana, from your perspective, what do service providers need to know when supporting gender and sexually diverse children and youth? What are the things that you would want them to understand and know to best serve those youths?

00:15:25:49 – Tatiana

Yeah, I think a lot of service providers, frankly, especially those who are in a city as diverse as Toronto, have access to a variety of trainings on gender, inclusion trainings, trauma-based trainings, trainings to equip them with the skills and the tools to properly identify and respond to LGBTQ identities.

00:15:44:00 - Tatiana

On one hand, participating in the training is good, but sometimes there are things that kind of fall through the cracks. This is observed in what we see happening in child welfare, where children may be removed from their home because of abuse, but knowledge of that abuse related to their gender identity or sexual orientation is not documented. So, I think it depends on where service providers are positioned. If they're positioned in child protection agency, it's really being able to sit down and create a comfortable environment for the young people to share, to really open up, to reveal those uncomfortable truths.

00:16:33:24 - Tatiana

And at times, like I said, sometimes when you're bullied, the reason that you have been bullied is what you want to dismiss. So, if it's because of your identity, then that's not something that you're going to embrace. It's not something that you're going to be very proud of because that's kind of being the essence of where your pain comes from.

00:16:53:15 - Tatiana

And service providers should be mindful of that, that just having an LGBTQ program or a queer person is not enough to really supporting queer and trans children. We need to create environments where they feel safe, and with time, they're able to open up, they’re able to express some of the hardships that they've experience, but they're also able to express what they would like moving forward for their life.

00:17:25:05 - Tatiana

The Black Queer Collective, we actually hosted a web series during the pandemic, and one of our discussion topics were on healthy relationships, and we kind of created a tool kit to help folks assess, you know, different aspects of their identity, but also how those key components, you know, having a safe environment, having good social connections, having financial resources, all interplay to create an environment that allows queer and trans support to flourish.

00:17:57:07 – Tatiana

So, I think service providers should continue to do the assessments, but really take a critical look at what's happening and really understand why or how children and youth are going to respond to some of the questions surrounding identity. Think about the abuse, not just from the perspective of this has happened, but also how have these children coped?

00:18:24:01 - Tatiana

And then also of course, me being more outcomes driven, thinking about like what are the plans for the future? How can we equip these young people with the tools, resources or even communities to support their restoration in times when they may have felt broken? And that can be, of course, having a list of agencies readily available for the young people to make those appropriate referrals.

00:18:55:12 - Tatiana

It can be creating environments or social spaces for young people to interact if they're at that place. And sometimes it's just having a quiet place for those young people to talk for them. Sometimes I would say what has worked is a lot of people kind of when they're going through an adverse experience, they themselves may not want to share their experience, but they would want to see that experience be discussed and addressed.

00:19:24:07 - Tatiana

And that's where service providers can kind of help facilitate some of those engagements, whether it's a panel, a community outing or even an event that are focused on a topic that affects the children and youth and in this case, intimate partner violence and coping or a fresh start, start a new life after a particular experience.

00:19:52:50 -Linda

And so, I'm sure we can provide our audience later with the link to that toolkit, which sounds like it would be really helpful.

One of the things that you've talked about, agency, and we know the importance of resistance and resilience in young people, and I'm wondering about your thoughts on how do we really foster the existing strengths and continue to build capacity for youth from gender and sexually diverse communities?

00:20:35:05 -Tatiana

Yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges have been, well, what I often hear in my work is we don't know how many folks are affected, and I think one is too many.

As mentioned with the example of child welfare, the Toronto Children’s Aid Society had commissioned a discussion during Pride for their network of providers. And one of my questions to them was how many LGBTQ youth are in care? And that was a question that they're unable to answer because, like I said, that data is not, it's documented, but it's not coded in a way that's explicit.

00:21:15:22 – Tatiana

So there have been a lot of folks in the Black community who have been kind of advocating for more disaggregated data. You know, we want more information on these specific communities so we can create appropriate responses based on those communities. I think that's where there's still this ongoing challenge. I think there needs to be a greater investment in research. 

00:21:42:06 - Tatiana

But also, I think it's about engaging those communities who know their communities best, to create interventions that are appropriate because what works for one group may not necessarily work for the other.

00:21:59:25 - Linda

Right. And those people at that grassroots community level are probably in the best position to recognize strengths and resistance and to support strengths and resistance.

00:22:12:15 - Tatiana

Yeah, and I think, I also I always frame it as I don't think that it's just, I think it's a communal issue. So, we engage a variety of stakeholders in our work, and that's been very beneficial in terms of having a measurable impact. So, I think for service providers, for agencies wanting to do this work, it's about engaging all of those stakeholders as well. I think that of course, consulting with parents, we need to understand what are the stresses in parents lives that's causing them to, I guess, be hostile towards their children and youth.

00:22:50:07 - Tatiana

And, you know, I know that in queer and trans communities, there are a lot of LGBTQ folks who do who are so connected to religious communities, despite, you know, some notions that would suggest that queer and trans individuals like foregone religion and forgoing their spiritual beliefs for a part. We understand that every situation is different, and that's why those assessments need to really identify and respond to those individual needs as opposed to the more general broad approach that's been being used.

00:23:32:12 - Tatiana

In terms of, I guess, a specific tool, I would say that the investment in research is needed because we also need to know what has worked. We've tried a lot of interventions. I've mentioned the BQIC was formed in 2017 and we've supported hundreds of Black queer and trans youth and we do have some data, but our data is also very limited based on the demographic that we serve. In our community needs assessment, we spoke to, I guess we not really spoke to, but we reported on some of the findings around what Black queer and trans youth in Ontario are experiencing, who they are and what are some of, I guess, some of the priorities for the future of our work.

00:24:19:11 - Tatiana

But I think all agencies need to do that or in fact, like I said, when we take this multisectoral approach, we would need to have it commissioned so that there's a national research project that engages communities to really have the data in terms of really creating informed responses to the community's needs.

00:24:41:31 – Linda

And to support them, like to help them ensure that they can do that data collection. It can feel, I'm sure at the agency level, if there's not the supports that go with that and training if necessary, it can feel like just another load to the already heavy workload in terms that falls on agencies.

00:25:09:13 - Tatiana

Yeah, I can understand that as well. And I think that one of the joys and fears is, there is joy in obviously creating a good intervention, but there's a fear of taking on all of that work and feeling very overwhelmed by it. And I think that's where delegation is needed.

I think if for agencies that are doing more protection work, that's going to look very different from individuals who are kind of more interested in evidence-based approaches, and that's also going to look more different from the school that's providing different learning environments for these children and youth. But everyone has kind of a role to play in supporting this young person outside of their parent and caretakers.

00:26:04:04 - Tatiana

So yeah, I think that's, I think the agency's ability to understand what's within their capacity and engage folks who are able to address issues that are outside of their capacity or kind of like correlated to the work that they're doing with the children and youth would be beneficial. 

00:26:29:44 - Linda

 Exactly. And again, it sounds like what you're saying is we may divide our services in, of course, the things we focus on within services, but young people live whole lives and their lives are divided into those segments in the way that often our services are.

So again, that collaboration and coordination between services becomes really important.

Anything that you haven't already mentioned, Tatiana, that you'd really like to share with the audience, and in particular in terms of where you hope things move to in the future in supporting children and youth?

00:27:15:34 – Tatiana

Yeah, I would say in closing, I think that we are entering this very technological age. I was on a panel speaking about, unrelated to this topic, but we were talking about the influencer culture and whether influencers are essentially a job and how lucrative it is.

And one of my recommendations was to embrace the fact that the way we live and work is changing. And while influencer is a modern term, it is a form of digital marketing. So for me, something that I want to share is I think in responding to or even kind of identifying children and youth needs, we have to also embrace technology because as I mentioned, a lot of young people are connecting online.

00:28:14:10 - Tatiana

That's those apps, whether it's a dating or a social app, have become a key part of how they operate in their daily lives. And as service providers, we need to be able to make that transition that's comfortable for folk because we also know that there's a need for privacy and autonomy. There's a need for folks to separate their personal lives from other aspects of their life.

But there's also a beautiful silver lining where we can kind of be able to create places for young people to engage in discussions or create games and storytimes and songs that beautifully capture what young people's current needs are, but also what they'd like to see. And yeah, I think for me, I love music, I love cooking, I love food.

00:29:16:10 - Tatiana

I think it would be nice to be able to have more places for us to talk and connect about specific issues beyond our limited social circles.

00:29:29:17 - Linda

You make such an important point, Tatiana. It strikes me because it's that balance. We're always very aware or trying to keep up with some of the harms that technology can bring or, you know, enable people to exploit others or harm others.

But we also need to figure out ways to just embrace, as you say, and to see the potential in terms of creating community that might otherwise not exist if it weren't for those virtual spaces. And that the goal is not to rule them out or prevent children and youth from accessing them because they will. It's how to ensure their space and that they really are supportive, nurturing spots for young people.

00:30:26:07 - Tatiana

Exactly. I always say gone are the days when we think about like climate change and some more eco-friendly approaches we're taking. A lot of print resources are not having the same reach as, say, something like a podcast or something like a lot of the folks, I’m not on it, but a lot of folks are on Tik Tok. Tik Tok videos can generate millions of views, which means that's an audience of millions of people.

So how we adapt our services to reach such a wide audience while sticking to a specific message is going to be one of those additional challenges that service providers are going to have to respond to. But I think it's a beautiful challenge in that when you embrace innovation, you're able to create something that's beautiful, that happens then.

00:31:23:23 - Linda

Tatiana, thank you so much for sharing this space with us today and congratulations on the fifth anniversary of the Black Queer Youth Collective. We will include a link to the Collective, and I'm sure that's where people will be able to find access to the tool that you mentioned to support youths. And we just want to thank for your amazing work and to encourage you in your future work.

And for our listeners, please stay tuned for our next episode. And you can do that by looking out for an email from the Learning Network to see when that episode is ready. Take care and goodbye and thanks again, Tatiana.