Hate Crimes Against Transgender People

The jarring and persistent rise of hate crimes against transgender people has received more attention from social scientists and the media of late, which may bring more resources to the problem and prompt more victims to seek help. However, trans persons and their advocates say that those offering assistance should recognize that there are still [...]

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Unpacking Femininity: Supporting Trans Feminine Clients and Inhibiting Clinical Bias

There is a growing body of literature to reflect the grave health disparities that transgender and gender diverse/expansive communities are faced with when compared with cisgender (cis) clients (Glick, Theall, Andrinopoulos, & Kendall, 2018), i.e., those whose gender identity is the same as that assigned at birth (Cava, 2016). On many micro and macro levels, [...]

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Affirmative Therapy with Trans and Gender Expansive (TGE) Youth and Their Parents

When youth are expressing gender expansiveness or claiming a trans identity, it is common for parents to seek therapy for help navigating their child’s process. Parental attitudes vary widely and may include full support, relief, confusion, disbelief, fear, loss, anger, or outright rejection. Regardless of a family’s level of attunement with the youth’s expression/identity, it [...]

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Let’s Talk About Trans Sex

To date, the sexuality models and interventions utilized in therapeutic fields are often constructed based on binary, heterosexual, cisgender coitus (Iantaffi & Benson, 2018)—leaving those in same sex relationships, those with different abilities, those with multiple partners, and those with various gender and sexual identities, excluded from the conversation. Specifically, trans people are often neglected, [...]

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Stealing “me”

There is an intruder in my life, This intruder keeps score of what I “should” be. They ask of me to keep my life as a crystal-clear pane of glass. They make me think of crystal-clear glass as something that is fragile, needing to be protected. But what I think it is a boundary separating [...]

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Rewriting the Script: How Therapists and Parents Can Use the Problematic Messages in Media to Strengthen Families

The smell of popcorn in the air, the sound of candy boxes shaking, and the excitement of watching the most anticipated film of the year; it’s no surprise the global box office revenue hit $42.5 billion in 2019 (McClintock, 2020). From Blockbuster to Netflix, families around the world have used movies as a way to [...]

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Ethical Decision Making in Unilateral Client Termination

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, there were no discussions on this subject. I don’t know if there are any now, but all of us who have practiced for any length of time have come face to face with situations where we have needed to end therapy without it being a mutual decision. [...]

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Data and Research on Transgender Populations

data note therapy talk “We’re just two people in a relationship”: A qualitative exploration of emotional bond and fairness experiences between transgender women and their cisgender partners: Appearing in JMFT Early View — Trans‐including couples experience systemic marginalization impacting their relationships, yet studies on these relationships or narratives of strength are few. AAFMT Clinical Fellow [...]

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Community, Hope, Resiliency

This issue of FTM marks the one-year anniversary of swift and radical changes—and they are not over. You have had a tiring, challenging, and undoubtedly frustrating year. Balancing home and work are difficult but that took on an entirely new effort over the last 12 months. Despite 2021 having glimmers of potential difference, with prognosticators [...]

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