�����Ʊ

Kerryn Drysdale: Hi, everyone,
welcome to this workshop that is being hosted by the Sex, Health
and Society Conference. And with
massive thanks to the conference
organisers for allowing us to take up this space, I want to
acknowledge that I'm coming to
you from Gadigal land. So that's
the Gadigal people of the Eora
Nation and I want to pay my
respects to Elders past, present and emerging. And I think that
this is a really welcome time
right now to really critically
reflect on how a Voice to Parliament might provide us with
one of the first steps towards a
more equitable and appropriate
treaty conversation with our
First Nations people. But having
flown up today from the beautiful lands of nipaluna, the
lands of the muwinina people. I
just think that we just really,
really need to take a moment to acknowledge the amazing
custodianship of this land that,
you know, we've done our best to
destroy, we really need to return back to our First Nations
knowledges in how we can care
for this place better. So this
is a very exciting moment for us. My name is Kerryn Drysdale.
I'm a Senior Research Fellow at
the Centre for Social Research
in Health at the Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture. And
joining me today are some
amazing panelists who cross the
faculties in �����Ʊ. But first of
all, I just want to give you a
little bit of background about why we're all coming together
today. So this is one of the
inaugural events of the newly
formed �����Ʊ Community of Practice for Inclusive Research
with Queer, Trans, and Intersex
people, or CoPQTI. And this is a
group that comprises �����Ʊ
academic and professional staff
and research students, both LGBTIQ+, and their allies, who
have particular expertise and
interests in making research,
and other engagement and collaboration with queer, trans
and intersex people more
inclusive. Now, we all know, and
we have amazing data to support
this knowledge, that the
continued explicit exclusion of queer, trans and intersex people
from public, social and cultural
life has far reaching
implications. And this exclusion often starts with the language
that we use in research and
associated practices. And so in
recognising these challenges, the CoPQTI was founded by us
with support from the Division
of Equity Diversity and
Inclusion, to establish a program of activities to build
connections and capacity in this
much needed area. So the CoP is
led by myself, Drs Brooke Brady,
Bridget Haire, Andy Kaladelfos,
Anthony Smith and Professor Christy Newman, and we have the
amazing support and assistance
from Yssy Burton-Clark. So,
aligning with the conference theme of empowerment,
relationships and intimacy, this
workshop has been organised by
the CoP to introduce attendees to the general principles
underpinning inclusive language,
and research, and the importance
of asking questions around sex, gender, and sexuality in
culturally safe and sensitive
ways. Specifically, this event
is meant to showcase the amazing work undertaken by higher degree
research students here at �����Ʊ.
And we're going to be drawing on
an array of amazing lived experience, community
engagement, and professional and
research expertise. So while we
have this workshop, I just want
to remind everyone to pop the
questions into the Q&A function,
and they'll be relayed back to
us by the amazing Yssy. And if you want to tweet about this
event, and I heartily, heartily
encourage you to do please tweet
at #CoPQTI, and that hashtag is
on the bottom of the screen that
you can see right now. So without further ado, let's get
started. What I want to do now
is introduce each of our
panelists and give them a short, quick rapid fire round of
introducing themselves and their
research expertise. So first of
all, I'd like to start with the Jacek. Jacek, what do you do at
�����Ʊ? What do you do in your
life that makes you such an
amazing person? Jacek Anderst: Hi, so I'm Jacek
Anderst, I'm a non-binary and
queer person. So I'm a PhD
student at �����Ʊ. But it's
actually not in the LGBTQI
space, I'm actually doing a PhD in Aboriginal health, in housing
and health, within the
Guunu-maana (Heal) Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander health program at the George
Institute for Global Health,
which is affiliated with �����Ʊ.
But I've always, like in the last five years as a public
health researcher, I've kept a
toe in LGBTQIA+ health research
because I have a lot of lived experience and also have public
health expertise. So I've worked
as a peer worker at an LGBTQI+
sexual health clinic, at Check OUT in Sydney, and I've also
been a community researcher on
SWASH, a lesbian, bisexual and
queer women's health survey. And I'm currently on ACON's Ethics
Research Committee. And I guess
what I'm most interested in is,
thinking about all areas of
health research and practice, is
how does research and how do services support the needs of
specific communities? Whether
that's in the work I do with
housing and health around Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people in social housing, or if it's to do with,
like, all manner of trans and
gender diverse people and queer
people across all the different health research areas. And doing
that while also recognising the
diversity within those
communities. Kerryn Drysdale: And important
to note, SWASH is the longest
running lesbian and queer
women's sexual health survey in the world, isn't it? Kerryn Drysdale: Fantastic that
you've been part of that. I Jacek Anderst: Apparently it is.
heard a rumor that it actually
came out of some really old performance scenes back in the
day, the the, the need to sort
of collect sexual health
information, so they can better serve the the people that
attended. Okay, next up, I'd
like to introduce you to Bella.
And Bella has, is tuning in all Bella Bushby: 11am. the way from Berlin where they
are on annual leave, I believe.
So we're very, very lucky to
have Bella. I have no idea what time it is over there. But
you're looking very, very
Kerryn Drysdale: Oh perfect,
perfect timing. Would you like to introduce the work that you
do?
Bella Bushby: Yeah, sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Bella
Bushby, my pronouns are she/her and I identify as bi+, and I'll
explain why that's relevant in a
second. I'm a sexual health nerd
who has a professional background in HIV policy and
research. And I've worked in the
community sector and government
sector. I now work at the Kirby Institute here at �����Ʊ. As a
Senior Project Officer, and I've
just started my PhD earlier this
year looking at the sexual health and HIV needs of bi+
people in Australia. For those
who haven't heard of the term
bi+, it's relatively new. And it's an umbrella term that
describes people who are
attracted to more than one
gender, such as bisexual, pansexual and polysexual people.
So basically, anyone who isn't
gay or straight, and despite
large numbers of people identifying as bi+, we are the
largest group in every LGBTQ+
survey, there is really a
limited amount of bi+ specific research focusing on sexual
health and HIV needs of bi+
people in Australia especially.
My PhD research will use a mixed
methods approach, mostly
quantitative data, but a little bit of qualitative, to
contribute to addressing these
gaps in knowledge and to try to
understand a bit more about what the sexual health needs of bi+
people are, and what are some
strategies that we can employ to
provide appropriate sexual health care in Australia. I've
also had the amazing opportunity
to work as a project coordinator
on the upcoming study. It's called the Bi+ Sexual Health and
HIV Study, but it's
affectionately known as BiSH.
The study is being run by a group, a group of researchers,
led by Dr Benjamin Bavinton at
the Kirby Institute and
alongside researchers across Australia and �����Ʊ with
experience in bi+ people and in
sexual health, these researchers
are partnering with the bi+ community to run a national
cross sectional survey. It will
be online and anonymous and open
to any person who identifies under the bi+ umbrella. And,
yeah, I guess my passion is bi+
sexual health. It's a really
important area of research. We know the bi+ population is big,
and it's growing, especially
among young people. They are the
future. And again, in every new large survey, we see the
proportion of young people
identifying as bi+ increases. So
I'm going to be focusing on that
today. Thank you for inviting me
and I look forward to the panel. Kerryn Drysdale: Thanks, Bella.
And you know, I think it's
really important to point out
that despite the numbers of people who identify as bi+, they
have some of the worst mental
health outcomes in Australia,
among some of the more
marginalised groups in society,
so I think well overdue, well, overdue research. I'm so excited
that you're doing this. I would
now like to introduce Ange.
Sorry, I'm just going to scroll
past my screen so I can see
Ange's amazing face. Take it away, introduce yourself.
Ange Griffin: Thank you. Yeah,
my name is Ange Griffin. I use she/her pronouns. And I'm a
Research Assistant at the
Gendered Violence Research
Network, which is a network run out of the Faculty of Arts,
Design & Architecture. I am
really excited to be here
because unfortunately, a lot of my research involves LGBT
communities. Sexual violence and
gendered violence,
unfortunately, does affect that community at a much higher rate
than sort of the general
Australian population. And so
even though I personally don't have lived experience as part of
the community, I think that's
really important to recognise
first up, unfortunately, that community is incredibly well
represented in my research. So
currently, I am working on a
national survey of LGBT specific
experiences of sexual violence.
And that national survey is the first of its kind to study the
LGBT community specifically. So
that's really exciting. It's
open at the moment. So everyone should complete it so that we
can have some much needed data
in this area. And yeah, in other
parts of my research, I've been
involved in particular with
queer collectives at universities. A lot of my
research also includes writing
of policy and also training for
universities. So Gendered Violence Research Network does
research as well as sort of
professional provision of
services. So a lot of my work is
also with young queer people.
And that has been an incredibly fulfilling part of my experience
in the last couple of years.
Yeah, so that's, that's me. Kerryn Drysdale: Fabulous. And
am I correct in that the new
survey that you've launched has
a particular First Nations kind of perspective or collaboration?
Ange Griffin: Absolutely. Yeah,
absolutely. We have two really fantastic First Nation
researchers who are really
specifically kind of going out
into community and making sure that the queer First Nations
experiences are specifically
captured because we know those
communities are our most vulnerable. Kerryn Drysdale: Fantastic,
great. Now, Heather, if you have
been anywhere lurking around the
sexual health area, then you
would have probably heard Heather speak previously. So it
is a great pleasure to have
Heather here with us today. Or tonight. Heather McCormack: Hi, I'm
Heather McCormack. I'm a
Wiradjuri queer femme dialing in
from Bedegal country today. I
have a long history in queer
organising of queer community
spaces. And as Kerryn said, I've
worked in sexual health for 15
years or so now. Which kind of
by necessity involves working a
lot with, I want to say the LGBT
community, but we all know that
it means some letters more than
others. I'm currently on the
homestretch of a PhD with the
Kirby Institute which I'm, if everything goes according to
plan, I'm going to submit by the
end of the year, fingers
crossed. Like Jacek, my PhD is actually not on an LGBTQIA+
related topic, I'm researching
STI testing in routine health
assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young
people. But, you know, through
my, my work with the New South
Wales STI Programs Unit, I'm
doing a lot of work in that
space. And I've also got a bit of a side hustle doing some
casual academic work with the Kirby and I'm currently writing
up a qualitative study on
Aboriginal LGBTQIA+ young people
and their understandings of
sexual health. So I don't have a
lot of free time. I don't know if that was clear from that
introduction. But I'm really
looking forward to the
discussions we have tonight. Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah,
absolutely. I've been, I have
just been listening in thrall
whenever Heather speaks. And I'm really hoping that they'll be
able to share some of the her
unique experiences around I
guess, how how these kinds of
acronyms are translated into
other non-western contexts and whether or not they make sense,
and that's actually a really
good segue into the last but
definitely not least panelist today. Ashraf is is doing some
amazing research. And so I'd
love that for him to be able to
explain that to you today. Ashraf Uddin: Hi, everyone. So thanks, Kerryn. My name is
Kazi Ashraf Uddin. I'm from
Bangladesh. So I'm technically
the only Global South researcher here in the panel. So now I'm in
Australia doing my research in
the Global North. My pronouns
are he/him. So I'm, my PhD, I'm
doing a PhD in the School of
Law, Society & Criminology in the Faculty of Law & Justice,
and I'm also working as a casual
academic. So my research
involves a South Asian and gender diverse community called
the hijras. So it's basically a
qualitative research that
involves like multi methods involving fieldwork and
ethnography, of course in
Bangladesh, in this case, in the
Global South, so I have to go back and forth to Bangladesh and
Australia for my fieldwork. So I
would like to see, how different
are the gender diverse communities in the Global South
from the Global North, and what
are the cultural specifics and
cultural nuances? It's not only the cultural, but also the
anthropological nuances that we
need to understand for a better
understanding of the gender
diverse community in the Global
South. So, in so doing, I have
to look into how different
community or cultural factors which shape the hijra identity.
And in so doing, I have to also
go through the internal, the
intra-community and the inter-community power dynamics
within the gender diverse
communities in Bangladesh, which
slightly, which is related to the queer politics or the gender
politics going on in the Global
South. So I was initially
trained in cultural studies and
literature. So during my
training of cultural studies, I got interested in gender
studies. In 2012, I was always
intrigued how culturally diverse
the gender expressions and expectations are across the
borders. So that was the
preliminary curiosity that
intrigued me doing further research in this field. In terms
of community engagement, I'm
also engaged as an ally with
gender diverse communities in
Bangladesh, and in upholding
their rights and causes, because gender, or the gender diverse
community still, in terms of the
legal allowance is still in a
dilemma and in a lot of crisis
there. So the legal issue is
very, very crucial in understanding the gender
condition, the situation in the
Global South. So that's me.
Thank you. Kerryn Drysdale: Well, you've
already had a shout out from the
audience with us today, Ashraf,
so that's great. People are very, very happy to see the
Global South represented here on
this panel. Now, I've had the
amazing privilege of working with these panelists over the
last couple of months trying to
get this event set up. So what
we're going to do is, we're going to move through a couple
of topics that we've all thought
were the most important kind of
broad umbrella ways to start getting into the nitty gritty of
these questions. So I'm going to
ask the panelists a couple of
questions around these, these broad areas before we move into
Q&A from the audience. So bear
with us, because you definitely
want to hear the answers to these questions, because they
are, they are really on the
ball, like these are amazing.
Well thought out responses to these. So let's start. Now when
we start thinking about
research, we have to start
thinking about the hypotheses and the research aims and the
research questions that we want
to answer. And that's, we often
think about this as the research design phase. But I think even
before we even start designing
research, we're already starting
to think about what are the types of information that we
want to have answered, what type
of questions, where we want to
get our data from. And so we want to start thinking about how
we should be thinking with sex,
gender, and sexuality in mind.
Now, this is something that we always need to do throughout an
entire research project. And we
often go back and forth, and we
redesign and we tweak depending on what our data says. So this
is not in any way a kind of a
linear, you know, progression
from the start of a project to the end of the project. But it's
really important when we're
starting to think about the
research design and thinking about terminology. You know,
what are the terms that are most
helpful, that are resonant,
culturally resonant, and inclusive when we're talking
about sex, gender, and
sexuality? So thinking about the
word queer, for example, the recent, Australian Bureau of
Statistics have established the
2020 standard. So these are
questions, or a set of questions that are intended to standardise
the collection and dissemination
of data relating to sex, gender,
and variations of sex characteristics and sexual
orientation. But yet 'queer' is
not actually used in one of the
drop down boxes for people to describe their sexuality. Now,
they can definitely put it in as
an open box response. But the
reason for that is that we are looking at different ways that
people relate to terminology,
right. And that queer for some
people can also be something that's built or perceived as
quite derogatory. And so I guess
one of the questions I want to
start with is how we can respectfully and meaningfully
ask questions about sex, gender,
and sexuality. And I want to
throw to Jacekk to start answering this question from the
outset, if that's okay?
Jacek Anderst: Wonderful. I love
this question. I guess also because I feel like that kind of
concept and early design of a
project is the most important
part, before you actually dive into, you know, getting into
data collection or anything like
that, you really need to think
deeply about, you know who the population is that you're
thinking about studying, if
that's your own, from your own
community or thinking about intersectionality within the
community that you're wishing to
study. So I guess for me, the
important thing to think about in health research generally, is
that gender and sexuality are
not static, over a person's
lifetime. And that the terms that we use to describe
ourselves, they change over time
as society changes. I would say
that this is especially true, or maybe it's more obvious in the
LGBTQ+ community. It's ever
evolving. And the questions that
we design today for research, like surveys, and that sort of
thing, will likely be outdated
in a couple of years. So you
know, terminology lists and like the ABS standards are useful in
that they point you in the
direction of the terms that are
appropriate at this point in time. But you always have to be
aware of, you know, this point
in time, socio politically, in
the dominant, white Australian culture, generally, you know,
we're still in a very western
worldview in Australia, and who
are you actually, you know, are those questions actually going
to be appropriate for all the
all the groups that you're
thinking to, to do research with and for, but the standards are
useful, I do understand there's
a big push to standardise data
and to have data especially that's comparable, comparable
across data sets. So if one
researcher over here is doing a
project, they're using the ABS standards, and then someone on
the other side of the country is also using the ABS standards,
it's kind of useful, then to be
like, okay, well, these, we can
roughly compare them to some degree. And it's especially
important for the trans and
gender diverse community so that
we can actually start being seen in data in a meaningful way. So
that's through the two step
method. So asking about a
person's gender, and then asking about what they were assigned at
birth. So actually, seeing how
many trans people are actually
in the data is really important. Otherwise, we actually just
don't know. And, of course, it's
important for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and queer people to be captured as well and track how
we're doing over time in terms
of mental health. However, it's
not perfect. And sometimes I
worry that people are just, you
know, plucking the ABS standards and popping them into their
research surveys. And they're
not thinking deeply about what's
most relevant for the groups of people they're trying to
recruit. And then what they're
actually going to be doing with
that data and how they analyse that data. And I worry that
there's a sense of, you know, we
did it, we had this whole
consultation process to develop the ABS standards. And it's not
acknowledging necessarily that
the community changes the way it
uses language. And sometimes the words themselves change, but
also the way we relate to the
same words change over time. So
queer is a really perfect example of this, as was your
saying, you know, the word queer
became, you know, it began as a
slur. And now there's a whole new generation of, you know,
sexuality diverse people who are
using this term as an empowering
term, as a political term. But for older people, it's still
considered offensive, and they
don't want to say that they're
queer, necessarily. So you have to be really careful with the
words that you use. And I
imagine that's why it's not in
that drop down within the ABS standards, but it is in the
other terms that you can use.
Alongside queer there's also
asexual and pansexual that are considered the more common terms
that you can use. But to answer
your question, so how do we
respectfully and meaningfully ask questions about sex, gender,
and sexuality? I think it really
depends on who your target
population is, you know, if you're doing a general
population survey, which you
know, will have LGBTQI+ people
in it, whether or not it's you know, LGBT health research, you
might want to start on the
conservative end and just use
the ABS standards, and allow people to put in drop down, like
have the, you know, I use a
different term for my sexuality,
and then they can write in queer. And then you can see how
many people actually say queer.
And I think, you know, if you're
going for younger generation of particular, a particular part of
the queer community, you might
like, you know, lesbian,
bisexual and queer women's survey, for example, with SWASH,
although that's for, generally
for, for women, like you might
want to include queer and actually I just want to say that
queer, so, SWASH has been around
since 1996, happening every two
years. And it started to notice
that people were wanting to
write in queer, but that wasn't an option. And so in 2010, SWASH
actually introduced queer as an
option for sexuality. So that's
kind of an example and over time, it's actually increased.
So the I think, in 2020, 20% of
the 1500 respondents said that
they were queer compared to 9% in 2010. So it's really
interesting to see this trend
over time. That's one of my
favorite SWASH facts. Kerryn Drysdale: That's really
important. I think that's a
really great example of how
these terms don't remain stable. But there's also sometimes a bit
of a worry where certain terms
get conflated, or they get
misunderstood. So, for example,
when we are talking about sex,
you know, sex is technically a legal status, right? And so
maybe often it's more
appropriate to be asking about
sex characteristics, rather than the legal status. And while the
two step question is really
important to identify people
whose gender may be at odds with the gender presumed for them at
birth, we have to sort of ask
ourselves, why are we asking
these questions? What what do we need to know? Do we need to know
someone's sex? Do we need to
know someone's sex
characteristics? Or is it more appropriate that we ask
questions around gender? And so
I guess, you know, you did touch
on the idea that we have these longitudinal cross sectional
surveys, which provide that
stability of data collection
across those different facets, but how can we, what's the best
way to ensure that the words
that we're using reflect the
participants that we want in our research to, to hear themselves
being spoken to, to to see
themselves represented in that
data? So it's a bit of a twist on, on what I originally wanted
to ask you, because you just
answered the question Jacek Anderst: Yeah. Kerryn Drysdale: so
comprehensively. Jacek Anderst: I think, it's a
kind of couple of things. So, or
maybe even three things, and one
is kind of speaking to what you were just saying, like, is it a
longitudinal study, is it something you're going to be
capturing over time, a
particular population that you
want to see how they're doing over time, then it might be more
important to think about the
language that you're using today
and how it's going to track over time. But accepting
unfortunately, that over time,
it's going to change and sorry,
like, there's no easy fix for that. And all you can do is at
this moment in time, you know,
you got it right. But then the
other two things I wanted to say around that is you have to do
some deep thinking, you really
need to consider who your
research is with and for and carefully considering the
diversity within the population.
So rather than imagining that,
you know, you're assuming homogeneity around your diverse
group, because you see, like, a
lot of what I'm likely going to
call smugness is like, there's some like smugness in the LGBT
research world sometimes where
it's like, Well, we're the
diverse group, or something and like, we already are diverse,
and so there's not much room
sometimes to consider
experiences that are intersecting. So like age,
ability, ethnicity, cultural
background, like these things
don't always come into play when we're actually designing
surveys. And if you look at, you
know, LGBT health research
across Australia, a lot of it is actually run by white people.
And so that also changes how we
see things. And so a bit, the
third thing I want to talk about is consultation. So you really
need to consult with people who
are within your group, and going
as wide and deep as possible. So for example, I know at the
moment, the Gay Men's Periodic
Survey is undergoing some
changes. And they're interviewing gay men, as well as
bisexual and queer men and also
non-binary people, about these
changes, they're actually going through the survey with someone
and saying, these are the
changes we're thinking to make,
how does that make you feel? And, you know, trying to be
inclusive of a wide range of
experiences within that
population of people who have sex with gay, bi and queer men.
And, you know, obviously, we
don't all have the resources to
do that. But it's a really great start. But also like needing to
consult even more widely and
thinking beyond just, you know,
who you see, like in Darlinghurst, or Newtown, like
thinking, like, who else do you
need to be talking to? Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely,
that's a really important point, because what I assume of a
particular gender identity that
I hold, or a sexual orientation
that I hold, may not be the same as somebody else who may even
use that same terminology,
right? It can be very different
experiences. So it's absolutely important that we talk to the
people with whom we're doing
this research to make sure that
we're getting it right. And this is a really good point to move
on, to start thinking more about
the non-western context, and
really what has been a historical imposition of
colonialist ideas of sex and
gender and sexuality. So for
example, in some cases in in
some Indigenous or Global South
contexts, for example, those words just don't have the same
kind of meaning that we assume
that they might have. And so I
wanted to talk to Ashraf especially hear about his
research. Because one of the
things that I think is really
important is that we can't just assume that the term 'trans' is
something that can be translated
across various different
cultural contexts. So how can we be thinking about cultural
safety and cultural diversity
when we're designing research
and thinking about research? Ashraf Uddin: That's a great
question, Kerryn. Especially I
can share my own experience
while doing this research, because sometimes I also use the
term transgender in my research,
but then again, I've thought
about the popular perception or the contextual understanding of
the western terms in Bangladesh,
in the Global South, then I can
feel the tension, and sometimes even terms like 'transgender' or
'trans woman' might even evoke
suspicion among the ethnic
diverse community, secular diverse communities, for
example, the word, the prefix
trans, it evokes a kind of
transformation. So, you see such transformation in this in the
form of like medical or surgical
reassignment. So, this medical
or surgical reassignment or any sort of transformation or change
is religiously contested
sometimes. So, there is a kind
of tension in any sort of transformation. So, when you
say, hijra, that is more
accepted, but when you say
transgender or trans woman, that might create a kind of tension.
So, we need to be very careful
whether we are like generalising
or homogenising, the gender expressions or expectations, and
of course, the localised and
contextual understanding about
the public perception about gender diversity is very crucial
to have. So, as my previous
speaker said, to have some sort
of consultation with the locals is very crucial, having the
cultural nuances in gender
expressions and public
perception is very crucial in understanding this and also, we
need to respect the cultural and
localised nuances, while
imposing the mainstream or the Global North terminologies. So,
the same thing, I think, to me,
when I went into the field, then
I felt that tension, because at
the same time, you have the
gender diversity activism by different NGOs and development
organisations, which are mostly
from the Global North, and at
the same time, you also have the community based organisations
who are working locally with
their own community people. So,
here you have a kind of power dynamics between the western
terminologies and the Global
South terminology. So, this
tension, this power dynamics has to be decoded, it has to be
understood in doing any, like
any such research on the gender
diverse communities in the Global South. So at the same
time, I would say the very
localised, very contextual
understanding or intersection, or for understanding through
intersectional lenses also helps
the researchers to get a better
picture of the field. So yeah,
and as a researcher, I always
feel that well, cultural sensitivity is something that
always helped me to get into the
field, and talking to the people
and the community people. So
what I'd like to say, we should
have some sort of knowledge about localised gendered
expectations, and also how the
western terms are understood,
and what are the diverse ways that people in the Global South
prefer to identify themselves
as, and at the same time, it's
most important to understand the development and activism, which
are mostly from the Global
North, how they're functioning
in the Global South, because there's a very direct impact of
development activism, on, more,
I would say kind of westernising
the perception. So now when some people who used to call
themselves hijra or identify
themselves as as hijra, because
when you call someone hijra, hijra involves not only the
gender diverse expectations or
expressions, it also involves
cultural performances, ritualistic performances, even,
we call it hijra giri, the hijra
occupation, so they have a
particular gender diverse economy as well. So, at the same
time, they also worship
different spiritual deities. So
here there is a question of deity, religion is also very,
very much intersected in hijra
identity. So, if we say I would
like to do a research on transgender community in
Bangladesh, so that would be a
very problematic statement,
because it might generalise or
homogenise or even erase many
different gender expressions and cultural affiliations with
gender. So here, gender and
culture are very much
intersected and this complexity, this complexity has to be
understood while undergoing any
research in the Global South, in
my opinion. Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely. So
words matter, but words aren't
static, and that they change in
different contexts, right. But back in the old days, the good
old days when research methods
were written by white, you know,
middle aged dudes who are now dead. There was this notion that
you have this kind of, just
uncover the facts right? But we
now know that research is political, you know, that the
research that we do is a
political project, we can't
claim some kind of neutrality or objectivity, because we are part
of a society that that, you
know, on which we research. So,
I wanted to ask you, Ashraf, what does a decolonialist
approach to research look like
from your perspective? Ashraf Uddin: Sometimes, when I
hear this term, decolonialist
approach to methods, then I ask
myself, am I really going to decolonise everything, change
everything from what the Global
North has given? Or has adopted?
Then my question, my answer is
probably not. So, what I, the
positionality I have, that I
challenge epistemic or
methodological hegemony. So, that is my position, I mean,
well, the methods can change, it
can evolve, even when I applied
for my ethics application, some of the methods have evolved over
time during my fieldwork. So
what is important, not to impose
any sort of episteme, any sort of knowledge or, and also,
respecting and representing the
local knowledge. So for this,
what I did, I involve the community people in my research,
and sometimes they even advise
me on my, if not method, but
also strategies. So this strategy has really helped me to
navigate through my research,
and it facilitated my you know,
my access to the community. So,
and so, this is one thing that
we need to avoid any sort of methodological or taken for
granted methods, or taken for
granted that episteme or
knowledge, on one hand. On the other hand, I would say, the
researcher and research
participants' relationship,
there should not be any sort of domination or hegemony or
hierarchy between these two
classes, we should work on that.
And the researchers should not
adopt any sort of paternalistic
approach of the superior, or
Global North, or whatever. So
this, I've said this hierarchy
should not be there. So that is
one thing. And at the same time, we should also choose methods
that ensure cultural safety. And
of course, quality data, so
safety is very crucial. But at the same time, sometimes when I
applied for my visa application,
I thought, sometimes the
definition of safety has to be
rethought from the Global South
perspective, what really, if we say, well, it is safe to talk to
your research participant in the
restaurant. So in my case, that
was not really a safe space, because that was considered to
be a cisgender space. And there
is no access to well, gender
diverse community, well, there is legally, but well,
culturally, perhaps not. So for
me, I have to redefine the
definition of you know,
culturally safe space or safe
space, because for me the safe space was perhaps the
participant's place or, when
they were in the refugee camp,
it was not really the participant's house which was
the safe space because the if
the neighbours see that, well, a
researcher came to your place, that means you are gender
diverse, that must mean you are
a criminal, so you have to be
punished for that. So I have to go further away to a safer
space. So I think some words,
some ethical words like
'safety', 'consent', they have to be understood from Southern
perspectives, maybe, and through
Southern theories, if possible.
And last thing that I'd like to mention, we need to go, we need
to think about the
institutional, shall I use the
decolonisation, I'm not sure. But in terms of the formation of
the ethics committee, why I say
this is because maybe when you
have a case of research, an
application, an ethics
application from someone like me, who is going to undergo a
research in the Global South,
then perhaps an expert, who is
expert in Global South research
can be employed as ad hoc or as
invited guest or something. So
this is just my idea what I
thought. And of course, I've said my ethics application was
an eye opener for me, I learned
so many things. Yes, there was
many questions asked by my committee, but I learned so many
things. And at the same time,
which I realized, when you're
convinced with your own argument, then the ethics
committee, takes it away,
accepts it. So which is very eye
opening for me and entertaining and enlightening for me because,
well, I had 47 questions from
the ethics committee, but I
addressed those and the ethics committee accepted my argument
So this is a kind of academic
dialogue, academic exchange. So
which of course, gives us a lot of understanding about each
other's context and situations.
Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah. I mean, your supervisor has just
told me that you had a current record for 48 revisions
requested on your ethics
application. I'm surprised that
you pursued with it after all that. I want to throw to Heather
now, because Heather and I have
had some, and all of us really,
have had some amazing conversations around how we
understand gender roles in
different non-western contexts
here. And so I just, Heather, I know that I had a few few
questions here for you. So I'm
maybe just inviting you to speak
more generally on this, if you can, or if you can, if you can
even summarise, what is a very
complicated kind of argument for
western, for people from the
Global North to understand. But
in your research, can you talk to me a little bit about how you
navigate those tensions?
Heather McCormack: Yeah. So I
guess the challenging bit is
distinguishing between gender identity and gender roles and
behaviour, because I find that
in a western paradigm, there is
a big focus on gender identity as being the kind of the central
focus of what a person's gender
is. And we don't see that reflected in all cultures,
there's kind of an assumption
that this is a universal norm
that a person's gender is determined by their gender
identity. In some of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander cultures that I've worked with, we,
so the way I've described this
before, is that we see people who are what is often termed in
research behaviourally bisexual,
but they don't identify as
bisexual, they don't consider themselves to be heterosexual
people who are having sex with
same gender people, either. They
just consider themselves to be men or women. And that's not a
statement of identity. That's a
statement of alignment with a
cultural role. Man is a cultural role and woman is a cultural
role. And that's seen as a more
important statement of who you
are and how you fit into a community than what your
identity is, it's a more
relational understanding of
gender. And I find a lot of non-Indigenous people have a bit
of trouble getting their heads
around this because there is a
bit of a stigma attached to the, the idea of a gender role. And I
find that when non-Indigenous
people talk about gender roles
and how they're bad, and how we, we should get rid of gender
roles and focus on gender
identity, what they're really
talking about is gender norms. They're saying, the idea that a
man or a woman behaves in a
particular way is bad. But there
isn't really a western
equivalent to the way that
cultural gender roles operate in
Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander communities. I've been doing some work on a
communications program at the
New South Wales STI Programs
Unit that's focused on heterosexual men who have sex
with men. And we've done, so
this isn't an academic research
project. But we've done a number of rounds of consultation via a
market research process. And we
found this really interesting
disconnect where when we were predominantly talking to
Australian born, presumably
caucasian, heterosexual men who
have sex with men, they had a very strong attachment to their
heterosexual identity, they
needed to be seen as straight
men who engaged in a behaviour that didn't detract from their,
their alignment with that
heterosexual identity. And when
we, when we kind of, for reasons
I won't go into for matters, in
the interest of time, but when we moved on to speaking more
specifically to men from
culturally and linguistically
diverse backgrounds, specifically men from Mandarin
speaking backgrounds, and men
from Arabic speaking
backgrounds, we found that that that strong attachment to the
heterosexual identity was far
less likely to be there. A lot
of the men we were talking to when we spoke to the cultural
and linguistically diverse
audiences didn't think of
themselves as having a strong heterosexual identity at all. A
lot of them were like, Oh, I
think of myself as a gay man,
but I would never tell anyone that. We found we were speaking
to more closeted men. And
particularly in the Arabic
speaking group of men, we found a big proportion of men who
again, said they just perceive
themselves as men. Because,
like, if they were asked, they
would say they were
heterosexual. But that was because in their language that
they spoke to their family and
their friends in their community
in there is no term for gay or
homosexual that isn't insulting. So having that
having that, like a lack of
that, that positive affirming framework in language affected
how they thought of themselves.
Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah,
absolutely. I mean, this is such fascinating stuff to consider.
So this goes beyond cultural
safety, as Ashraf had said, and
it also just goes beyond, you know, just checking in with
aspects of a community because
they're not homogenous, right?
Because they're going to be, the meaning that we attach to things
is going to shift and the
emphases that we attach, as
well. So for things to be culturally resonant, they have
to actually sort of pay very
close attention to the words
that we're using. So just before we end this section, I just want
to throw over to Jacek because
I'm really fascinated by this.
I've been following SWASH for ages. Now SWASH is a great
example, right? Where you've got
some clear tensions between
identity and behaviour, where they overlap and where they
don't overlap. And SWASH had a
pretty unique way of dealing
with this. Can I give you a just a couple of minutes to sort of
give us some, some updates
around the longest running
lesbian sexual health survey in the world? Jacek Anderst: Sure, well, I was
also just really enjoying
hearing Ashraf and Heather talk
a lot about the kind of nuances around terminology and things
that just don't fit the
Eurocentric hegemony as someone
was saying in the chat, like, it makes so much sense. And I think
about the SWASH survey and the
Gay Men's Periodic Survey here
in Sydney, and thinking about, you know, how diverse Sydney is,
generally, and who's actually
represented in that survey. And
the words that we use in those surveys are very much from that
kind of western worldview. And
how, kind of, limit, that's a
limitation. But yeah, just thinking about, like, identity
and behaviour. And like, you
know, if you've got somebody who
says, you know, I'm a gay man, you know, we've seen in, in the
SWASH survey, and in the, in the
GCPS, like, even if somebody
identifies as like a gay woman or a gay man, they, their sexual
practices, what they actually
say that they do and with whom,
doesn't necessarily match with their identity, what they're
saying, you know, I'm queer, or
I'm bisexual, or if you're
bisexual that's, that's more clear, but if you're saying gay,
or lesbian, and you're, and
you're saying that you're
sleeping with someone of the opposite gender, like, you know,
we're actually seeing that there
needs to be a bit more nuance
around how we're asking that. And so, in the last few years,
SWASH actually changed, I don't
have enough time really to go
into like the full changes in how SWASH dealt with, not just
around the kind of shifts in how
people identify and their
behaviour, but also around like,
including how to actively
actually be including gender diverse people, non-binary
people in both SWASH and GCPS.
And actually, I'm talking about
both of them, because it's actually the same. There's the
same issue that both surveys have, they're both single gender
surveys based in Sydney, and
they have different purposes. So
SWASH is very much a general health survey for lesbian,
bisexual, queer women, while
GCPS is for gay, bisexual, and
queer men. And it's very much focused around HIV and STI
prevention and trying to
understand risk, right. But both
surveys actually kind of did come from the same idea of
prevention around HIV, because,
you know, SWASH came out of HIV,
and because they found that actually, queer women who were
spending, well lesbian women,
and bisexual, were hanging out
with gay men. And that was in the 90s. And so there was a risk
around HIV. And they were
sleeping with gay men, and so
there was a risk there. So they started a survey asking about
sexual practices. So I guess
what I'm kind of getting at a
little bit because I don't want to take away too much time from
other panelists is the
imaginaries that we have around
our population. It's changed so
much over time. And I think when
SWASH started, it probably would have been like a pretty, like,
generally static-ish population,
you know, lesbian, bisexual
women in Sydney and how they're connected to the gay community.
And over time, it's it's opened
up and been like, oh, actually,
let's start asking people that are non-binary. Oh my gosh,
first time we do that 6% of the
sample is non-binary. Oops. And
they're not saying that they're women at all, but they're doing
a women's survey. So what does
that mean? And same with GCPS,
like the first time, I think it was a few years ago, GCPS
started asking about non-binary
identity in a gay men's survey.
And I think it was like a few percent of people. And in the
last one, I had it here
somewhere, there was I think,
like, 2% of people are non-binary in GCPS, might be one
point something percent, could
be wrong. But what I'm getting
at is, you know, how do you deal with someone saying they're
non-binary, but they're doing a
single gender survey? How do we
actually support that community?
What's the, what are the health
promotion implications? How do we analyse that data? There's so
many questions that come up for
that. And yeah, I can talk about
it for a long time. Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah. Jacek Anderst: Julie and I wrote
a paper about it. So we can... Kerryn Drysdale: I was going to
say, yes, everyone should read
Julie Mooney-Somers's lead
authored paper on this, because it's fascinating. I'm conscious
of the time so I want to move
on. And I want to start thinking
about how we actually do this research. So how should we be
designing, collecting and
analysing research to be
inclusive of sex, gender, and sexuality? Now Bella, I want to
really hear from you here,
because I'm a qualitative
researcher, numbers scare me. And I've never understood how
you do what you do. But you
know, we hear constantly, things
like the limits of categorisation with small sample
sizes and statistical power
in quant data. What does that
mean? How can we be more inclusive of sex,
gender, and sexuality in ways
that actually do what you need
to have done at that population level of that, you know,
the high numbers. Bella Bushby: So, numbers also scare me. A lot of people
feel that way. Um, I'm really, I
mean, this topic, like, I find
really, really interesting, especially around categorising
quantitative data and how we do
quantitative data on sex,
gender, and sexuality. And it wasn't till I started working
with quant data that I realised,
how we categorise participants
and how we think about analysing, reporting data
actually needs to be done at the
very start before you begin
designing your survey. It's not something you kind of do
afterwards, when you collect the
data and you go, oh, let's look
at this. It's something that is a huge issue that we need to
sort of think about before
because without doing that, we
might be collapsing and conflating different groups,
particularly in sex, gender, and
sexuality research. And this is
a huge issue. And it's something I've come across a lot in my
work on bi+ sexual health during
my PhD, where I've struggled to
find literature and specific data on bi+ communities, in
particular, in research about
queer communities, often
categories of people are combined, especially bi+ people
who are usually reported
together with either lesbians or
gay men, or under a wider LGBTIQ+ umbrella. And this is
despite all the groups under
this umbrella being really
different and you know, different communities. And we
talked about before having
different health outcomes, like
mental health is really different among bi+ people
compared to LGBT and
heterosexual people. And while
combining people, for the research focus, you know,
sometimes it might be necessary
if you're doing something really
broad. But without being able to separate the data between these
different groups, the distinct
experiences of each communities
under the LGBTIQ+ umbrella are often missed. And then we don't
have specific and accurate data
about these different groups.
Another reason people combine groups is because they don't
collect enough responses from a
particular group. And then it
becomes an ethical statistical issue when it comes to analysis.
That's what I'm really
interested in. Because if you
report on small sample sizes, it can be quite dangerous. And it
risks making generalisations
about an entire group based on
experiences of a few. However, if this limitation is properly
acknowledged, then reporting on
small groups can provide us with
data that would otherwise be missed, missed, and might have
important implications for
specific communities, or inspire
new avenues of research. So, you know, we could find things that
are worth investigating further.
But ultimately, as researchers,
you know, we should be aiming to honor the experiences of
communities who have unique
experiences, rather than
combining them with other groups. An example I see a lot
in research that I'm looking on
in men who have sex with men, is
I'll see a study that collects say, 300 responses from gay men,
and then they'll collect 30
responses from bisexual men. And
because of this unequal group size, researchers will often you
know, be forced to kind of put
them in the same category when
reporting the analysis. And this kind of conflates gay men with
bisexual men and we lose the
sort of differences between
these groups. Really, to avoid having to collapse and conflate
categories and research. It's
really, really important to
think about your analysis beforehand. And I have learnt
this the hard way in the past,
it's really something you really
need to consider. And you know, you need to think, who's the
focus of your research? And how
do you want to report this data?
I've worked in the past with community groups about how they
want to see themselves
represented in research and how
they want to see categories of their population presented, you
know, it's really important. Is
it going to be, is your analysis
going to be by sexuality? Is it going to be by gender identity?
You really need to ensure you
ask the right questions and have
a strong recruitment plan. And think about this before so you
can gain adequate enough sample
sizes for analysis. Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely,
because it actually, it's not just about missing diverse
experiences around sex, gender,
and sexuality. But it's actually
the harms that can be developed
out of that as well. And we've
all heard the horror stories of, you know, back in the old days,
when trans women who had sex
with men were up coded in data,
to just fall under MSM, men who
have sex with men, which is
just, it goes beyond erasure.
You know, it's actually, it's a
really violent kind of thing to do to someone, to sort of just
completely ignore their, their
humanity, you know, the way that
they identify. Bella Bushby: Not respecting,
not respecting or justifying.
Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely
terrible. Now, Ashraf, I was going to turn to you, but you
did such an eloquent job in the
previous question, I actually
really want to hear from Ange if that's okay. So I'm going to
jump down and ask Ange a very
specific question. How do we
adapt methods based on intersectional considerations?
So we've got class, religion,
citizenship status, that goes
beyond just simply sex, gender and sexuality, as if they're
somehow isolated from all these
other aspects of our lives. Can
you talk a little bit about how you might go about that when
you're doing the research that
you do? Ange Griffin: Yeah, absolutely.
I think, I really liked what
people have kind of said
previously about, you know,
making sure that you're consulting with communities, I
think it kind of has to go
beyond consultation,
consultation is really important. But it also has to
include, you know, if you've got
a research team, if you've got
the resources, the research team really should include members
from the communities that you're
trying to interact with. And
what we've done for the national survey is we also have a very
large project advisory group.
And that includes experts, and
people with lived experience from a range of different
backgrounds. And that's really How does that feel as a
researcher, to say, yeah,
helped us to make sure that, you
know, when we designed our survey, we did all of those
things, like we used questions
that had kind of been used
before so that we could make comparisons to previous
research. But then, as Jacek
kind of said, lots of those
questions were outdated. So what we ended up doing was, you know,
we took these questions to queer
collectives to get that younger
audience. And we also took it to the project advisory group,
which had a whole range of kind
of people from different
backgrounds, just to check that what we were doing was correct.
And it was not. And that was a
really important thing to recognise.
there's a mistake here? Yeah, no, it's it's really
important and we need to do it. And we, you know, I think we
were really determined to try to
make sure that it was
representative. And also it was able to be kind of, compared
with previous data, it's really
important that we have, yeah,
this research has the capacity to be compared against other
data, but we can't prioritise
that above, making sure that it
actually speaks to our audience, because it's quite a significant
survey. If a person enters into
that survey and and thinks,
yeah, this doesn't speak to my experience, they're just going
to exit out and we're not going
to have the data that we need.
So I think that that was a really amazing experience. And
we're so lucky to have those
communities. And I think if I
had any advice for people trying to contact those communities is
that you know, the people are
there, and I think the queer
community in particular is such an open minded and open hearted
community. They want to be
consulted, they want to like be
included in research. You know,
most people really understand
why research is important and why, how it can be beneficial.
You know, this national survey
will hopefully be able to show
governments and other institutions why specific
services are so important for
this community and, and the
queer community understands that and wants to help. And so I
would just say, you know, find
those people, they are easy to
find. There's so many community organisations out there that you
can tap into. And if you've got
resources, pay people as well. Kerryn Drysdale: I was about to
say. Ange Griffin: Yeah, it's
really important. You can't just
ask them to do free labour, you have to acknowledge that this is
work. So yeah, that's what I
would say. Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely.
I think there's this notion that
people come to research for an entirely altruistic means. Ange Griffin: Absolutely.
Kerryn Drysdale: Some people do.
And yeah, right. Ange Griffin: Yeah, yeah. Kerryn Drysdale: But then it's the same people over
and over again, that tend to be
involved in this. And then there
are those so-called hard to reach populations, but are they
really hard to reach, or have we
just not made the effort to try
to connect with them, and to get their experiences? Because I
think one of the things that's
really clear from what everyone
has said here is that people are experts in their own lived
experience, we can't try to
impose meaning and order onto
somebody's own experiences, we actually need to let them tell
us what's important to them. And
I love the point that you raised
there, Ange. Okay, so we're moving along here. Just a quick
reminder to everyone who's
listening in, fabulous
conversation so far, we do want to hear from you as well. So if
you do have questions, please
pop them into the Q&A. And so we
can try to get to them. But I do want to move on to what I think
is the last area that I just
wanted to touch on with everyone
today. And this is about reflexivity. And I think this
notion of reflexivity has been
weaved into those responses from
everyone so far, where you have to reflect back on the
researcher's own positionality,
thinking about their
relationships that they have, and the co-production of
knowledge. So the relationship they have with their research
participants, that together you
generate knowledge, useful,
meaningful knowledge, right? But it's pretty tricky to be
reflexive all the time. And if
we listened to those old dead
white dudes, we wouldn't have have to do it. But thankfully,
research has moved on since
those days. And so I want to
ask, I'm gonna open this up, but
I'm thinking mostly maybe
Heather and Bella, but anyone step in. How do we manage those
relationships? How do we manage
relationships between
researchers and our participants, our communities
that we work with, with people
who are in higher positions of
power, like in the universities, and Ashraf had sort of
referenced the power that ethics
committees, for example, hold
over researchers when they're trying to do culturally resonant
research. So let's end on that
big question. I think because
that's a big one. And then we'll move on to some questions from
the audience. How's that? Maybe
Heather, would you like to kick
us off with a response from that? Heather McCormack: Yeah.
I love that you're closing on my
most controversial opinions.
Kerryn Drysdale: That was always
the plan, Heather. Heather McCormack: I just want
to follow on from what Ange said about members of communities
being consulted and involved and
on research teams. This is
something that I have spoken about quite extensively in the
context of research with
Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander populations before but I think it's also something that
applies to I mean, my work is in
sexual health. So all the
priority populations, we work with LGBTQIA+ people, trans and
gender diverse people, sex
workers, drug users, I would say
that it goes beyond even having
people who are members of those
communities actively involved in
like meaningful roles in your
research team. I would say that in 2023, we are past the point
where we should have researchers
who are not part of those
communities, approaching those communities and trying to get
support to do the research on
the topic the researcher is
interested in, we are at a point in time where communities need
to be setting their own research
agenda and determining their own
research priorities. And the role of researchers who are not
connected to those communities
is to facilitate the research
that communities want to have done. And if you're a researcher
and you're determining that
you're not in a position to be
doing the research that communities want to have done
with them, your role is to find
the person who can. Kerryn Drysdale: Hear, hear,
Heather. This is, I mean, for
me, this is not controversial. I
would hope that everyone listening to this would actually
sort of really pick up those
nuances that Heather's saying
there. You know, while we can never be wholly insider
researchers, so we can never
fully represent the entire
diversity of various identity claims that we make, you know,
but we need to sort of reflect
back on where we actually sit
within that, you know, where's our role in this, and so Bella,
could I get you maybe to comment
on that? You've been someone who's championing bi+
research as a bi+ person
yourself. Bella Bushby: Yeah, it's a bit
hard to go after Heather there with her amazing outlook. I just
wanted to sort of mention about
some of my experiences working
with advisory groups in the past, and I love working with
advisory groups, I find it just
so amazing, like, in the past,
and today, I still walk into sort of meetings, and I just
become sort of encapsulated in
awe and inspired by the feedback
and ideas and passion community
have around research. And I sit
there and I, you know, I want to go yes, yes, let's do it. Like,
that's amazing. And then I kind
of walk out and I get back to my
desk, and I realise oh, wait, you know, that doesn't work with
research methodology or funding
or skills we have. So I mean,
the role that you have, as
someone who's organising these
groups is it's really important to be upfront, have
conversations about expectations, funding, sticking
to research focus, and making
sure that from the start, you're
having sort of conversations, managing expectations, and you
know, the consultation process,
as well as you know, trying as
much as possible to take on these amazing ideas and what
research the community does
want. Kerryn Drysdale: Mm hmm. That's a really important point.
All right, now, I wanted to
leave some time for Q&A. So
while the audience members are thinking up their curly
questions for you to answer, we
had a couple of questions that
came in through the registration process. And these are some
doozies. And so I'd like to
maybe offer the opportunity to
answer some of these. Ange,
there's a really, a question
here, which I think is really good for you to answer. And just
thinking about some of the ethical and inclusive research
practices, and principles that
underpin the work that you do,
especially around gender and sexuality, diverse, young
people. So what what kind of
additional nuances, what kind of
additional things, relationships, reflexivity,
thinking with, all that sort of
stuff that you need to keep in
mind when you're researching with young people, especially?
Ange Griffin: I think, I mean, I
think it will depend on like how young
we're talking, I've exclusively
worked with young people that
are over the age of 18. I think, if you go for people who are
under the age of 18, that's a
whole other level that I
definitely cannot speak to. But in my experience, I think young
people are actually like, really
excited and keen to be involved
in this sort of research. I think the one thing that I have
tried to keep in mind and I
think is really important to
keep in mind is that it's easy to develop really strong
relationships with keen, excited
young people who want to be
involved. And that's amazing, it means that you can get some
really rich and exciting data
and get some really amazing
research outcomes. But one thing you do need to keep in mind is,
you know, these relationships
that you're building, they can't
be transactional, and they can't be exploitative in any way. So
it's about making sure that
boundaries are set. You know,
I'm a young person myself, and I have relationships with people
who are of similar age that I
then engage in research, and
that closeness means that they know that they can trust me,
but, and I hope you know that, I
honor that trust. But it also
means that, you know, I need to be really careful that I'm never
putting them in a position where
they feel like they need to be,
you know, saying yes to being involved in research so that
they can continue to have this
friendship with me. So I think
it's about just making sure that you're like continually checking
in with them. And, and being
really reflexive about, you
know, how much am I kind of asking of young people, even if
they seem really like, yes, I
want to be involved. Like, it's
just important to just keep in mind that, you know, you don't
want to be ever exploitative in
any way. So, yeah, I think it's
about just making sure you have strong boundaries.
Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah, perfect.
I mean, I think those principles should apply, across the board, right? Ange Griffin: Generally,
absolutely.
Kerryn Drysdale: Not just, you
know, additional ethical concerns. One of the things that
I'm I'm really interested in is,
is advisory committees. You
know, we often think about young people doing what they're told
to do you know, that they have
little voice in these larger
political questions and debates. But yet one of the most simplest
ways to do that is, right, to
have them on in an advisory
capacity, give them agency and respect that agency in
understanding what their
preferences are and what drives
the research interests that they hold. I have a great question
here for Jacek actually, So
there's a question, it's a
really big question, of what is the current state of research,
promising directions,
limitations and how they may be
overcome regarding the health
and well being outcomes for
non-binary Australians. So this is a really...
Jacek Anderst: That's a doozy. Kerryn Drysdale: Let's break it
down. Jacek Anderst: Look, and I just
want to break down the question
a bit, because, and just make
sure that I understand, I'm understanding it correctly. My
understanding of this question
is that the link, they want to
know the link between medical transition, and health and
wellbeing outcomes for
non-binary Australians, I'm
imagining what they're saying by, in terms of medical
transition, that they're talking about hormone therapy, and/or
gender affirming surgeries. And
especially with a non-binary,
only for non-binary people in Australia. I would say that the
research out there is very
limited. I'll pop into the chat,
we'll pop in the chat, a little bit of an evidence brief on
trans and gender diverse people,
and the benefits of gender
affirming surgery. And this actually does include some
information about non-binary
people. And it does have some
good references in the reference list of their evidence briefs,
so I can pop that in there. But
it's not, doesn't, doesn't have
that direct link between, you know, gender affirming,
surgeries, medical transition,
and health and well being
outcomes specifically for non-binary people. So that's
something that, there is obviously a gap. I did also find
some articles adjacent to this,
but not explicitly asking this
question. It's a study from the US that was looking at
non-binary people and the ways
that they affirm their gender.
But also, again, it's not linking to their health and well
being but it's, you know, this also how research works is like
people are working in their
little spaces. And then
together, we kind of do create a bit of a picture. I would say
that in Australia, just just
being on the ACON Research
Ethics Committee, for the last couple of years, there does seem
to be a huge push. And there's a
lot more research around
non-binary people. And we are seeing this, in that there's
increasing numbers of research
around trans neurodiverse
people, that's coming through ACON. But yeah, it's it's the
you know, it's not necessarily
just non-binary people, though,
it's often like trans and gender diverse and, and what I'm
finding is also that more and
more LGBTQ surveys in general
LGBT health research in general is asking for, they're using the
ABS standards in their research.
And actually, I was gonna pop
into the chat, someone had a question about what's the most
common questionnaires and I would say the ACON community
indicators, I'll pop that in
there too. But in that, in
including non-binary as an option for people to say in, in
generally, in LGBTQ health
research, it does mean that
we're starting to get a bit of a picture. And yeah, and I had
those stats from earlier I
really wanted to say, is that in
the last GCPS, the Gay Men's Periodic Survey in 2023, there
was, 2.7% people said they were
non-binary. And in SWASH, it was
8% of the total sample of 1500
people. I can't say what they
were for this year, or like last year, for SWASH, because that
isn't publicly available yet.
But it is increasing. So we'll
be getting to know more and more about, you know, there's, we'll
get we'll be getting to know
more about the health status in
general of non-binary people and as it relates to other, you
know, queer and trans people.
But there is a need, there is
really a huge need to understand non-binary people as a
standalone identity not in
relation to other, like the most
single gender people, women and
men, cis men, trans men, you
know, like, we need to know about us.
Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely. And
that's one of the things is we can't just keep conflating it
under a trans asterix, kind of
umbrella, because that won't be
necessarily appropriate for everybody. And I just also had,
going back to that question that
you sort of touched on that you
wanted to answer. You know, one of the things I really love
about the SWASH survey, for example, is they use a parts and
practices kind of model, right,
for asking questions. So maybe
in the past, it might have been, have you had sex with a man in
the last six months? Or have you
had sex with a woman in the last
six months? Now it's has a has a penis been inserted into a
vagina? You know, these are
these are much more relevant
questions for the type of sexual health kind of information that
you want to get out. But I want
to turn a question now to Bella.
And�� this is again, quite
another doozy of a question. So
let me see if I can break it down a bit. So this is a
question from a professional who
does a lot of collaboration with
international countries and teams and institutions. And so
they often may encounter non
inclusive language and
practices. So for example, where, you know, terminology,
like people who could who can
become pregnant, and it gets to
sort of simplified incorrectly into pregnant women or, or
females who become pregnant,
right. So this person wants
advice from you about how to approach these situations from a
professional standpoint when
working with these individuals,
and how do you sort of maintain those professional relationships
at the same time, as you know,
banging the drum for inclusivity
and inclusive language?
Bella Bushby: Yeah, so, I would say definitely a
respectful approach to your
colleagues. And I think, in
these instances, it's really important to have sort of open
conversations with colleagues
together. So maybe not like an
individual one on one, but maybe, you know, organise sort
of a meeting and a presentation
to your team and talk about, you
know, why certain terms are used, why they're important for
inclusivity. And sort of just
lay it all on the table. Because
I mean, we were kind of talking about before how inclusive
research is, you know, it's
constantly an ongoing learning
process, and everyone is learning and everyone's at
different stages. So you know,
if we take opportunities to talk
together, that could be a really good way to keep your team up to
date and using best practice
language. And that's, you know,
an example of that is the, you know, the term queer; people
from older generations, that was
a pretty offensive slur in the
past, and you know, over time, it's evolved, um, to be
inclusive to be an inclusive
term. So that is, you know, it's
a good example, to raise about how and why language is
important to change and why, you
know, we need to be keeping up
to date. And another idea I thought of, in this situation
that could be really useful is a
lot of community organisations
have developed their own language guides for how to talk
about their communities. For
example, I know there's some
really great guides out there for talking about trans people,
for talking about people living
with HIV, and people who use
drugs, and it gives examples of,
you know, common language that
maybe is not the best and what you could replace it with, and
why that's important. And that,
you know, that's a great
resource to circulate around to colleagues. If you're not sure
on how to have these
conversations, and to find those
updated informations, and you know, at the, if you really you
can't get your message through,
you know, maybe you can reach
out to communities and ask community groups and
organisations if you can't find
information online. Kerryn Drysdale: Yeah, I've got a plug for our CoP, our
community of practice, is that
we're here to answer those tough
questions as well. So yes. Kerryn Drysdale: You know, this
is the thing, like one size Bella Bushby: Exactly.
doesn't fit all, does it? And so
you really have to sort of respond to the, to what's
happening in that particular
context as well. But the other
thing that's a really simple thing to do is to share
pronouns, right? As a cis woman,
you know, I make it clear that I
use these pronouns. So it doesn't make it like it's just a
secret language that only trans
and gender diverse people, you
know, may do, Kerryn Drysdale: it's a really
important thing. And this is Bella Bushby: Normalise.
actually a really great way to
move into another question that we've got, which I think is a
fabulous one for maybe Ashraf to
answer: as someone who uses
he/him pronouns, but also does
this really culturally sensitive
work with our often marginalised
members of society. The question
I have for you is, how do you unpack cis privilege? Right, so
this is the sort of norms around
cisgender identity that are sort
of taken as universal norm,
right? And where it seems like
people who don't ascribe to that kind of gender are the ones that
are always forced to explain
themselves, right? So how do
you, how would you unpack your cis privilege in the work that
you do and the power that it
holds if it's not acknowledged? Ashraf Uddin: I think for me,
it's a question of reflexivity. I,
before even starting my
research, I asked myself, what
am I gonna do for this community, and what will be the
impact of this research? And
what my worldviews are. I mean,
how do I look at those people who I'll be doing the research
with? So I think the question of
reflexivity and self reflection
is very crucial in this case. And afterwards when I'm
convinced then I go to the field
and before going to the field,
what I should do, I mean, in my case, it was like more
convincing, having some scoping
conversations, trust building.
And of course, using the language, I think the language
is very important because when I
talk to the people in
Bangladesh, I have to use the local dialect, I have to use the
local words. And very, not the
jargon, not the English jargon
that they won't really understand, even I'm not really,
not really comfortable in using
my pronouns as well because
using the pronoun is considered to be a kind of elitist
approach. Right? So you belong
to the Global North. You're an
elite. So I didn't really use my, in any of the
correspondences, I didn't really
use my pronouns. So I have to, I
have to be as humble as possible, as respect, like, as
respectful as possible and
showing my respect my, my
cultural sensitivity to the people and that is, that was a
crucial point for me in trust
building. So it's not only about
the trust building among the community, but trust building
with the gatekeepers, so in my
case, it was also the
gatekeepers who were kind of a crucial part of my research. So
I had to have some sort of
pre-fieldwork conversations with
the people, convince them. And also, I have to be very careful
about not imposing any
psychological, economic harm. I
said economic harm, because when I take one hour from, like, from
their life, it's about their
livelihood, because these people
are from the working class. So time really matters,
economically. So I have to also
go through a kind of strategy,
how not to impose any sort of economic harm on them. And then
the question of remuneration, or
giftcard, came, and I also have
to convince my research ethics committee about this. So they
are also convinced about my
remuneration strategies, and so
on. So I think when you think about the intersectional
approaches in gender, then if
you've considered socially,
economically, in terms of employment, caste, gender, and
also religion, so there are many
overlapping, so a researcher is
both an insider, and also an, and maybe an outsider as well.
So in my case, when we talk
about my cisgender privilege, I
might be considered as an outsider. But when I established
the communication, the trust
building, then they said, well,
Ashraf is doing something that will do some good to us. So that
was a statement that made me, if
not belong to their community,
but a close ally to their community. So in this case,
sometimes the noble
referentials, noble references
also work. My friends, my relatives, people, my network,
so my personal network sometimes
also helped me in establishing,
in unpacking the cisgender privilege and being close and
accessible to the community.
Kerryn Drysdale: Um, that's,
that's actually a really
fascinating point that you just
raised then, and that actually just made me think about
something else, we have another really fabulous, fabulous
question here. And I'm gonna put
this to Heather, and say, Can
you answer this in one minute?
Now, this question is around
someone who works in the STEM area. And that they are
acknowledging that there's a growing involvement of citizen
scientists and citizen scientist
approaches, right. In our world,
we often think about the terms like deliberative panels or
democratic panels, and Heather
you said, it's really important
that researchers respond to the research needs of the
communities with whom they work
and they research, not imposing
research agendas on communities, especially when they've been
oversaturated, historically. So
I just want to leave the last
word with you on that, is, how can we embed a community
resonant democratic processes in
research so that we can actually
do good for the, for the communities that we work with?
Heather McCormack: I was
actually just eyeing off that question. So I think
my thoughts on this are probably
not what you were expecting. But I would say that in a lot of
cases, the organisations and
networks of the communities
we're talking about, so Aboriginal community controlled
health services, sex worker
organisations, sexual health
clinics, they actually are doing research, they just don't call
it research. There's a lot of
little projects being done and
consultations and yarning
circles and CQI projects
happening all over the place,
that aren't labeled research
because of either historic
negative associations with the
idea of research being conducted on those communities, or with a
kind of feeling that the term
research reflects a level of
qualification or academic
association that these
organisations don't have. So they, they don't feel that they
can claim the term research. But
to address the question, I would
say like yes, that absolutely is a thing in our field. And
something that I would really
like to see happen in the future
is, the, more of the, the
dissemination strategies that we
have for official research being
extended to these research
adjacent processes that are
being done within communities.
If that is what the communities want, to get greater reach on
the findings of their research
so to speak. And to get more
eyes on the things they're
uncovering within their own
communities that aren't being disseminated in that way,
because they're not seen as
research. Kerryn Drysdale: Hmm. Okay. Now
listen, we've had a bit of a
conversation today. And we have,
we're fast running out of time, I wanted to let everyone have
one last chance to say, what do
you want the people who are
listening to this conversation to take away from this session
today? And I want you to do it
in about 30 seconds each. And
I'm gonna start with the Jacek, because apparently, according to
our back channel, communication
chat, they're about ready for
bed now. Jacek Anderst: It's definitely
my bed time.
Think, reflect, go deeper, be critical.
Go outside your own lived
experience, you are definitely
missing something. No matter who you are. If you're only thinking
from your own standpoint, be
conscious of your standpoint, be
honest with yourself about how your standpoint is influencing
your research, because it
definitely is, even though you
think that you've got it right. And you have to constantly be
reflecting throughout the entire
research process. There's
nothing wrong with who you are, what your standpoint is. But,
you know, obviously, we're all
unique snowflakes. And we have
our own special experiences, and we can't be all the things. So
reach out, open yourself up to
different ways of being and
experiences and respectfully learn about other people's
experiences for the better of
people outside of that
experience, of your own experience. Kerryn Drysdale: Nice one.
Fabulous. Okay.
Ashraf. Last words, what do you
want people to take away?
Ashraf Uddin: I'm just
wondering, I think, be respectful to cultural
specificity, specificity to
gender expressions, have some
knowledge on the geo local context, if you'd like to do
some research in the Global
South, because the contexts are
different. And that will help you for your research design, by
geo local context. I mean, like
even load shedding, internet
blackout, political unrest, natural disaster, inflation,
cash economy, even weather,
crime rate, social stigma,
religious environment, etc. And also think about the legal
context in the Global South of
the gender diverse community,
for example, the level of incarceration, public nuisance
law, or even laws, like criminal
trial service, etc. So this will
only help you to well design your research plan, and also to
tailor your questionnaires or
interview questions as well. Kerryn Drysdale: Fabulous. Okay.
Bella.
Bella from Berlin. Bella Bushby: Inclusive research
involves ongoing learning, be
open to learning and continuous
learning. Think through your analysis first, I can't express
how important that is, and
engage with community
organisations when relevant and appropriate. Kerryn Drysdale: Fabulous. Ange.
Ange Griffin: Yeah, I think, um, don't be too afraid to get
things wrong. You know, I think
like, like most people have
already said, we're all coming from different backgrounds. And
we can never represent all of
the places that we need to
represent. But it's about making sure that you're listening and
you're being open. And as long
as you're honest with yourself
and with others, when you get things wrong, which you will,
then that's the important
bit. Kerryn Drysdale: Okay. Last words, as always, for
Heather,
what do you want people to take
away? Heather McCormack: I feel like
everyone else just nailed it like, they've not really left me
much to say, but
I guess emphasising that. These
communities that we work with
have their own inherent strengths and
assets and like, communities
want to be consulted, they want
to be involved, they want to be engaged. I think the point about
not being afraid to ask
questions is really important.
The project I was talking about earlier about the the
heterosexual men who have sex
with men, we've been told
repeatedly that these were a hard to reach audience who
didn't want to be contacted, but
when we found them, and we said,
like, how do you want to be
engaged with, the most common
response we got was, no one has ever wanted to ask me in a
respectful manner, about this
part of me before and I think
that that position of
approaching communities with
humility and respect
and asking what they need of
you, is gonna get you a long
way. Kerryn Drysdale: Absolutely.
Well, we're out of time, I have had a
blast. Every time I talk to all
of you, I'm just astounded the
level of your knowledge and your expertise. And I always learn
something. And so I really hope
that everyone else in the
audience has had the same experience. This conversation is
not over, this conversation will
be continuing. So I know that
there are some questions that we couldn't get to, please feel
free to email, the email address
copqti@groups.unsw.edu.au. And
you'll get all of us, the academic leads and Yssy. And
then we'll be able to send those
across to our fantastic
panelists and see whether they have any more energy to answer
these questions. But this will
not be the last time that you
see us. We are hoping to develop the community of practice
further, we want to really
engage with all the different
faculties across the University and beyond. And there's a couple
events I just want to quickly
flag attention to: between mid
October and mid November, ADA will be taking over the Bank,
which is the old Commonwealth
Bank building, for a residency
aiming to promote our research strengths that are relevant to
health. And so you will see CoP,
the community of practice
members there for a meet and greet on the eighth of November.
And we'll see if we can shoehorn
some of our amazing panelists
who might want to pop in as well and have an opportunity to talk
to them face to face. We're also
going to have an online seminar
on inclusive research hosted by the Centre for Social Research
in Health, where we'll discuss
the projects that I guess were
the impetus for why we all came together to develop this
community of practice. That will
be the fifth of December. Please
tweet, if you'd like, to talk about this and continue the
conversation at #CoPQTI. And my
voice is just about to go which
is fantastic timings. Thank you so very much. And huge, huge
thanks to all of our panelists
who have devoted their time,
when they're on annual leave, when they've got their busy
lives, outside of business hours
to come here and talk to us
today. And I'm, I'm, yes, just personally just in absolute awe
of all the work that is being
undertaken in these spaces. So
thank you. Goodbye, and, and good luck. Don't forget to reach
out to us if you have any
questions. Thank you.