Considering Harm
By Jill
Ryan wrote last week about how panic often incites quick responses that might feel like the right thing in the moment, but don’t create long lasting change. They also, we posit, might do harm, intentionally or not. We are all human, and we all make mistakes when it comes to LGBTQIA+ matters, even those of us who are a part of the community. Sometimes we make mistakes because (sorry, not sorry) we’re old, and language and common practices change faster than we can get to it. Sometimes mistakes are rooted in our own lenses of the world, and we find it difficult to break through that glass. And, sometimes our mistakes are truly because we don’t know better.
If you are reading this, we are pretty sure that you want to help queer and trans youth (and are likely already doing that), and queer and trans folks more generally. In the face of the knowledge that we have likely already made mistakes that we don’t even know we’ve made, how do we humbly reflect and move forward in productive ways? That’s what I’ll write about this week. Next week, we return to harm and consider how we can repair past mistakes. And, in a future post, Jay will write about how, in particular, queer and trans folks can assess if stepping in to interrupt homophobia or transphobia is safe, but for now, let’s think about actions that we might not see as harmful, but that actually create spaces and ideas that promote a dehumanization of queer or trans folks. I’ll describe two scenarios that can serve as concrete examples of what I mean by harm.
The first scenario is from my own life. Literally decades ago, when I was pregnant with our first child, I was frequently asked how that was even possible. This felt incredibly invasive. I also began to feel like it was my job to explain a very considered process to anyone from family members to students to acquaintances who happened to know I was married to a woman because if I didn’t I was over sensitive, rude, or giving people an excuse to talk about my life to other people without knowing facts. Of course, in 2025 and beyond, the ways that people get pregnant, regardless of the gender of the person one is partnered–or not–with, is more known than it was in 2004-05 when I was carrying around a little fetus. But, the other part of this invasiveness continues. When my now teenage daughter was in elementary school, I walked into the yard to hear the neighbor child (who was in her class) explaining our family and how it came to be to another child while my daughter just sat watching. Of course, I do not know how my own child felt in that moment, but I do know that watching her watch her life, and mine, narrated by someone else hit me very deeply. Why was this anyone else’s business? How did my neighbor’s child have these details that, sure, might have come up in a casual conversation between adult neighbors, but certainly hadn’t been intended to serve as a show and tell for the child of cis and hetero parents. I felt outrage, but also didn’t know how to convey that outrage when the deliverer of the pain was a child.
These experiences–the needing to know about, and being the one to explain other people’s families–walk hand-in-hand. Both of them center the needs of folks whose identities fit a cultural norm rather than those with identities that are often marginalized. Curiosity is normal, as the educators and parents among us know intimately. Voyeurism can look like curiosity, but it is, in fact different. These experiences offer insight into how we as adults can intervene before these moments of voyeurism happen. We can and should teach kids (and ourselves) that when we tell other people’s stories without their permission, we are centering ourselves to the detriment of the folks whose stories we are trying to tell. Instead, we can help children learn about how to satisfy their curiosity about new to them concepts in humanizing ways. Teachers are familiar with the pedagogical move of responding to a question with a question: “How could we find out?” The job of adults is to show children where to learn, to talk about how there are people who have answered these questions without putting the onus on individuals who might not have given consent to being asked the questions. We can teach children how to use the library, the internet, and community organizations to learn about things like families, gender, and relationships that don’t map onto what we are all used to seeing in media or in our immediate lives.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, when we decenter ourselves, we can center the needs of queer and trans folks. When we are telling stories, asking questions, and making assumptions about queer and trans folks, are we doing it to satisfy our needs–to know, to be at the center of attention, to be seen in a particular way–or the needs of the queer or trans person we claim to care about? We can remind children (and ourselves) of how it feels when they are being talked about and the talk isn’t true, or the talk embarrasses us, or the talk is something that was shared in confidence, no matter what that talk is (could be a test grade, could be that a parent is getting divorced, etc.). Being the one to ask intimate questions or to share someone else’s story when we don’t have their permission, or when we are doing it for ourselves can cause harm.
The other scenario is one I observe. When folks share images or the dead name of a trans person that don’t match their current gender identity, particularly when that sharing is done in the service of explaining one’s own identity or someone else’s trans identity to other cis people, it is harmful. As a cis woman, the closest I have come to this is having people talk about or question my pregnant body, and of course, this is not even near the same sphere of harm that is caused to trans folks when their bodies are discussed, gazed upon, and questioned by voyeurs in the service of their own satisfaction. When we use somebody else’s story, image, and/or history to publicly make sense of our own or to help a general public (on social media, for example) see us in a new/different/more educated way, we decenter the person who is being harmed for our own advancement. I am thinking about how folks who claim to be allies to and with trans people share information about trans children (and adults) in order to explain transness or queer identity. This kind of disclosure, when it is done to someone else, provides a permission structure for others to use trans people and their bodies as examples. It dehumanizes.
These might be scenarios that you have seen or experienced or participated in. Of course, the hope is to prevent them from happening in the first place. Education, conversation, and reminders can help with that. But, what if the harm has already been done? What then? Next week I’ll write about how fellow Banned Resistor Jay taught me an evaluation system for levels of harm, and provide some language for doing harm reparations.
One Small Thing: We have a new book review up! Gender: Your Guide by Lee Airton is an excellent read, so for your small thing this week, check out the book review here, and then go to the library or your local bookstore and pick it up. It provides so many resources for harm reduction, so it is a great match for this week’s post.
Spot for Support: We recommend the Trans Student Education Resources as our spot for support this week. This youth lead organization created the Gender Unicorn that some readers might be familiar with, and their mission is focused on creating trans-friendly schools and educational spaces. Check them out!