Optimising health – skills you need

Transcript

Ash: The one thing in particular I would want professionals and workers to know in terms of LGBT youth is that you may not always understand something, but you should be willing to learn about it. Doesn't matter if somebody comes to you with new information and you don't get it, like, you don't have to get it straight away.

But I think being willing to engage in proper conversation about it, being willing to, like, do your own learning will mean that you will come back with, like, so much better of an understanding about that person and about what they're going through.

Ewen: They were supportive, but they didn't know how to handle it and even when we sort of point them to the resources that DEET, could give them, and that's external resources as well. All free for them to use. Bring someone in and they can explain transgender and how, what's appropriate and what's not appropriate. They didn't take that opportunity, and so we've moved schools, and that new school has taken that opportunity.

But the best, example I have of good practices at the school was My wife went to the new principal of the new school, and there's a couple of things we need to tell you before we enrol our son's transgender. And his response was, Okay, so what do you need from us?

Raja: Yeah, I think like, at the end of the day you gotta start somewhere. And like, one of the things that I did some like, LGBTI training a little while ago and one of the things that we talked a lot about was like, asking someone their pronoun can be like, awkward if you've never done it before for like, the person asking.

At the like, offended if you like, what are your pronouns. Because for them, it shows that you're making an effort. One of the biggest things that I've found is if I get, like, when I used to get people's pronouns mixed up or I'd call them, like, the wrong name or something, I used to, like, blow it up into a really big issue and I'd be like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry!

And I'd, like, go on about it. And having a conversation with someone about it, who's a trans person. And they were like, just don't do that. Like, it just makes me feel worse if you're going off about it. Just be like, I'm sorry, and then move forward.

Phoebe: Something for me, was in grade 8 and 9, was whenever we did sex ed, or talked about stuff like that, it was super heteronormative. But they would sometimes say like, Oh, I mean, other people can be lesbian or bisexual, but they'd always say it the sense that no one in this room could possibly be like that. And I think one thing they needed was to make clear that if you felt like you were in this transient period of discovering your sexuality that they were there for you to talk to. Because no one really ever gave any, like, indication that they would be helpful to you or if they even wanted to, like, Listen to you talk about what you're trying to figure out.

Really, having none of my teachers acknowledge it, they really just kind of avoided the subject as much as possible, even when queer rights was something that was coming up in the classroom. And I wanted to talk about it, so that was... hurtful in a way for them to completely ignore it. Like, you have to be visible. You can't just, you can't say it. You have to be visible so that people know.

Sebastian: I probably would have come out a lot sooner and talked about it a lot more.

Phoebe: Yeah, but just erase all doubt, I think. Because that's always better, I think, when you're coming out to someone, just that doubt that you feel that they might reject you.