datejie C green

This chapter aims to demonstrate a series of issues faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer [LGBTQ] people seeking assisted human reproduction [AHR] services. We write this as members of a qualitative, community-based study that has aimed to shed light on the experiences of LGBTQ people in Ontario, Canada who have used or have considered using AHR services to have biologically related children. In line with community-based research principles, this study was guided by an advisory committee of AHR service providers and service users. In total, sixty-six LGBTQ people from across Ontario were interviewed about their experiences with AHR services. Representing to our knowledge the largest project of its kind, this pilot study was conducted collaboratively by researchers at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Sherbourne Health Centre, and Osgoode Hall Law School.Based on this research, we point out the gaps and limitations in the current regulatory framework and offer suggestions to ensure a more equitable access and utilization of AHR services by LGBTQ people in Canada. The chapter draws upon data from the “Creating Our Families” study to demonstrate how reproductive policy affects LGBTQ people in distinctive ways. Although there are other areas of law that impact how LGBTQ people access and use AHR services, this chapter takes up the pressing consideration of access to reproductive materials, services, and facilities. Our research shows that questions of access pose unique challenges for LGBTQ people accessing AHR, few of which have been addressed within Canadian case law or legislation. In highlighting these areas of inequality and differential access to reproductive assistance and materials, we hope to encourage future developments in AHR legislation to take into account the specific concerns of LGBTQ parents and parents-to-be.

This article uses an intersectionality lens to explore how experiences of race, gender, sexuality, class and their intersections are associated with depression and unmet need for mental healthcare in a population of 704 women and transgender/gender liminal people from Ontario, Canada. A survey collecting demographic information, information about mental health and use of mental healthcare services, and data for the Everyday Discrimination Scale and the PHQ-9 Questionnaire for Depression was completed by 704 people via Internet or pen-and-paper between June 2011 and June 2012. Bivariate and regression analyses were conducted to assess group differences in depression and discrimination experiences, and predictors of depression and unmet need for mental healthcare services. Analyses revealed that race, gender, class and sexuality all corresponded to significant differences in exposure to discrimination, experiences of depression and unmet needs for mental healthcare. Use of interaction...

What are the experiences of trans persons (i.e. those whose gender identity does not match the gender assigned to them at birth) who sought or accessed assisted reproduction (AR) services in Ontario, Canada, between 2007 and 2010? The majority of trans persons report negative experiences with AR service providers. Apart from research examining desire to have children among trans people, most of the literature on this topic has debated the ethics of assisting trans persons to become parents. To-date, all of the published research concerning trans persons' experiences with AR services is solely from the perspective of service providers; no studies have examined the experiences of trans people themselves. Secondary qualitative research study of data from nine trans-identified people and their partners (total n = 11) collected as part of a community-based study of access to AR services for sexual and gender minority people between 2010 and 2012. Trans-identified volunteers (and thei...

This article explores structural mechanisms that are the context for violence and depression in the lives of sexual minority women and trans people in Ontario, Canada. The article draws on interviews with 14 people who reported experiences of depression in the previous year, foregrounding three representative narratives. Narrative and case study analysis reveal that violence is a repeated and cumulative experience over lifetimes, occurring across different interpersonal contexts and institutional encounters. A common theme across the narratives is that experiences of violence are connected to a broader context in which structural arrangements, cultural norms, and institutional processes create conditions where marginalized people are put in harm's way, perpetrators are empowered, and justice and access to help are elusive. As the violence experienced by these sexual minority women and trans people is rooted in structural and cultural oppression represented in poverty, racism, mi...

Previous studies have found that transgender, lesbian, and bisexual people report poorer mental health relative to heterosexuals. However, available research provides little information about mental health service access among the highest need groups within these communities: bisexual women and transgender people. This study compared past year unmet need for mental health care and untreated depression between four groups: heterosexual cisgender (i.e., not transgender) women, cisgender lesbians, cisgender bisexual women, and transgender people. This was a cross-sectional Internet survey. We used targeted sampling to recruit 704 sexual and gender minority people and heterosexual cisgendered adult women across Ontario, Canada. To ensure adequate representation of vulnerable groups, we oversampled racialized and low socioeconomic status (SES) women. Trans participants were 2.4 times (95% confidence intervals [CI] = 1.6-3.8, p < 0.01) and bisexual people 1.8 times (95% CI = 1.1-2.9, p...

To determine the effectiveness of interactive theatre as a knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) method to educate assisted human reproduction (AHR) service providers about lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) patients. We transformed data from the 'Creating Our Families' study, a qualitative, community-based study of LGBTQ peoples' experiences accessing AHR services, into a script for an interactive theatre workshop for AHR service providers. Based on forum theatre principles, our workshop included five scenes illustrating LGBTQ people interacting with service providers, followed by audience interventions to these scenes. Before and after the workshop, service providers completed surveys to assess their knowledge and comfort concerning LGBTQ patients, as well as the modality of the interactive theatre workshop as a KTE strategy. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were used to determine changes in preworkshop and postworkshop knowledge and comfort scores. Thirty AH...

Conference Report & Summary of Conference Proceedings, June 15-18, 2008 at York University, Toronto, Canada
This was the inaugural Conference of the Canadian Association for Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (CARFMS). The event was hosted by the Centre for Refugee Studies, York University.

Canada is at war in Asia. The US leads global imperialism. A Black man is on track to be president, answerable to million-dollar donors. And rich women entertainers buy Third World children for charity. In this new millennium we see some things are changing, but many stay the same. We live in an age where financial aid and knowledge production are mobilized in the name of humanity and altruism, but for purposes that are not so fresh or so clean. When an American Nobel laureate espousing scientific racism masterminds aboriginal DNA into the Human Genome Project; when feminist and post-colonial analyses are recruited by Western defense departments and conservative think tanks; when environmentalism becomes a tool for turning food for people into fuel for machines… what does it mean to engage academically with the Global South? And in this context, how do we critically reassess international internships? I suggest we need to start by deconstructing the uniform of innocence that cloaks their micro relationships of power, persuasion, exploitation and appropriation – relationships that are not always good as intended. And such demystification is not as unidirectional as it appears. Many left activists and scholars have worked to articulate how centuries of colonial, post-colonial, and " globalized " migrations now mean that the Global South and the Global North coexist, and often coalesce, in every country-defying geographic, historic and temporal assumptions. This complicates relationships of international aid, global citizenship and student training, and calls for new approaches and agreements. It is with these considerations, and with the fresh eyes of my own recent internship, that I propose a ten-point plan for crafting new relationships for students working internationally. I will argue that with a change in relationships, a more honest, open and even fruitful framework for international scholarship, if not solidarity, may emerge. * This paper is a slightly revised and extended version of a presentation that was commissioned as a critical analysis of student internships, in partial fulfillment of the Students for Development program, and as a contribution to a new way of considering critical praxis at York International and York University's Development Studies Program. The questions I examine here have flowed in large part from my own reflections on mostly positive and sometimes negative experiences of fieldwork, on observing the systemic problems entrenched through deeply unequal North-South power relations, through an analytic lens of race, class and heteropatriarchy. My focus is similarly cognizant of the fact that my co-presenters and I, all being from racialized groups living in Toronto, did not fit the traditional profile of Canada's student interns.