Sun Seed Community Podcast
Sun Seed Community Podcast
S5E3 Dismantling Gender in Conflict Work
On episode 3 of the podcast, I get to have a much-needed convo with Samia on how enforcing gender stereotypes can negatively affect how we navigate conflicts in queer communities and what ways we can start to dismantle it.
**Content Warning: This episode covers topics on interpersonal violence, s*xual abuse, and harm.**
GUEST BIO
Samia is a transformative justice practitioner and facilitator working to address harm, abuse, and violence within queer and trans communities of color. They are the co-creator of Transform Gender Collective, an accountability, support, and healing collective by and for transmasculine and masculine-of-center BIPOC. Samia facilitates workshops on community safety, empowerment self-defense, de-escalation, and other ways to keep ourselves safe without relying on the state. When they’re not working towards an abolitionist future, you can find them hiking in the woods or drinking tea.
CONTACT GUEST
TGC website: https://www.transformgender.com
CashApp: $samialalani
PRODUCED BY: Goddess
MUSIC: 22,000 by Spirit Paris McIntyre
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SPEAKER_01:Hello fellow weird and wild ones. It has been a minute. So much has evolved and changed about your lovely host and me, Goddess, and Sunseed community since season four of the podcast. And I am stoked to share some of the dopest folks I've met, and some of the been in community with, and have learned from along the way in season five of the SSC podcast. So grab your drink, get your snacky snacks, and gather your homies for the end times. End of what? I'm really not sure, but I really hope it's fascism. But I digress, different conversation. Let's get on with the show. You are inspiring. You are inspiring. You are inspiring at least 22,000 times a day. Thank you so much, Samia, for joining the Sunseed Community Podcast. We actually first met at Funders for LGBTQ Issues 2025 Funding Forward Conference, so I'm really, really excited to be following up with you and continuing whatever is possible. So I'm going to go ahead and read your bio. So Samia is a transformative justice practitioner and facilitator working to address harm, abuse, and violence within queer and trans communities of color. They are the co-creator of Transformed Gender Collective and Accountability Support and Healing Collective by and for transmasculine and masculine of center BIPOC. Samia facilitates workshops on community safety, empowerment, self-defense, de-escalation. I'm sorry, I'm stuck on the self-defense. I'm like, oh, we need to talk even more. I'm so excited. De-escalation.
UNKNOWN:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:and other ways to keep ourselves safe without relying on the state. When they're not working towards an abolitionist future, you can find them hiking in the woods or drinking tea. Yay. So how we start the podcast, after reading your bio, I just want to leave some time for us to invite in the folks that we're carrying with us into this conversation. So our check-in question is, who are you bringing into this space with you today?
SPEAKER_03:Yes, thank you for that question and also thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to be here. So today I'm bringing in the space with me my mom, who I'm just thinking about lately these days, and also my partner Bea, who is very supportive of me and I just think about them all the time. And I'm also bringing in my best friend Akhtas, who co-founded The Collective with me.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, that's a good squad. That's a good squad to be bringing it to the conversation. I appreciate that. I actually this like two weekends ago, I went fishing with my dad's gear and my dad passed about like a year, year and a half ago. Thank you. He transitioned. Well, he was ready. He was ready. Um, but I'm definitely bringing him into this space just, um, given our relationship and all the things that, um, he's now currently working on as he like, you know, acclimates to being an ancestor. Um, I'm definitely bringing him into the space, um, and my blood family. And then also my friends as well. Um, I will say in particular Rory, um, who I love dearly. And we are constantly talking about ways in which we are thinking about planning safety and security practices, showing up well for each other and for our other loved ones and being anchors in those that we love's lives. So bringing them into the space. And of course, the ancestors that are ready to do this work. That is not easy to do. Okay, so first question. Sometimes I find myself vacillating with what transformative justice is. You might feel this way a little bit too. There are clearly things that transformative justice isn't, but I do feel like how we practice it is not all the same. And I really appreciate actually that about transformative justice. So instead of asking you what transformative justice is, I want to ask you, how do you feel in your body, your spirit, and mind when you practice it? And why don't you just start with that question first?
SPEAKER_03:I love this question because, yeah, I struggle with the same thing sometimes. I think that TJ can be kind of an amorphous thing and is a lot of different things. So, yeah, in terms of how I feel it in my body, spirit, and mind, I think it feels like being wrapped up in love and understanding, like thinking about, like, yeah it feels like liberation like it feels like freedom i think um it feel i don't know if this is a feeling but i'm i'm a very like um thought person so i feel like my thoughts are also kind of my feelings so um it feels to me like we're all kind of like taking care of each other within our own communities without having to rely on anyone who isn't us right so like like this kind of I don't know, it feels like a warm community embrace, you know? And something that I actually think about sometimes is, There was a time once when I was like meditating really deeply and I felt this like really pure sense of being like held, like just a really clear understanding that it was all going to be okay. And like all the little things I was stressed out about, like guilt and shame and different kinds of like difficult emotions were just like passing, you know, passing things and that everything was really going to be okay in the end. And it maybe feels lofty, but like that's what transformative justice feels like to me. to me, like these things are tough, but like, you know, we can hold each other with love. We can be deeply understanding with each other. We can hold the nuance, like knowing your past mistakes don't define you completely as a person. So I'm like, it feels like all of those things to me, but I also don't want to sugarcoat what TJ actually feels like when you're practicing it, because I wouldn't say it feels like that when you're practicing it. I feel like in practice, it's like pretty hard shit. Like it can feel very stressful Yeah. And, and when you're facilitating TJ or when I'm facilitating TJ, that is, it's really hard. Like you're often asking yourself, like, am I doing the right things here? Like, is this really like, how can I make sure I'm being fully values aligned as I can feel really messy and difficult. So I don't want to make it seem like TJ just always feels like, you know, the community is swaying back and forth and holding hands, you know? It's like, that's like ultimately what it feels like to me, but kind of in the, in the moment, it can feel like a lot of tough stuff too.
SPEAKER_01:Agreed. That is a really good way of putting it. Because yes, I think when dreaming into it, when you're not in the thick of a actual circle, like process, or hard conversations, it does feel like a warm blanket or like, I think for me, I have visuals like this, like, pathway that like has stepping stones and like I'm going on an adventure with my friends and like we don't know all of what's in store but we know that there's steps to take and like we know that we got each other we know who's got what skills and how we can like work together um and that feels um very like calming to me and um i i would say like i have a sense of safety around that like it feels like a clarity and like assuredness that even though we don't know what's coming we do know what we have to bring to whatever is coming but in the thick of it oh yeah it is It is hard. You are brought into your discomfort zone quite frequently. And there are so many opportunities to grow and learn new regulation skills. So completely agree. I think you kind of... answered this a little bit around like what you see in here around you. But is there anything else you kind of like want to add around like when you are in a circle or in a process? What are kind of the things that you like see or hear? I
SPEAKER_03:really like the visual that you brought in of like you and your friends just kind of navigating together and having different skills. And I feel like that really resonates for me. I think that when I'm in a process, it can feel like week. Okay, so like, imagine a stream, right, that's flowing, but there's some rocks that are blocking the path, or they're kind of like stopping the stream from flowing as smoothly as it could. And as a facilitator, sometimes it feels like I'm picking up those rocks and moving them out of the way slowly. So that that, you know, and the stream being, I guess, kind of like the relationship between these two people, or it can also be like the healing of the survivor, or it can be the accountability of the harm doer. And there's things that feel like they're blocking it or the things that feel like they're making it more difficult. And I feel like as a facilitator, I'm basically just trying to identify what those rocks are and just move them out of the way. So that, that's kind of what I, the visual that I see when I think about facilitation, facilitating processes.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's beautiful. I like picture your hands, just like lovingly reaching into the water. Yeah. Taking them out. I like, I really like that.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So how do you describe the work you do around conflict and harm? And why does it feel important for you to explain it in the way that you do?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so my primary transformative justice work is through Transform Gender Collective, which I co-founded. And so we're an accountability, support, and healing collective for transmasculine and masculine of center BIPOC. And so basically, we focus on transformative justice by and for masculine people. So when I say masculine people, I'm like the people who attend our meetings totally varies between, you know, trans men, mask of center lesbians, trans masculine, non-binary people, butches, studs. I mean, you kind of name it. Right. So that's when I say mask people, that's what I'm referring to. Just so I don't have to say the whole acronym every time. So, yeah. So basically we support mask survivors, mask harm doers. We support mask people who are just in communities where harm has happened and who want some support in figuring out like what to do and how to intervene, whether that's, you know, a community member has been harmed and someone has told them about it or their friend is the one who's accused of harm and they want to figure out how to support them, things like that. And so that is a lot of, you know, one-on-one support, like workshopping people's specific scenarios and just kind of hearing them out, providing some support to folks. A lot of times I think people have a lot of skills Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We also at one point ran what I guess you could call like a harm doer intervention program. So those in the domestic violence space, they're usually referred to as abuser intervention programs. And they're really specifically like usually court ordered there for people who have caused domestic violence, who are abusers. This is different. This was more just like anyone who's caused any kind of harm in their life, especially more major harms. So that could be abuse, like domestic violence, That could be assault, physical or sexual assault, things like that. people who have caused more significant instances of harm who need support in workshopping how to change their behavior, how to make sure that kind of thing doesn't happen again, how to take accountability for that harm and do repair work. So we ran a year-long program for masculine harm doers. And we're hoping to bring that back soon. We did that a little bit ago and it took a lot of capacity. So we just kind of are waiting for us to have a bit more capacity so we can bring it back. It feels like a really important intervention kind of program. I would say we also do a lot of political education. And so that's a lot of just transformative justice kind of 101 type stuff. And also I would say like really practical everyday ways of applying transformative justice. I think sometimes it's weird because TJ can sound like really lofty and really like inaccessible. And then other times when you really break down what it is, you're like, whoa, anyone can actually do this, right? So we try to make it more accessible. So we've done workshops on like how to give a good apology or how to talk to your friend when they did something that was problematic or harmful. So just things like that that we can all really do or identifying your own conflict style and figuring out how you can approach conflict in more... liberatory ways. So kind of more accessible TJ type workshops. We also do a lot of work around what we call abolitionist masculinities. So we got the framework of liberatory masculinity from the Brown Boy Project, who we partner with a lot. And they do work with also mass like queer and trans masculine people of color. and so basically the the question for us when we're thinking about abolitionist or liberatory masculinity is like what does it look like for us to embody a masculinity that isn't not only isn't toxic because that's really just like the lowest bar right but it actually is actually supportive right it's actually supportive to our communities and to liberation so it's not just like oh let's just not be toxic okay that's like the first step right and then the next step is like what does it look like to be a masculine person that's like actually supportive for our communities and for liberation. So that's the kind of masculinity work we do too with folks. And then the last program, I'm like, wow, we have a lot of programs now. You do? We're doing a lot. Like we're doing a lot and we're a team of four and none of us are paid. And I'm like, this is really, yeah. Let's get into some sustainability. Yes, please fund us. Oh man, we could talk about that all day for sure. But yeah, the other program I wanted to mention is we just started a local transformative justice collective in Baltimore. And so our hope with that is that that will become like a local resource that people can tap into when harm happens in Baltimore. And we, you know, that could be tapping into, you know, the collective for like workshopping kind of scenarios again, but also for community accountability facilitation. Cause we pretty firmly believe that like local intervention is really where it's at when it comes to accountability processes. Like we just can't, we can't just like come into someone's community where we don't know anyone. We don't know the resources. We don't know the landscape and be like, like, OK, we're going to do a TJ intervention here. I don't think it works. I think it has to be more local and people who understand the context. So really, our ultimate hope is to skill up as many masked people as we can to be able to be resources in their own local context. So we're a national collective. So we do workshops for people all over the country, also outside of the US, too. And so our hope is that people are sharing these skills with their friends, with their community members and also learning more and more to the point where someone can go to them and say hey i'm dealing with this conflict issue what can i do and they are like i know enough that i can i can provide you with some support you know yeah
SPEAKER_01:yeah your offerings are very extensive um and so needed i think there's a reason why four people are holding all of this um Would you say that there's like a difference between maybe what someone will get from like a one on one where it's a group of folks learning together versus it sounds like some of the things that you offer are actually like for individuals to kind of like work them through their own plans or accountability plans?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. I think that they fill different needs, I feel like. So I feel like the group spaces are really also community building spaces. Like a lot of the folks who come to our groups don't have a lot of deep community with other like trans masculine and masculine of center people. And so they're looking for that too, right? To build like deeper relationships with other masc people. And I think that the group spaces have like a different purpose where they can do that too. And I think our group spaces are a lot of like let's learn this together like let's just figure it out together let's workshop some scenarios you know let's see how it goes but it's more like skill building without anything have having happened if that makes sense maybe like you could put it in the prevention category and then i think our one-on-one support tends to be a lot more in the reactive category of like a conflict has happened harm has happened abuse has happened and now it's about repairing it and figuring out what to what to do next and so that both are really necessary, I think, but I feel like they serve different purposes. Gotcha.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Okay. So there's different ways, y'all, for you to tap in. So I'm going to move us to a commercial break. All the commercials, I encourage you not to skip over, please, because they are organizations that I deeply love and support. So please check them out. And we will come back after this break.
SPEAKER_00:Rubble Art Collective is an activist art collective, creator space, and used art supply store located in Fort Collins, Colorado. And we're fundraising for a community risograph printer. We want to get the word out about people and movements working for the liberation of all beings from systems of oppression and provide our artist activist community with a unique form of creative expression. Risos are great for zines, stickers, education material, posters, and more. Learn more about our fundraiser on our Instagram at Rubble Art Collective. Link in the bio All right. Welcome back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I like that. I love it. I love it. Welcome back. I hope you learned about a new organization to support and get involved in. Let's get back into this conversation with Samia. So I want to bring us into the part of our convo where we explore how gender norms are perpetuated in repair models and how we can start breaking out of that cycle. So can you explain how the Transform Gender Collective came to be to kind of set the tone for this?
SPEAKER_03:Totally, yeah. So this is maybe gonna be a longer story, but I'm gonna do my best to make it
SPEAKER_01:concise.
SPEAKER_02:Grab the popcorn. No, we're in it. We're in it now.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, we're in it. So I'm just gonna get into it. So basically it all started in 2019. I used to work at the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network with Erica Woodland. And he was really big into skilling us up with political education, which I still appreciate so much. I mean, I learned a lot from that role that organization. So our focus was really on healing justice at the time, but he was starting to bring in transformative justice more as being pretty important to our movements. Um, so he brought in Mia Mingus to do a TJ training for the staff. Um, and that training like just totally invigorated me. Like, have you ever been in a space, you hear something and you're like, Oh my God, this has the potential to change everything. Like that's, that's really how it felt for me after that training. I was, I was, I was listening to her talk about Everything she talked about. And I was like, oh my God. And I think she really, she talked a lot about how important it is for all of us to have these skills around addressing conflict, harm and abuse in our communities, like without relying on the state. And otherwise we will always end up relying on the state and relying on people that are trying, only trying to harm us and oppress us. And I was like, man, I need to share this with everyone. Like that was how I felt after that training. I was so like vitalized. you know? So I just started, I was like, I'm going to invite all my friends over and all the people I know in community and just talk about everything I learned during this training. I had taken like a lot of notes and she had shared some materials and, you know, at the time, you know, 2019, it's like people had some understanding of community accountability processes. Like that was, and I had actually, you know, had, I had heard of that as well, like some years before, just because everyone was abolitionists and everyone was trying to figure out ways to like, not everyone was abolitionists, excuse me, my, in my community, people I was friends with and talking I wish everyone was abolitionist no it is wild the difference between your circles and
SPEAKER_01:then
SPEAKER_03:when you get it and you're like oh my god I'm like whoa I don't I don't want to be out here let me go back to my circle yeah exactly um but yeah so everyone I knew so which feels like everyone um was an abolitionist so you know we were all like trying not to call the cops or trying not to rely on those kinds of things so people were aware of community accountability processes but the more extensive kind of transformative justice work like how how much more it is than just community accountability processes. I wasn't really aware of that at the time and I feel like a lot of people were like, whoa, this is really cool and this is really interesting. I just kind of started sharing that with folks. And around that same time, because I was just obsessed with transformative justice as a concept at that point, I started also volunteering with Collective Action for Safe Spaces in D.C., which was run by my friend at the time. Still my friend, run at the time by Ja'Kendria Trahan. So I was learning a lot about transformative justice and kind of like skilling myself up. And around that same time, I was having conversations about TJ with my friend Akhtas who I mentioned earlier who came to that group and we were talking about that a lot and we were both kind of having similar gender journey kind of stuff around the same time around masculinity and I was really in a space where I was like what is masculinity without toxicity does that even exist like what is it what does it mean to be a masculine person like not be an asshole and I was just trying to you know I was like I don't know I'm gonna try to figure it out so we were both kind of in that in that space and at the same time we were seeing just lots of stuff popping off in community around harm and abuse, like people just getting called out left and right, and it's all masculine people getting called out for harm. And so we're talking about it, we're like, what is going on here, right? So that was end of 2019, so beginning of 2020. So of course, COVID happens right after that. So we're kind of in this space where we're talking about these spaces and dreaming about doing more things for masculine people. And then COVID happens. Everything kind of shifts online. And in early COVID, there was a particular person, a transmasc Black person, who had a really big social media platform. And they got called out really publicly for sexual assault. It was early pandemic. They were called out on Instagram Live. And so, of course, all of us are sitting at home, nothing to do. Everyone's on their computers. So it got really, really big. I mean, the last I looked at it back then, it got like 150,000 views or something. It was wild. And it was so messy. It was so messy. And again, this is a masculine person being called out for harm. There were a lot of dynamics there. And I feel like that's when Oktas and I were talking, and we We were like, okay, we really, we really have to do this thing. It feels like necessary. So we basically just started TGC. So we started with a concept. We were like, okay, we're just going to do online virtual monthly meetings, like kind of a mix of a political education workshop and a community building space. So we basically like started an Instagram account. We started posting about our meetings regularly and like actually started building a following, which was very cool. So, you know, again, early pandemic, people are on their phone all lot so that helped us that helped us get some momentum going um so we started creating like you know i i don't know if you remember like in in that 2020 period especially summer 2020 it was like Instagram infographics were the thing you know
SPEAKER_01:it was like yeah
SPEAKER_03:with the slides and it's like a billion words yeah the carousels and you're like trying to zoom in to like see what it says and it's like learn about police brutality and this like really cute like
SPEAKER_02:infographic
SPEAKER_03:I don't know I'm not making fun of it we did that they're
SPEAKER_01:definitely helpful though
SPEAKER_03:they're super helpful I feel like they politicized like a lot of people which was very cool very cool I'm making fun of it but it was very cool um and i'm making fun of it as someone who made a bunch of those about justice
SPEAKER_01:for our
SPEAKER_03:digital zines yeah it was it was great it was great and so um we started you know making those and uh and having these meetings and like some months in the beginning you know we'd only have like one or two people come like we might even have to cancel the meeting but we just kept going which i feel like is an important like thing to think about i you know we just kept doing it we're like we're gonna we're We're going to be here every month. Maybe no one else will be here. We'll be here every month. And then it started being kind of a consistent space. And more and more people started coming to now where we have like a decent following. We have regular attendance. We like, you know, consistently have people at all of our different types of programming, whether it's like virtual or in person. Very cool. Very exciting. So that was back then, 2020. And now it's been five years. We have two amazing additional team members that we added on during that time period, Malik Coleman and Mani Vinson. And they're both amazing. And we have way more programming and super consistent attendance. And we've provided, you know, all of this like support and education to mask people. So I feel like it's been a super, a really cool experience and journey.
SPEAKER_01:that's so cool and oh when you said like when no one would show i feel that same thing it's like oh do we is this do we even people want this like how do you yeah i love that y'all continued and it just grew when it was time for it to grow so that that's amazing
SPEAKER_03:yeah it really is it's very hard to keep showing up yeah and you start questioning like does anyone care about this or want
SPEAKER_01:this thing right
SPEAKER_03:but
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_03:But people do. Sometimes it just takes a minute for people to find out about the stuff you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Or even be ready. I know folks are like, I see it. I'm not sure if I'm ready. But consistently, if they see it's available, maybe they'll tap in later. So yeah, it takes time. I'm curious about when you first started doing that. And I also love how it started with just having conversations with their friends. I'm like, I'm going to gather all my friends. I'm curious how when you first started opening it up to the public and having these conversations, the folks that were coming in, what were some of the immediate needs that they had versus now that it's grown, has the needs changed for folks that are newer to the group?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, honestly, I think what's interesting is that the need is often kind of the same, like across that time period that I found is that, honestly, a lot of people come to our workshops, just seeking community with other masculine people wanting to talk about what it means to be a masculine person and an abolitionist and a person who's invested in liberation. So I think that that's often like a lot of what people are looking for. And that's what it felt like in the 2020, because everyone was really on their computers and online, you know, just kind of tapping in. We had a lot more people, I think, who are maybe more isolated than the people we see now. It's a lot of people who were pretty isolated, looking for a community, looking for connection. So... It was nice to be able to support people with that in the earlier stages. I think now too, we still have a lot of people who come regularly, who are just like looking for a space to talk with other masculine people, right? So a lot of times people do have connections in their life and their like physical life, but are like lacking in places to have these specific conversations. And so it's been cool to just be able to provide that space for people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that makes sense. Especially during COVID, when everyone felt a little bit isolated, then coming out of it, if you can say we are
SPEAKER_02:fully out of
SPEAKER_01:it, how it switched things. So what are some of the patterns you've experienced within conflict care that perpetuate gender norms?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, a lot. So I feel like one of the things that actually that we noticed that led us to start TGC was noticing that when we were seeing all of these people getting called out for harm, again, almost all masculine people being in the harm doer position in these processes. As facilitators, we are seeing almost exclusively femmes of color, specifically black femmes as facilitators, holding all of that. It's so much to hold. For anyone who's ever facilitated a process, you know this. It is so much, so much to hold. And we're like, whoa, this is like really replicating the emotional kind of labor burden that's usually put on women or like, you know, femmes, femmes of color. We were like, we don't know any masculine TJ facility. Whether that's cis men, whether that's trans men, masculine, anybody. I was like, this is not good. an interesting thing because i think especially the ways that we've internalized the binary and internalized you know heteronormative gender norms we're not operating like we're not saying oh i'm masculine so i don't have to do this work like people aren't saying that but that's that's what ends up happening right like why else are we seeing these these dynamics where it's almost all femmes holding this work right
SPEAKER_02:but
SPEAKER_03:it's care work and so Yeah, that was that was a big pattern. And so I do feel I do feel good about saying that I think what we've accomplished, at least part of that goal, like skilling mask people up on the principles of TJ and also more practical skills of TJ. And so hoping that that has like ripple effects throughout their communities. So they were like treating their femme partners better, right? Assuming everyone's partner is going to be femme for sure. But saying, you know, for the folks who have partners that are femme, hopefully they're treating them better. Hopefully they're being more responsive to care concerns when they see them. So that was a really big pattern that we noticed. Another thing that we noticed too, this is more in terms of the dynamics we see playing out in accountability processes, is like, you know, as a facilitator, let's say, or honestly, for anyone if you hear if you hear about oh this couple is going through a community accountability process which first of all probably we shouldn't actually be talking about that until it's finished but people do right and so if you hear about this couple that's femme and mask going through an accountability process most people are like oh the mask person was a harm doer like oh they were the abuser like they're the ones who who harmed the femme right and i feel like that's like a really concerning replication of heteronormativity that that i feel like we see a lot Like, of course, there are mass, there are many mass people that harm femmes. There are a lot of mass people struggling to come into their masculinity without embodying toxic masculinity. It's hard to do, right? And so that's a huge part of why we spend so much time like working with folks on abolitionist and liberatory masculinities. And also at the same time, we've supported like a lot of mass survivors who've been assaulted or abused by femme partners. And a lot of times people didn't even realize that they, that's what had happened. that happened, right? Like they're telling us a story, sometimes where a femme accused them of harm and we're hearing the story and we're like, whoa, it sounds like there was a lot of harm happening in this relationship coming from you and also coming from your partner, right? And a lot of times people aren't even recognizing those things, right? So it's like the same way there's an assumption that men can't be sexually assaulted or men can't be harassed or men can't be physically abused by women, there's still an assumption that masked people can't be either. And that totally extends to our communities. Again, even as we say that we're trying to move away from those assumptions and move away from the binary, Totally, we're totally replicating it. And one of the frameworks that we talk about, actually, that has specific that is specifically about gender at TGC is this framework about the binary that we see between abuser and abused, or between like criminal and victim. And the way that that that's kind of a more of a TJ concept, right? That like, either we're either we cause harm, or we experience harm. And that's, that's kind of all it is. That's how we're taught. But we know that it's so much more nuanced and complex. complicated than that there are so many people who abuse others who were abused themselves as children or when they were younger same with assault same with all of the harms like these are cycles right right um and and you're not just in one category or just in the other um and so we see that those categories end up mapping onto masculinity and femininity too so specifically white femininity so white femininity being seen as innocent always always the victim always you know um always being seen as as innocent you know that's where white women tears comes from right um is this idea that like oh white women are pure and innocent and and must be protected and then masculine people specifically black and brown masculinity as the abusers as the criminals as the you know as the people who are guilty perpetually guilty and so we're we we put ourselves into these boxes or these boxes are put onto us And then we in our communities are trying to escape these boxes, right? But we end up perpetuating them anyway in the way that we talk about harm. And that can be even a much longer conversation about how in our communities we say that we want to be abolitionist or we say that we want to move away from the state. But then when it comes to thinking about how we deal with people who've caused harm, people are very quick to say, like, get them out of here. Like, I never want to see them again in a community space. And those are all ways that we see people as once an abuser, always an abuser. Like, not capable of change, not capable of transformation.
SPEAKER_01:This idea of like the perfect victim. And this is what I find. I find myself struggling with in like examples as I'm like learning more and like continually strengthening my own toolkit around facilitating circles is like this idea of like the perfect victim. Not only that, like they they're usually femme. and they usually take on kind of like a role of mother in terms of like they are not only the perfect victim like something happened to them and they did nothing wrong in the situation but they also like are held as an example of how to forgive and like this mothering way like they must then like take on the role of like caring for their own emotional needs plus the person that caused them harm and, and like be all loving, all forgiving and be like, come here, let me hold you. Cause I know that you have had a hard life. And I'm like, Oh, this just feels like. Um, and if we're, and I, and I think, um, a lot of those examples I would say are from predominantly like hetero cis spaces. But when you bring transformative justice, like restorative justice forms of conflict care into a queer space, it really allows for a challenging of like breaking that down and like who are the people who are being kind of like, expected to take on a role of caring and who are the people that, um, are, are, are being, um, not baby. I feel like that's like a, not a nice way of saying it, but like, who are the people who, uh, are not being allowed to be in their fullness and in a learning space because of like, how are they, how their gender is perceived and how they enact their gender and And so that is something that I kind of see happening. more in cishet spaces and also in queer spaces, but because it's in like queer gender fluid spaces, it just feels a little bit more nuanced and there's a lot more room to be like, we can play with this a little bit more. We can start to like break this down. Um, so that's something that I'm constantly like seeing and experiencing, um, in different ways. Um, and then also like learning myself, like trying to unlearn and teach myself new ways. around of like oh how am I clocking how I am seeing the person who caused harm and how much I'm expecting them to be involved or step into a circle is one way. So yeah, I'm curious, like, what have what have those experiences taught you? Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:yeah, I totally hear what you're saying about this kind of like perfect victim idea. Also, right. I think that we all end up in roles that are put on us by society, right? Just like we were saying before about gender, it's also true of other things. I think the perfect victim thing is totally caught up in gender norms as well. And I think one of the things that I appreciate about TJ is that in a well-designed process, someone like survivors should be able to show up as messy, as angry, as upset, as like wanting carceral punishment as they need to be, you know, because those are real feelings, like revenge fantasies are real, like wanting someone, yeah, wanting the person who hurt you to be hurt themselves is a very real and completely valid human emotion, right? And I don't, I really don't want us to get to a place where we are saying like, oh, survivors have to, you know, hold space for their abusers or their harm doers, or they have to they have to say they have to forgive them or they have to hold space for their emotions. I don't think that that has to be a necessary part of a process. You know, I really don't think so. I think that the hope, in my opinion, with TJ processes too is that there's so many different people playing different roles that there is someone who is providing emotional support for the harm doer who is not the survivor and that the survivor never for so I don't think the survivor should ever be playing that kind of a role unless unless they're like in a continuing relationship where they want to stay in a close relationship with the harm doer that might be a different conversation but generally speaking I'm like there should be people that are supporting the survivor in hearing all of of the, you know, revenge things that they want and hearing all of the real messy emotions that are coming up. And there's someone supporting the harm doer and hearing them say things like, I didn't do that, or that wasn't that big of a deal, or they're just upset for no reason. Like, they have to get those things out too, because we're not going to get to behavior transformation without a bunch of problematic things being said, right? Which is a real thing, right? And we have to be able to hear that out in order for us to get anywhere. Otherwise, people are just suppressing how they feel, right? So I think in my opinion, in that more ideal process, which, you know, what even is that really? But in a process where you have a lot of different people playing different roles, my hope is that the survivor wouldn't have to feel that pressure to like have to do that and have to show up in that way. But I don't know. Yeah. Oh,
SPEAKER_01:yeah, that it's tricky, because when I'm talking with folks about like, you know, doing a circle, one of the things I asked him was like, what do you need or desire from this space? And like, try to be clear with them about like, what the space can and can't hold because there is a way in which, like, transformative justice, these circle processes, you do need to be in a place of really wanting to be, not wanting to be, but being in the struggle together, and that includes with the person that caused the harm. Okay, yeah. but not in a way that you have to sacrifice your own needs. Those needs to come first. And so my first goal is to say, okay, if this is where you're at, what are the ways that we can set you up well to get your needs met? And then maybe circle back to doing a process. Because if someone is in already a heightened state and they're frantic, heightened emotions, in the cycle of one to enact harm themselves to other people, okay, there are still needs that you have not gotten met yet. So how can we meet those needs? How can we bring in your community to first take care of you? Because I want to focus on you, but taking you through this process might bring you not even just comfort, but more harm.
SPEAKER_02:And
SPEAKER_01:so how can we make that space first? I do not have the full answer. This is just what I like like like felt has been like the most helpful um for how i approach things but it like like we were saying before this this stuff is really tough
SPEAKER_03:yeah yeah
SPEAKER_01:no i think you're no no no continue
SPEAKER_03:yes yes i feel like your approach like totally that that makes sense that's how i would i would think about it too i i feel like um When I think about the interventions or processes that we've supported, I feel like a lot of times we don't have, like the survivor doesn't wanna be in the same space as the harm doer. Or there's other ways to get needs met. I think one time we've supported a mediated conversation. And that was so far along in the process that both parties were kind of at a more regulated place, I think, at that point. It feels like with TJ... I think what I like about TJ2 is that there's so many ways that it can look, right? That sometimes if people want a mediated process or a circle, we absolutely can do that, right? But then sometimes it's like, there's a bunch of stuff you can do where you don't even need to have a circle with, you know, that person might never want to see the other person again. And there's still so many ways that we can support like behavior transformation and change and survivor healing without having to have that direct. the things that you're talking about right which doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen obviously a lot of people do want that but more so just like it it's like it's very easy to get right back into that pattern of like the survivor is now comforting the harm doer and the harm doer is crying and upset. You know, like there's so many, and I know you've seen it, so I don't have to tell you. There's, you know, there's so much that can come up in that space that I'm always like a little hesitant, honestly, about those unless someone is really pushing for it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I agree with you. And I think this speaks to the different types of, hair that we've both done, because I work more within organizations and trying to do this work more within community versus you do this more like, you know, it's with loved ones or like, yeah. like more community-based situations. So I think, yeah, it speaks to... It's
SPEAKER_03:all
SPEAKER_01:different. It's all different.
SPEAKER_03:Totally. And all very good approaches that we need all of them, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So how can perpetuating gender norms within transformative justice work be counter to what we are trying to dismantle?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Yeah, I mean... it hurts us in the end in a lot of different ways, you know? I think that even with the most radical of folks who say that they're moving away from gender norms in their relationships, I feel like sometimes we still see a way that projections happen. Again, we work mostly with masculine people. So there's a way that masculine people project toxic masculinity onto ourselves and then also have it projected onto us by other people. And I also think, like I said, there's a way that sometimes masked people are shirking this responsibility of caring for our communities and seeing that as work that primarily femmes do, whether consciously or subconsciously. And so I feel like all of that hurts our communities. Right. And I think that especially when harm happens, it feels like those gender norms get particularly salient. Like, it feels like it's very quick. People are very quick to say, there's no way that femme sexually assaulted that masked person. Or, of course, the masked person is the abusive one. What do you mean, right? Like, there's very quick ways that we jump to those kind of internalized norms, even as we're trying to move out of that, right? Yeah. I wanted to mention this tweet that I saw, which I'm just going to read out loud. It's like the very specific trans mask experience of having to unlearn the conditioning of quieting your emotions to appease others and instead standing up for yourself only to transition and be told you have toxic masculinity anytime you give any indication that you have a backbone. And so I think that what's real about that, and I think that some Sometimes people get a little tense when we talk about this kind of stuff, or I feel like that happens sometimes in community spaces, but it's like, you know, mass people, the mass people we're working with, we're not cis men, you know, like most of us were socialized as girls, like lived adult lives as women in some cases, right? Currently may still live as women. Again, we have, we have mass live center women who come into our spaces as well, right? Experiencing misogyny and sexism from cis men. Like some of us are still having those experiences. So it's not, it's not the same, right? And it's like, yes, we do. There are many ways that we perpetuate toxic masculinity. I'm never going to say that's not true And also, I think we have to have a more nuanced conversation about masculinity when it comes to queer spaces, because I think it just looks so different. And people take what happens with cis men and just apply that framework onto queer masculine people. And it is different.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Definitely agree with that. And I think it's like, it also like speaks to kind of how we enter into relationships as well of like, what are the expectations that you have of this person simply because they express themselves as more masculine or more feminine? Like, how is that like feeding into gender norms? Totally. And also not giving... everyone an opportunity to actually do what is natural to them instead of what is expected of them. Because there's this kind of weird thing of like... I've been in romantic relationships where I have expressed more masculinely because my gender fluctuates. And it's interesting because at first I'm like, oh, why do I feel like a dude in this situation? And then I have to ask myself, well, what does that mean? And I'm thinking, oh, like a caretaker role. But then when you think about masculinity, it's like, since when have like...
SPEAKER_03:Amending caretakers.
SPEAKER_01:And so, like, it's even in the way in which, like, we kind of, like, set ourselves up and, like, what does this actually mean? And what does this mean for how we want, like, want to be seen and heard and show up and also want that of our partner? Because there is a way in which we need to be aware of how, like, how we express might, like, be on the outside looking in perceived in a certain way, but that shouldn't diminish our feelings or like our ability to express a boundary.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like too, it's like, especially in our spaces, identity is not behavior, is not gender performance. You know, like those things can be so different. And I think that, you know, sometimes I feel like I saw this kind of, joke like video going around on instagram or something a while ago that was basically like you're seeing mask and femme couples and then they're like oh surprise the mask one is actually really soft and and the femme one is actually like the hard one who like doesn't want to cuddle or whatever you know it's just like why are we still surprised by this in 2025 you know exactly exactly Like, this is, not to hate on that trend, because I'm like, it's totally working, you know, people are like, whoa, what? You know, but I'm like, let's, yeah, let's go beyond just, like, surface presentation, right? There's so much more happening under there, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Well said. Those tickle me. Those tickle me. Totally. So... What would you recommend cis or even those that identify more closely with being stereotypically masked or femme consider when addressing conflict?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I feel... I feel like, well, one, I think TJ is really for everyone. I think everyone needs these skills. I think everyone benefits when we work through our own approaches to conflict and find more connective and loving ways of being with each other. I think in terms of Yeah, well, for folks that are more maybe like aligned with binary gender or who are cis people, I think it's important for them to interrogate also the things we were just talking about, right? Just because your partner is a woman or a cis woman doesn't mean that she's going to want to do certain things around the house or dress in certain ways or be caring and nurturing to you in certain ways. And the same way for cis women, don't assume that cis men are going to want to be the buff guys who are taking care of everything and are super stoic and never have any emotions. I think that those things just seriously harm us. I feel like when I'm thinking about... Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, like the tweet example where it's like, no, actually, I've been going through my whole life struggling to say how I feel and being told that I can't have boundaries or can't say how I feel. And I'm working on that now and I'm trying to say how I feel. And maybe that's related to gender and maybe it's not, right? And same with anything else, right? Like, I think that... especially, you know, sometimes in, in the mask spaces that we facilitate, we do hear things about how people feel about their femme partners that we have to intervene in. Right. You know, that like, like don't assume that your femme partner is going to feel or do certain things because of, because of their gender, you know, like that doesn't, that doesn't mean, um, Yeah, it's not everything, right? There's a lot more going on underneath the surface. And gender is important in these dynamics because we see it show up all the time. But let's also look at what's happening with this person beyond just their presentation.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm so bummed that we're going to have to bring this to a close. So much more to talk about. So what is something you are learning about your own life when it comes to conflict as you do this work?
SPEAKER_03:yeah yeah um i feel like when you when you do this work like i feel like it really highlights the stuff that you have to work on yourself you know um like you even like you know i think especially when you see dynamics when you're being a facilitator or a supporter like every time i'm talking to someone about a conflict they're experiencing i'm seeing echoes of myself my partner my friends my own life in that right because we've all acted and shown up in different ways throughout throughout our lives and and we're gonna see that when when it comes into conflict so it's gonna it's gonna trigger you if you're not working on your own stuff or it might trigger even if you are working on your own stuff let me be honest but you know it's like asking yourself questions like you know sometimes i'm facilitating um something or i'm supporting something and and i'm realizing like oh the dynamic in this situation is that this person really has kept their resentments in for like a really long time and never said how they really feel directly to this other person and now it's become this blown up thing I see this a lot more in like group kind of you know organizational collective dynamics and you know then it makes me think about are there places in my life where I'm not speaking up when something is bothering me or like am I building resentment towards anyone and you know things like that and I think it it's important to do that self-reflection as someone who's supporting conflict work I know you know this like if you don't do your own self-reflection you're gonna be oh my god all over the place right like Yeah. Yeah. man, you're going to be responding to people as if you're talking to yourself. You know, you're going to be responding to someone else. Yeah, it's not good. So it's like, you know, all we can do really is try and work on ourselves. Like, we're never going to be perfect. We all have our own stuff coming up, right? And we're all going to definitely project onto people at some point, get triggered at some point. Like, we're all human, right? But for me, I think it's really highlighted, like, I need to be very intentional about doing this. work in my own life and pushing myself to show up in more connective like you know ways in my own life that aren't disruptive because I'm seeing patterns that show up for other people and I'm like let me make sure that I'm not you know doing the same thing in my own space so
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah agreed um especially when you're like the holding it in for a long time I think one of the things I'm continually reminding myself of when starting new relationships of any kind is it's actually actually okay to start like by studying the tone of like, these are the practices that I have. These are the ways in which I try to keep me and my community safe and like anchored. And I would love to hear about how you do that for you, because I think when you do this work it's rare not super but it's rare to like meet other people who are also like deep in it yeah and so you're like oh maybe i'm asking too much or like maybe and it's like no no no like it's okay because you're gonna keep it bottled in and things are gonna come up in the relationship and you're gonna try to find at least for me i find any which way to like see both sides and then I hold it and then I hold it and then I'm like, I can't do this! No! Whoa, whoa, whoa. I was not in my practice from the beginning around like being in intentional relationship and utilizing the skills I've learned within transformative justice. So that's definitely one of the ways in which I'm like constantly reminding myself, like, yeah, bring this in earlier on. Oh
SPEAKER_03:my God, it's so hard though. It's so hard
SPEAKER_01:to do. It is. It's very tricky because not everyone has the language for it. Like you'll bring up like things that I think maybe we kind of consider as like based on... can't even think of an example maybe like how how do you communicate um like when you are at capacity um and the poll's like whoa I've never been asked that before I was like yeah you should you should be asked that because you deserve it
SPEAKER_03:totally yeah yeah I mean so many of these yeah yeah yeah so so many of these things i feel like yeah people people aren't used to having also direct communication in their relationships so i think it can be like really jarring the first few times you i mean it was for me the first few times i experienced direct communication from someone i was like whoa are you attacking me what is this so i like try to remind myself of you know when i was there to like remind myself of why other people might feel that way um you know the first the first few times it happens and I don't know all we can do is really try I try to apply the framework of pod mapping I feel like in my friendships and just like start like I feel like the number one thing that I try to do and again I'm totally not perfect very much a work in progress and one of the things that I try to do is let's have these conversations before a conflict happens
SPEAKER_01:yes yes yes yes
SPEAKER_03:yes let's talk about like how do you want to hear feedback how do you what happens if you get defensive what's the best way for me to respond to you you know like how how do you receive care and like all of those things feel like they are so supportive such a supportive foundation when inevitably some kind of conflict comes up it feels like more easeful because you kind of already know like how to communicate with this person
SPEAKER_01:absolutely and shameless fuck me and Roy are working on a workbook to talk about those things Tommy I think you're gonna be doing like a runoff like workshop for that as well so I'm excited yeah for that but okay can you tell us where we can find you what are some of y'all's current offerings all the things
SPEAKER_03:yeah so we are still doing like monthly free virtual workshops for trans masculine masculine of center BIPOC and so sometimes we also have offerings for any queer and trans BIPOC regardless of gender identity and so you can go to our website it's transformgender.com or our Instagram which is just at transformgender.com transform gender and all of our most updated offerings are going to be on there. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. And I will put the link to your website in the description. And then as we say goodbye, what is your heart carrying with you into this great big wild world?
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for that question. We're in such an intense time right now. Things feel really scary and hard and everything feels like it's getting worse. And I feel like the thing that I'm trying to carry every day, it's like, I think Miriam Kaba said, hope is a discipline. I'm trying to work on that. I'm thinking about like how revolutionary movements increase as fascism increases. So like, that's a hopeful thing is like, maybe we are going to be more banded together. other as community. Like maybe we are going to be able to rely more on each other and really, really get serious about liberation work. And so I think that I'm just carrying with me the hope of, you know, more deeper community, deeper ways of showing up for each other without, you know, dealing with the state, whether that's like banding together for mutual aid stuff or having more skills for navigating harm, any of these things, right? Like there's so much more that we can do as communities to support one another. So I'm sitting with that right
SPEAKER_01:now. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. I think I'm carrying with me similar. I was saying that like a butterfly was outside my window and butterflies are rare to see in the city of Aurora near Denver. And so to see more butterflies, I'm like, okay, like earth is keep keeps going so we can we can do it too humans come on um but definitely holding um just hopes for more conversations with like loved ones around planning before even harm happens before you go into crises like what that can look like and to like not give up even when there's only one other person in the room like how do we continue to have those conversations so i'm holding that near and dear and like hopeful and renewed sense of I'm going to keep it going. I
SPEAKER_02:love that.
SPEAKER_01:Keep it going. Thank you so much, Samia, for being in space with us. Really appreciate you and your work. I'll put Samia's Cash app in the description as well. And we're going to wrap up with one final commercial so that you can find more community and ways of supporting dope organizations. So take care, y'all. Hey, Hey y'all, it's Goddess. I just wanted to do a big thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast over the years. Everyone who has laid their blessed hands on this labor of love. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the listeners. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I am not sure if it will be continuing. Um... But I say that with hesitation because I really do love talking with folks and sharing like these amazing folks with other people. So I don't know. But please don't be waiting for season six. That's what I'm saying. Anytime soon, at least. But what I did want to share is that there's other ways to stay connected with Sunsea Community. As Samia and I talked about in the podcast, Sunsea Community is actually partnering with some of my dear community members on creating several workbooks. One will be on building intimate relationships that can be friendships, that could be romantic partners, that could be play partners whoever you are bringing into your orbit how to build um intentional relationships with them and also create safety plans with our loved ones so that when we do encounter harm when we do encounter violence we have a plan and we have trusted community that we can go to and then the other workbook that i'm creating um with a fellow community member shout out to moon is a workbook honoring a program that I used to run with Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom called The House of Olakun. So this workbook will be a wrap up of all the things we learned as Black TGNC Plus folks who are doing work in movement and how we paired our movement work with our spiritual practices and what it means to reclaim and dream more for our spiritual practices as folks from the Black or African diaspora. So I hope that you go check those out. They will be free workbooks, free digital workbooks that you can access. And in celebration of the workbooks releases, There will be some events that will also be free coming out later in 2025. So please sign up for the Sunseed Community Podcast email or follow us on Instagram because you will be getting all the details to those dope-ass workshops. I will not be leading them. These will be led by other folks, including folks that have been on the podcast. So be on the lookout. And thank you so much for your support throughout the year. I love y'all so much and I'm so excited for all the different ways that we will be in community together. Thank you so much for watching this episode. I love you so much. I'm kissing. I'm kissing consensually. If you want that, I will ask you before kissing you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. I encourage you to meander on down to the description link below to share this episode, tip the guests, and follow all the magical folks that made this podcast possible. Deep gratitude to all of you. Even patting my myself a little bit on the back right now labor of love labor of love later gator and may you walk with the ancestors peace out 22,000 times a day 22,000 times a day 22,000 times a day 22,000 times a day