Episode three of the second season of the Podcast on Crimes Against Women welcomes Dr. Paige Baker-Braxton, Director of In Power Services for Howard Brown Health Center. Paige sheds light on the barriers unique to transgender women, the extremely high rates of violence toward transgender women, and what In Power is doing to move the needle in the right direction for a more holistic approach to harm reduction and trauma-informed care.
In this third episode in a series about addressing barriers of survivors of violence, we explore how advocates and organizations can be more inclusive of transgender women in their practices, how we can lessen the stigma and create more acceptance toward the transgender community, and how trans voices can be heard and integrated into solutions.
Episode three of the second season of the Podcast on Crimes Against Women welcomes Dr. Paige Baker-Braxton, Director of In Power Services for Howard Brown Health Center. Paige sheds light on the barriers unique to transgender women, the extremely high rates of violence toward transgender women, and what In Power is doing to move the needle in the right direction for a more holistic approach to harm reduction and trauma-informed care.
In this third episode in a series about addressing barriers of survivors of violence, we explore how advocates and organizations can be more inclusive of transgender women in their practices, how we can lessen the stigma and create more acceptance toward the transgender community, and how trans voices can be heard and integrated into solutions.
Maria MacMullin: The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics, multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
Kendall Stephens: In this country, 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes, there is a murder. Every five minutes, there is a rape. Every two to five minutes, there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her, it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business. I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
Maria: Welcome to the podcast on Crimes Against Women. I'm Maria MacMullin.
Kendall Stephens is a transgender woman and community advocate living in Philadelphia who survived an attack in her own home because she is transgender. In the story for the Human Rights Campaign, she shared her experience with gender-based violence.
Events in the transgender community have come to an unfortunate crisis, and a reckoning must occur if we are to be saved from the cultural erasure currently happening to our community. People in our community have been suffering in the silence of shame and are afraid to live fully in their truths due to the legitimate fears of harm and retribution, so many of us are disowned and abandoned by our friends and family when we reveal our truths. We're fired from our jobs, forced out of our communities, and relegated to living on the fringes of society.
I'm in advocacy work to help give the people in my community a soft place to land, something that was not afforded to me when my own mother pulled all support and love when she discovered I was living as a transgender woman. Both people in and out of my community need to see unstoppable bravery and chutzpah in the face of relentless oppression and hate. Often, all we have is each other, and we look within our own community for guidance and support.
More of Kendall's story will be featured in a bit, but what she reveals to us is that barriers exist everywhere for transgender women. She mentions shame, fear, being disowned, abandoned, and the cultural erasure for transgender women happening all around us.
In this series of addressing barriers, we aim to address these unique barriers for transgender women to expose the despicable acts of violence committed against them, as well as explore the need to formalize culturally-sensitive responses to these acts. To do so, we turn to an expert in the field of multicultural clinical psychology, whose focus on the LGBTQ community is both unique and groundbreaking.
Dr. Paige Baker-Braxton attended Nova Scotia Southeastern University, earning a doctorate in Multicultural Clinical Psychology. She completed her fellowship in one of 10 national sites, specializing in LGBTQ veteran mental health. Dr. Baker-Braxton's clinical expertise and passion is providing harm-reductive, trauma-informed care from an intersectional lens.
Throughout her career, she has developed and implemented revolutionary programming, including the nation's first LGBTQ-specific sexual assault response department, In Power. As Director of In Power Services at Howard Brown Health, Dr. Baker-Braxton oversees the provision of medical, legal, and behavioral healthcare for more than 400 survivors annually. In addition, she's a practicing clinical psychologist owning and operating LGBTQ psychological services in Chicago.
Dr. Baker-Braxton, welcome to the show.
Dr. Paige Baker-Braxton: Thank you so much for having me, Maria. I'm really excited for the opportunity to chat with you today.
Maria: We're so glad you're here. We just shared your bio in the show intro, and it mentions your harm-reductive, trauma-informed care from an intersectional lens approach. Can you expand on that and maybe tell us what it looks like in practice?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: Sure, I would love to. Harm reduction, trauma-informed care, and intersectionality are frameworks that I hold really closely to me. And they're pretty intrinsic in the way that I look at the world, but if I'm being honest, for most of my life, they've been really academic and theoretical. It hasn't been until my work at Howard Brown Health that I've really been able to translate those more into practice.
Harm reduction at its most basic was designed to work with people who use drugs, but its implication is significantly further reaching because it's grounded in this idea of non-judgmental care that is free of coercion and discrimination, and that really centers the needs of the folks that were working with. And so, When I try and integrate a harm-reductive approach, I'm really looking to decenter myself and refocus the needs of my patients. Through that, we're able to leverage their strengths, their resilience in the communities that they're often embedded in. This idea of harm reduction is really closely linked to intersectionality and that they're both these social justice movements that acknowledge people hold multiple identities. Often when those identities are marginalized, there are challenges and barriers that the system has set in place, whether that's for people who are black and brown, queer and trans, have a disability, do sex work, or have history of incarceration, what we know is that these folks experienced significant barriers to accessing care or sometimes healing.
In my work, what I try and do is acknowledge that their outcomes are theirs. It's their needs and their desires. As trauma-informed themes and frameworks like automatically kind of fall into this work of working with survivors of violence who are part of the LGBTQ community because I try and look at everyone who walks through the door as if they've had complex trauma. They might be walking through for a single interpersonal instance of violence, but I have to acknowledge that there are these micro and macro violences happen every day. Racism, sexism, classism, I need to acknowledge how I participate and perpetuate those systems and how they play out in our work.
I know that's a lot of theory, and distilling that down as much as I can for this work is, as a clinical psychologist, that means being patient-centered, being strength-based, being patient, being compassionate, knowing that I'm walking alongside the folks that come through my doors.
As a program administrator, for me, these frameworks look like really listening to what community is asking for. I'm using my experience, my expertise, and my academic knowledge to inform that, that really center what community is asking for.
I think as an administrator, part of that requires that I hire people from community who have those identities and lived experiences and that when I'm building programs, I'm making sure that those are embedded with trauma-processing, sustainability, and a living wage for the people doing this work, and advocating at a larger level for agency and policy change and legislative change. I think it trickles into every piece of my work as a psychologist and as an administrator.
Maria: That's so holistic. We've been talking in this series of the podcast about addressing barriers and part of the reason we're talking with you today, as well, but I'm hearing in your approach what I hear from several other people that we've had on the show is that we have to meet people where they are and we have to respond to what survivors tell us they need, regardless of the background or the trauma. I think this is really ground-breaking and I appreciate learning about it.
We opened with a quote today from Kendall Stephens who talks about being attacked at home simply because she is transgender. She mentions many barriers like being abandoned or feeling abandoned, the cultural erasure for transgender women in her experience. Are these the norm for your patients? What's walking in through your doors?
Dr: Baker-Braxton: No. Kendall's experience is one that's really horrifying and at the same time, really emblematic of what most of our patients are experiencing. Those things that you named about the shame, or as Kendall calls it, "being pushed to the fringe of society", those have been very similar to the experiences a lot of our patients have coming out, and it's also remarkably similar to the experience of a lot of survivors where they feel shame, they feel pushed away, pushed out of community. If we hold that complex trauma lens, we can see how these things are cumulative.
In addition to the things Kendall names, part of Kendall's story that we didn't hear about was what happened when she went to police to report a hate crime. Using her words, she said she was "trivialized and harassed", and that two is so common in the experience of our survivors that they go to the police because that is the system society says is in place for accountability. And when they go, they not only are blamed, not believed, and more often than not experience another set of traumas interacting with police. We have this broad range of barriers to accessing care following an acute assault, but one of the other things we see in our program is that it's the day-to-day needs of our LGBTQ survivors that are not being met.
When I think about healing, it feels really hard to heal when you're hungry and you're thirsty and you're tired and you're cold. If you don't have food, you don't have shelter, you don't have stable income, how can we even think about accessing these larger systems? Let's say, we do address those basic needs. Thinking just about my own community in the mental health community. Mental health providers are largely white,
largely cisgender. Providers that do this particular work are largely women. A huge barrier is having someone that has the LGBTQ competency experience, or better yet, those identities to provide the support and this holistic healing process.
Maria: To people in the transgender community, do they understand how to reach you? Is there enough community awareness about what Howard Brown Health and In Power offering so that people know how to find you and access to this holistic trauma program?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: The answer to that question is yes and no. When our program started in 2015, 2016, we thought we would see 30 survivors of sexual assault, and we saw 330. That's without marketing, that's without outreach, really. That's just by word of mouth from within community. The yes part is yes, there is some knowledge of our programming but we also know just based on the statistics that so many trans and non-binary folks are not getting access to our services. The question is why? How can we make our services more accessible? How can we outreach to communities that need our care but aren't getting it?
Maria: Is your program available in more than one location? Is it across the country?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: It's right now just in the Chicagoland area. We have 11 clinical sites at Howard Brown Health. Right now, because of our COVID response, we're have primarily out of two: our Sheridan Road on the North side and our 63rd location on the South side. Our program, specifically, is isolated in the Chicagoland area.
Maria: Are you aware of similar programs across the country for transgender women?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: There are many other agencies, particularly LGBTQ centers, across the nation that provide sexual assault and domestic violence response services. You think the thing that makes our program unique is that we're able to offer the holistic care under one roof: medical services, behavioral health services, and medical and legal advocacy in one place. That's pretty unique to our program. A huge reason for that is the sheer cost to execute a program on that scale. And what we know is that LGBTQ programming is underfunded, sexual violence, and DV programming is underfunded, and specifically, clear anti-violence work gets very little funding from a foundation or federal funds.
Maria: How is your program underwritten?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: It's a great question. We've had pockets of funding from foundations and federally, but largely, it's funded through our agency. Our agency and board has made a commitment to the community of survivors who have essentially said, "We see this need. We have to build the infrastructure to respond to it," so we're always looking for funding and support, but the agency has made the commitment to have this not necessarily tied to specific funding sources.
Maria: It's a remarkable commitment. You stress that you are unique among your peers. Are you planning to make this replicable and do it in other States? It sounds to me from just even so far into this conversation, and it's only been a few minutes, it sounds like it's something that warrants replication and expansion.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: I'm always so proud to say we're the first program of its kind, and I'm frustrated that we're the only program of its kind. The idea is that we can create technical assistance for other programs to integrate some of these frameworks. The idea is we're building curriculum in order to support agencies that aren't LGBTQ-specific and really deploying these best practices. Since our Genesis, our team has had a commitment to presenting at local and national conferences, even if it's in 90-minute blurbs, in order to provide what we have found to be best practices and open this conversation at a national level because it's the dialogue with other community providers that strengthens our community response to sexual and intimate partner violence in your community.
Maria: That's the absolute truth. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about the high rates of violence across the transgender population. What is the basis for this in your experience?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: I get asked this question in a lot of different kinds of ways. I go back to this fundamental idea, and it reminds me of a quote from Danielle Sered, who is an activist in this harm-reduction world, that, "No one enters violence for the first time by committing it," that, "We live in a culture and a society that is based on otherizing people that is based on this heuristic of good and bad, of victim and survivor, that allows the violence to continue." I think until we have a level of self-accountability, the violence is going to continue because it's going to be very difficult to ask other people for accountability.
Our current structures in response to violence are carceral and punitive, and that does not invite vulnerability. That does not celebrate accountability. That is the antithesis to the anti-violence movement. It's kind of a walk-around way of answering the question. I think the violence happens because we have not created a society where we can address the violence.
A world free of deviant sexual assault does not mean a world without harm. It means a world without harm where the pattern continues. We need to identify ways to disrupt that pattern, take accountability, and call those around us both out and in when they're causing harm.
Maria: Let's talk about the organization, In Power. It's a program that I know you're working with and it plays into your approach and all of the concepts we've discussed so far. Tell us more about that.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: I love talking about In Power. It brings me so much pride. In Power is a department of Howard Brown Health, which is a Federally Qualified Healthcare Center in the Chicagoland area. Howard Brown Health serves about 30,000 people a year with the primary goal of eliminating health disparities experienced by LGBTQ people. Howard Brown does that across a variety of service lines.
In about 2015, our medical providers and support staff were starting to identify a number of patients who are self-disclosing sexual assaults. When these providers were referring folks out into the community, they were being lost to care. Howard Brown Health providers started to come to the conclusion that we needed to bring those services in-house. That we needed LGBTQ-specific sexual assault services.
With the support of our board and some foundation and federal funding, they were able to hire me to help build this program alongside a community. As we've talked about, this program is really revolutionary, and that it's the first that provides this multidisciplinary holistic response to sexual violence under one roof for LGBTQ people. What that looks like in practice is we have 17 staff across four really robust service lines. We have medical services that are free and confidential for anyone following an acute assault, STI testing, treatment, emergency contraception, post-exposure prophylaxis. We were actually able to summer, to get some legislation pass that allows federally-qualified health care centers to perform medical forensic exams, which are rape kits. Because that's a service that has historically been inaccessible to LGBTQ people, so we're now able to bring those in-house.
We have two service lines of advocacy, legal and medical advocacy, to respond to the complex systems that survivors often have to navigate. As we talked about with the barriers that Kendall mentioned, our programming is designed to meet those barriers, whether it's transportation, housing, food, gender, affirming, clothing.
Our last service line that's growing is our behavioral health healing. We have two specially trained trauma therapists that do crisis work and individual and family and group therapy.
I could spend the next 45 minutes talking about this program and the staff, because these staff members, our team, are the most harm-reductive trauma-informed folks that I've ever worked alongside, and they are from community. They are passionate, they are driven to really revolutionize the sexual assault response programming in our nation. I just feel so lucky to work alongside them every day.
Maria: Well, go ahead and dig into it a little bit. We'd love to hear more about that.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: The thing about this program is that many of the folks who work in it have their own experiences of violence, their own experiences of trying to navigate these systems, and using that first-hand knowledge to develop programming and integrating the voices of community advisory boards, integrating the voices of the patients that we serve have enabled us to create this really fluid and flexible programming. That I believe, while there's still opportunity for growth, really does meet the needs of survivors in a new and different way than we have historically conceptualized sexual assault response.
Maria: You mentioned a lot of services. This is a holistic approach with many facets. Is it all the no cost?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: All of our services are free and confidential in the State of Illinois. Sexual Assault Services in any hospital are free by law, by legislation, so we mirror that and offer all of our services for free. Our behavioral health services, if people have insurance, we will move through the insurance process.
One of the really cool things about Howard Brown is we have primary care, we have trans health navigation, we have patient access and patient resources, so if we have someone that enters into our program that is un or underinsured, we can refer them in-house to our benefits navigation team and have them help that patient get access to insurance, to help not only get them access to sexual assault services in our agency and elsewhere, but primary care services and any other resources they might need.
Maria: Speaking more towards the awareness and creating and developing solutions, do you feel like trans voices are being heard and integrated into solutions? You obviously talked about integrating them into In Power and the work that's being done at Howard Brown Health. At a more high level, beyond your own walls, are you being heard?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: That's a complicated question for me. I think about showing up at the table, and I do think in some ways that our voices are heard. For example, the passing of the legislation that allows FQHCs to do medical forensic exams, but that's not an LGBTQ-specific legislation. The reason we advocated for it is because of the impact on queer community.
I also sit across from you as a cisgender white woman with a doctorate, book chapters behind my name, and the force of a 400-person agency with a great community reputation and an entire department surrounding policy and advocacy. So I have a seat at a number of tables, whether they're advisory councils or committees, and I think my voice gets heard in some of those situations. Recommendations are certainly taken, but I'm not seeing them translated into large-scale policy or funding.
I think the second complicated piece is, am I the one who's supposed to be at that table? Who deserves and demands to be heard? I think when I look at our own Chicagoland area and more largely, there are so many activists that have been doing this work longer than me that often don't get a seat at the table. They're people like Shira Hassan in the Chicago community, Mariame Kaba, Melissa Alexander, these are folks that have been doing this work and have seats at tables but not at tables, big enough in my opinion. Because the work of the sexual violence community has always been grassroots and community-driven. And in order to make this system revolution, these voices need to be heard on a larger scale.
Maria: I would agree with that completely. I think, overall, the voices of women are being heard. We now have a new Vice President, which I think will be helpful to all of us, to all people. Really.
We want to set up our listeners for some success when they leave our podcast and for the listeners who serve women who are victims of violence. I want to talk about specifics of how they can be inclusive of transgender women at their organizations. I'd like to give them some key takeaways that perhaps they can begin to implement or investigate in their work.
Dr. Baker-Baxter: I love that question. I think one piece is looking back to our mission and vision statement as agencies. Who are our programs designed to serve? Do those need to be nuanced to include LGBTQ people, to include men who've experienced violence, to include trans women? If that's the case and where our intention is to create more inclusive services, I go immediately back to hiring people with those lived experiences and identities, hiring LGBTQ people on your staff. That means hiring LGBTQ people, queer and trans people for direct service roles, as therapists, as managers, on the executive leadership team, on boards, and making sure that those voices are integrated as we're designing and refining programming.
One thing that I have seen happen is when those staffing changes do happen and we're looking to diversify our agencies, those folks become then the spokespeople or the default trainers of the agency.
My recommendation would be to hire outside consultants to come in and help objectively review your services. That can include things like reviewing your intake forms and making sure that when you're asking questions about sexual orientation or gender identity or relationship status, that your questions are open and affirming of all identities and experiences. That includes creating policies and practices around asking people their pronouns and making sure we're sharing our pronouns as providers. That's something really simple that can be implemented tomorrow, adding our pronouns to our email signature. Now, those are small logistical changes that can happen.
One of the things that I've seen in my clinical practice is that when you make things more LGBTQ-affirming, you make services better for everyone. In Power is a program that is designed specifically for LGBTQ survivors, and yet, about 25% of our patients who access our services are straight and they're accessing our services because removing barriers to care. If we want to create trans-inclusive services, that means we're removing barriers to care. We're finding ways to get
people bus cards or Ubers or transportation to appointments, for figuring out how to give somebody a granola bar and some juice when they come in so that they're satiated and can participate in our service provision.
Maria: Yeah, I think those are really critical, those basic human needs, and I think you mentioned this a little earlier, they really need to come first because how can you think about your trauma when you're just so tired or you're hungry, or you had to walk to get to the clinic instead of being able to take public transportation or something like that which may seem really simple. It is those basic needs that are critical, as well.
It's interesting that you say that 25% of the people you serve are not from the LGBTQ community. I think that's a great thing. It just shows the openness of the program, that maybe there is progress in breaking down this barrier or exclusivity of different programs like you can only come to this program if you're this color or this orientation. Do you think that by serving all people, regardless of the face of the program, that does move the needle in what were you were talking about in breaking down that cycle of violence?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: I think creating programming that is designed to meet the needs of marginalized populations that center the unique challenges and barriers that those marginalized populations experience is really critical. What we see is that when we reduce those barriers, that everybody benefits. One of the other things about our 25% of the folks who identify as straight, walking through our doors, we also know that because of this historic context of how LGBTQ people have been treated in the medical community and psychiatric community, many people are not out. To require a specific identity to participate in our program has the potential of excluding people who are queer and trans, but for very real and valid reasons, aren't ready to disclose that to us. It's about, again, creating accessibility for all folks within our programming, even if our mission and vision and our design is to serve your community.
Maria: It's so well said and it's certainly better than the way I asked the question. You really articulate the idea of inclusivity and the holistic program so well.
I want to talk a little bit about your experience with the veteran mental health. You did a fellowship in the LGBTQ veteran mental health program. Can you tell us your experience with that and how you think the military meets the needs of the trans community?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: I did complete my fellowship in LGBT mental health in the VA system. Also, I come from a military family. My dad is an army veteran, my brother-in-law was a combat surgeon, my husband is an eight-time combat Air Force pilot, so military service people are really close to my heart.
Route my work and training in the VA systems, I have worked with trans veterans from every conflict. I've worked with trans women, particularly from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and one of the things that I have seen across my work with trans veterans is this huge commitment to country and community. I think that we have made great efforts in lifting the ban on service of trans folks because one of the things the military offers for many people is access. It offers them access to education, to employment, to housing. When we create barriers, particularly for trans people that we've talked about experienced these barriers, when we remove that channel of accessibility, I think we're creating a whole host of problems.
Opening up that door, I think it's fantastic, and I think it requires some additional work. It requires ensuring that trans service people have access to gender-affirming medical care while they're serving. To gender-affirming uniforms, to some sense of safety within their units. It also requires that we reverse all of the dishonorable discharges throughout history for folks who were identified as being gay or trans. I think, especially through my work in the VA, I have seen the necessity of making sure that services for veterans through the VAs are gender-affirming, that we're enabling folks to get services for medical care and behavioral health care that are affirming of their gender identity post-service.
Maria: Do you think we'll see some of those changes here in the next couple of years?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: I do. Interestingly the VA already has a lot of the infrastructure to support LGBTQ veterans. Prior to having my fellowship, I thought those two things were maybe incongruent with each other, the VA militaristic system and support for queer and trans folks. But that infrastructure is there and the VA operates in a really multidisciplinary practice model already. The care of social work, behavioral health, medical services, access to additional resources, and in-patient programming all happens under the umbrella of a VA system, so the opportunity to get those holistic services for veterans is there.
Maria: That's incredible. I didn't realize some of the services that were available, and I think you make a very important point when you talk about the military service provides access to some things that people may not otherwise be able to take advantage of, like education, like the GI Bill, with receiving funded college education. I'm glad you brought that up.
I wonder as I listen to you talk about all of these amazing things that you're doing and plan to do, what attracted you to this work?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: It's interesting because I always thought that this would be part of my work. I never knew that it would be the entirety of my work. I never thought that doing sexual violence work within queer and trans community could be my 9:00 to 5:00 job. I also never thought that I could build a robust private practice as a clinician for that was my only specialty. I think one of the things that keeps me embedded in this work is the sense of community and a sense of resilience. I've worked with a number of different patient populations throughout my career, but when it comes to queer and trans folks that have experienced violence, the amount of creativity and ingenuity, and resilience in the face of some very horrific things is really grounding for me and encourages me to work closely with my team every day and with my patients every day. I see it as part of a larger social movement that has both professional and personal gratification.
Maria: Let's talk about COVID. How has that impacted the population that you serve and the services that you're able to offer?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: What we've seen with COVID is kind of what we've seen historically when there are moments of global instability. That's the incidents of domestic violence, sexual assault, intimate partner violence are increasing. We know this to be true for all populations, but my assertion is that the impact is even greater for LGBTQ community because as we've talked about, there are significant barriers to accessing traditional sexual assault resources, so the response for LGBTQ people has always been to turn inwards to community.
As a response of COVID, shelter in place, social distancing, work from home, job loss, many queer and trans people have lost significant connection to community and to chosen family. What that looks like is not having the access of going to school, going to work, going to see a provider, and often, those things are opportunities of respite for chances to disclose violence. Not only are the instances of violence going up, but what we've seen in our programming and in my practice is the intensity of need and the frequency of violence is going up, without that infrastructure to support it.
Maria: How do you respond to that with your program and your services?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: Our program has largely still been in person. Many of the other sexual assault response programs that operate out of emergency rooms have gone to Telehealth work but our program has remained in person to a large degree because one thing we know about disclosing sexual assault is that when you're doing it face-to-face with somebody, you're more likely to build that rapport and relationship and come back for follow-up services.
I think it has also significantly impacted our team. The degree of burnout and secondary trauma is really high right now, because not only are our patients living through a pandemic but so too are our staff, without the resources or access that they had a year ago.
Maria: Yeah, that's pretty much across the board, right? I know we talked about the increase in sexual assault and domestic violence across the board. That's pretty much been reported widely for all groups. Has violence specifically against transgender women increased or changed because of these circumstances surrounding the pandemic?
Dr. Baker-Baxter: I think when we talk about sexual violence in its entirety and particularly violence against trans women, that it is nothing new and it is something that maybe we are starting to talk about a little bit more in maybe not the most helpful ways all of the time. I do think the health disparities, the inequities, and the impact of COVID is hitting fear in the trans community at higher rates so the violence both on an interpersonal level and the violence on a systemic level, I think is absolutely mounting for trans women, for non-binary folks, for trans men.
Maria: How can other agencies respond to that?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: That's a great question. There are a number of agencies nationally in the Chicagoland area that are doing great work, that are doing trans-affirming work even if it's not necessarily in their mission and vision. I think things that agencies can do is to make sure that their staff are supported and their staff are educated about the increased risk of violence to queer and trans people during this time so that we're making sure we're doing the right assessing, we're asking the right questions, and that we're creating spaces that are safer for folks to come and access our care.
Maria: Absolutely. We're coming up on time, and I want to ask you three quick questions before we close out the show. We talked about COVID. But how has the pandemic and upheaval of 2020 kind of changed you or your work or your approach?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: I'm also a new parent during this time, and I think one of the things that the pandemic has encouraged me to do is to look at my work, look at my values, and look at the way that I'm spending my time and my energy in learning that in this time, there's so much work to be done, but part of that requires sustainability.
One of the things I've really been trying to do is to show a lot of gratitude for the people that are in my life, whether that's my partner, my children, my family, the staff I work alongside with, the patients I work alongside with, and to try and offer everyone grace, including myself, during this time as we're trying to navigate this unprecedented time in both of our violence community and our larger global world.
Maria: That's such a beautiful approach. It's such good advice for all of us really right now. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
Dr. Baker-Braxton: That's a great question. I think one of the best pieces of advice that I learned as a clinician, it goes back to that self-care piece of making sure that I'm caring for myself as I try and provide care for others. That's often really hard for me to do and for me to center, again, because there is so much work to do, but it's still a work in progress for me but I really try and come back to that self-care.
Maria: That's so smart. Describe your job in three words.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: Which job?
Maria: That's your choice.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: I would say ever-changing, hopeful, and utterly rewarding.
Maria: That's amazing. I want people to know where to find you and also where to find In Power, Howard Brown Health, and all the services that you offer. Tell us the websites we can go to to get more information or to get help.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: If you want to get connected to Howard Brown Health, you just go to howardbrown.org, and if you're looking for information about the In Power program, specifically, it's howardbrown.org/inpower. That's I-N-P-O-W-E-R. If folks are looking for more information about my private practice or me as a clinical psychologist, they can send an email my way at drbakerbraxton@gmail.com. That's D-R-bakerbraxton@gmail.com.
Maria: Perfect. I do hope that this program brings people closer to the holistic approach that you've developed and makes people hopeful about the services that are there and that may be developed in the future. I do hope that someone listening today can get excited about your program enough to fund it and make it replicate across the country because I think it would make a really important impact to the future of the LGBT community and transgender sexual violence survivors. I really enjoyed talking with you today. It's been enlightening and just amazing. Thank you so much.
Dr. Baker-Braxton: Thank you so much, Maria. I really enjoyed our time together. If there are any providers that want to start this program, I am excited to offer any of the technical assistance, support, best practices, and all our insider information. The more of us doing this work, I think the better chance we have at that revolution of sexual violence work.
Maria: There you go. Thank you.
We return to the story of Kendall Stephens, the transgender woman attacked in her own home, who was quoted at the beginning of this episode, and the lessons she hopes people can learn from her experience. I hope people understand that trans people everywhere are under siege due to the rampant transphobia in the public.
We were never safe outside our homes, but now we are not even safe inside of our homes. Though that may be impossible to fathom for the typical American, this is our reality. Although some laws exist that protect people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, those laws are often not followed. We need to ensure that more laws are put in place to protect trans people and that the laws that do exist are enforced.
Unfortunately, to many, trans lives do not matter. We have been categorically rendered invisible by the whole of society. Without legislative protection that is uniform and permanent, the murders, the suicides, the attacks, the oppression, discrimination, the hurt, pain, suffering, and trauma will undoubtedly persist.
You can read more of Kendall's story in her blog post on the Human Rights Campaign website. We're hopeful that by including excerpts of her story in her own words, we have given Kendall and all transgender women a seat at our table and a voice in the conversation.
Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe.
Voiceover: Interested in learning more about the topics you've heard on this podcast? Visit www.conferencecaw.org for details about the 2021 Virtual Conference and other upcoming training opportunities. Be sure to follow us on social media at National CCAW.
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