0:00:00.5 Louie Marven: Welcome to Resource On The Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual abuse and assault. My name is Louie Marven and I'm the Training Specialist at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center. This podcast is part of our male survivors series. Today, Michael Munson joins me for part one of a two-part conversation on working with transgender men and transmasculine survivors of sexual assaults. Michael is the Executive Director at FORGE. [music] 0:00:43.6 LM: Michael, thanks for being on the podcast. Tell us a little bit about FORGE and your work. 0:00:49.4 Michael Munson: Hey, thanks for having me as part of the series. We've been talking about this for a long time, so it's kind of fun to actually be with you in this virtual space and recording. So, FORGE is an old organization, at least I feel like we're an old organization, 27 years old, we are a national trans anti-violence non-profit. So those things all go together. The trans part, the anti-violence part, and let me just give you a little snippet of where we came from and where we are right now, 'cause I think it shapes a little bit about our work and how we work with folks now. So, we were founded 27 years ago, which is kind of... It's not pre-internet, but it was like when people didn't have ready access to the internet. So we started out in that really grassroots sort of way, like many organizations do, and we were filling a need of whatever and however people needed services and support. So it wasn't necessarily about sexual assault, it was about what kinds of resources do people need and how do we find those resources if they don't exist, and how do we connect people to those resources. 0:01:56.0 MM: And at the beginning, we were very focused on trans-men. Language was different then, and we'll talk a little bit about language, but that was our central focus. And then we've since expanded from that. In 2003 we started noticing that the people that were coming to our support-based groups, we saw that at least 50% of them were referencing sexual violence. So, casually referencing, not talking in depth. And it was like, "Wow, if at least half of these people are referencing sexual violence, this has gotta be something... There gotta be something going on here." 0:02:34.9 MM: And so we were able to start doing some research around sexual violence within the trans community, and our research validated that in terms of the higher rates of sexual violence within trans communities, so within transmasculine communities and trans-feminine communities and non-binary communities. Again, that in 2003 wasn't the language that we use, but that's how we can re-cast it today. So that was in 2003, and since then our work has really evolved to center on that connection between trans folks and anti-violence. And because of our funding through OVW, Office on Violence Against Women, we've predominantly focused on sexual assault, intimate partner violence, stalking, and then also hate-motivated crimes and how they interact with those other forms of crimes. So just to give you a picture, about 25% of our work is with trans and non-binary survivors and loved ones. And again, that's national, so that means translating those things into virtual spaces. 0:03:39.0 MM: And then 75% of the work, so the majority of our work, is doing training and technical assistance with victim service-providers, with advocates, with all of those allied professionals. And that TA is traditional TA, that is one-on-one support, webinars, conferences, prior to COVID, webinar that we archive, that we've created ourselves, webinars for other people, publications, site visits, support policies, procedures, all of those things that most TA providers do. So that was a really long answer of who we are, but that's kind of the trajectory and where we're landing right now. 0:04:16.4 LM: That great, thanks. And yeah, I'm sure you could talk a lot more about all the things that you've seen and done along the way. I really appreciate that you highlighted both a grassroots and a national technical assistance perspective, I think that's really cool. And you have anticipated where we're going already in your commentary about how language has changed over the course of FORGE's work, and so I'd just love to get right into that. We're diving into some topics related to trans-men and transmasculine folks today, and it seems that before we get there we should talk a little bit more about gender, just broadly. So spend some time talking about what to you is maleness and being a man, and what is masculinity? 0:05:07.8 MM: And I think this is gonna be much harder than talking about sexual assault or sexual violence, so it's a very hard question. And it's a hard question that I think that I could give you a different answer to today versus yesterday, versus tomorrow, and I certainly know that there is no one answer to this. So, what I'm sharing is certainly my perspective of it and what we know other people think around masculinity maleness, because it's a hard question, it's a broad question. So I think to start out this question, I think that most of us know what gender is, we at least know what it is to ourselves, but we can't always define what it is. I think most of have an internal gender identity, and this is not about trans people or non-trans people, we all have that internal compass of what our gender is, and we know it. But it's hard sometimes to figure out, "Well, what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be masculine?" 0:06:07.0 MM: So I think that when we look at things as a construct, like we could look at a lot of things as constructs, as social constructs, we might look at gender in terms of what did our parents or grandparents, or guardians, or aunts or uncles, or pick the non-gendered or gendered person in our life, teach us when we were growing up. What did we even hear maybe when we were still in the womb? What messages came through psychically, and not to be all "woo woo", there are some messages I think when a parent knows what gender they think their child is gonna be. 0:06:43.9 MM: We can look at maleness, masculinity and gender in terms of what toys are we given as kids, what kind of clothing are we given as kids, what messages get associated with those external objects from other people, and then how do we resonate with those objects that we're given. We don't always have the agency over picking our toys sometimes as kids, we're given things. So, how does that get reinforced, how does it feel dissonant to us in our gender, and then what was affirmed in our behavior, our actions, our choices, what was not affirmed or what was he even punished or chastised or talked negatively about, again about our behaviors, how we talked and walked and moved and what we played with. So I think all of those become the core part of what makes up our early gender. 0:07:38.2 MM: And then when we start to have more awareness of being able to articulate it, I think I look at gender as relational, so we have a world that's really focused on the binary, that when we talk about masculinity it's always in relation to femininity, and so there's not just gender as this big thing that is kind of free floating, it's polarized. And even if people end up in the middle of that polarized, it's still usually seen as a spectrum. So a lot of trans communities are talking about gender not as a spectrum but as a sphere or as something that you can not be on one end or another end but could be not on an X and Y axis, or maybe it is on an X and Y axis, so that there's many different places that people can land. 0:08:28.2 MM: So again, I think it's really hard for us to not talk about masculinity without somehow referencing femininity. And for a lot of people there's a charge to masculinity or femininity. There's a, "I like this or I don't like this, I feel more like this, or I don't feel more like this." So I think it's hard for people sometimes to look at their own gender without having those external references of what other people think of gender. So, just a couple quick reminders, that gender identity is what's on the inside, gender expression is what's on the outside. And so sometimes those things match for a lot of people. So non-trans people, cisgender people, those things usually match. And for trans folks, they often times don't match, so what we were assigned at birth doesn't match our current gender identity and how we express our gender might be different or the same as what our gender identity is. So those are just kind of like these things to try to keep in mind as we move forward in talking about, "Well what does maleness and masculinity mean?" So it's a really slippery question, again. So it's a big question, slippery question. 0:09:42.0 LM: Yeah, yeah, I think slippery is a great word. And I think, yeah, you started that by saying it's a hard question, you gave everyone a lot of great stuff to think about, and then ended by using that word slippery, and I think that's right, that's exactly right. So I appreciate you leading us through some of those thoughts and kind of helping us get our bearings in thinking about about gender when we're thinking in the context of working with male survivors. So then, yeah, thinking about how this larger series of conversations is about working with male survivors, so put into context for us what it means to talk about working with trans survivors of sexual assault when we're talking about working with male survivors. 0:10:32.3 MM: So that's another good question. And another really broad question, and I think I wanna acknowledge upfront that this question, there are many different ways in how people view trans survivors within the constructs of working with male survivors. Or the other way around, so working with male survivors and how trans people fall into that. So for some folks, both providers and survivors, I think that male survivorship is about those who were assigned male at birth and continue to identify as male, that's the traditional way that we think about male survivors. And more and more folks, both survivors and providers, are seeing that that's a limited way of looking at gender, and it excludes a lot of people that need services and support and healing. So that's kind of the short answer to that, is that we can look at male survivors and we can look at an old model, or we can look at a more expansive model of who that includes. 0:11:28.2 LM: Yeah. And address that expansiveness. What might that expansiveness look like or be like? Again, knowing that these are broad questions that can't be summarized in a three bulletpoint kind of answer, but what are some things about that expansiveness that you'd like for our listeners to think about? 0:11:48.5 MM: Yeah, so again, we could talk for hours about what expansiveness is, what trans communities are, what all of these pieces are. So if we circle back to that initial question about maleness and masculinity, and we can talk about gender, and we can kind of get into this question about what is the expansiveness of communities. Once again, there's no monolithic trans community. I might have a very different view of what trans communities are versus you, versus somebody else, and there's a lot of folks that want to limit who the trans community includes, and that might be for their own process of self-identification, it might be who they find alliance with or resonance with. And at FORGE we have a really, really broad definition of who's in the community and who's... Well, we don't really have anybody who's not, but in terms of who's in. So we have a really expansive view. So let me share with you a couple of things that I often talk about when we train, which is like, "Well, who is in that expansive community and what are the types of people that are in that community?" 0:12:56.2 MM: And so we generally share things like, "That community, our community, is made up of folks that are gender non-conforming." So folks that may express their gender in ways that are not like John Wayne or Marilyn Monroe, they might express something very differently with how they move through the world. Trans folks can include those folks that transition from one point to another point, and that might be from male to female, female to male, or male or female to something else in that gender spectrum. It might include people who are questioning their gender or exploring what that means. It might be people that don't fit in the binary, that don't fit on that male or female spectrum, but someplace else on the X or Y axis, whichever one of those that is. 0:13:42.6 MM: We're also seeing gender in ways that it includes people that are gender conforming, so not gender non-conforming, but gender-conforming but have a trans history, includes folks that are multiply gendered, so that could be living parts of their life and one gender, parts of their life in another gender. It could be embodying more than one gender within themselves, and at FORGE we include family, friends and allies, because we know that when people are experiencing sexual violence or intimate partner violence, that it impacts those folks around that trans person, so the people that love and care for trans people we view as part of that community. 0:14:25.0 MM: So I may have gotten a little bit off track. So let me circle back if I can give you an even longer answer. So when we look at people's gender identity, it might change over time, their gender expression might change over time, how people perceive their gender might change over time. People might hold on to parts of their past or disavow some parts of their past. And so one of the things that I was thinking about before we talked today was I think the popular culture has picked up on the word "dead-naming", and it's a phrase that has become both one of the cool things that people can acknowledge and also something that really is hurtful to people in many different ways. 0:15:10.0 MM: So, dead-naming is basically using a person's name prior to when they transitioned or a name that they don't use anymore. And it's interesting that if we look at trans folks, and this really relates to when we look at male survivorship, the gender trajectory of people, so when we look at dead-naming, some people really like claiming the gender that they were assigned at birth and acknowledging that part of their history, whereas other people view it as dead-naming and they want to remove that part of their life. So when we look at people who want to embrace their childhood, which might include a name that's different than what they're using right now, versus other people who want to kind of cut that part of their life out, that's gonna really impact how they look at their survivorship, what therapy looks like, what support groups look like, because if people are kind of cutting off or including their childhood when abuse might have happened it's gonna change how they heal. 0:16:14.0 LM: Yeah, thank you. And I know that in this conversation I've been using the language of trans-men and transmasculine folks, or transgender men and transmasculine folks, and we've had conversations about that language too. So address that language, what's significant about bringing that language of trans-men and transmasculine folks into the context of talking about male survivors? 0:16:38.1 MM: Yeah, great question. So again, this is another bit and piece that is complicated and it changes rapidly, so when we look at language, again, I mentioned that FORGE is 27 years old, so we have heard and seen the evolution of language. So in our notes, 'cause we predominantly communicated by email, I noticed that you separated out "trans" and "men". Well, it used to be trans-men was one singular word rather than an adjective describing men, so that's one piece of how it's changed over time. One of the things that I wanted to share, and this is a different format than when we do training and technical assistance, so I feel like it allows me to share maybe a little bit of a personal story in here where I would normally not. When I'm training I'm training because I know what I'm talking about, about sexual assault and trans folks, and my identity is not important to that conversation. But for this question I wanted to share that I am a person of trans history, I am someone who was assigned female at birth, and when I came out almost 30 years ago our language was really different. 0:17:51.5 MM: Right now, I look like a big, burly bearded guy that either gets perceived as a biker or a very fem kind of Nelly gay man, depending on what situation I'm in, I get perceived as those things. But 30 years ago, we had language that was F2M, it was female to male, and now people, even within my community, if I use that language, will get really aggressive and say, "You can't use that language, that's offensive language," even though I still resonate with that language, because that was kind of my mother tongue, that was kind of what I was born into as a trans person. So my affirmed language is being impacted by other people who think that other language is right, or more right. So it's kind of a preface, it's a longer preface to what language do people use now. And some people will really resonate with the language of trans-men, either put together as one word or separated as two words. Others will identify as transmasculine and not wanna claim the word men or man, even if they're living in the world and others see them as a man. But that word may not feel comfortable or good to them. So just to give folks an idea of some of the other words that people might be using, so trans-men, trans man are common words right now, transmasculine is common. 0:19:21.7 MM: We hear in some communities language of masculine of center, so again that goes back to, "Are we talking about a spectrum or a sphere of gender?" And then someone, if we look at a spectrum, are they to the right of or to the left of that mid-point. A lot of non-binary folks are using AFAB or AMAB, so assigned female at birth, assigned male at birth. So they're not wanting to claim a man or a woman identity, but non-binary and then it shows their gender vector. We can look at communities of color, communities of different places in geography, and we can hear words like stud or aggressive, and when we're talking about sexual assault, someone's identity as an aggressive becomes very dissonant for us, because we think of that as a behavior rather than an identity, but within transmasculine communities both stud and aggressive, within especially black and Latinx communities, are identities of transmasculinity. We can also hear things like drag king, and again, that could be a really controversial subject, but that is an identity for some folks. We also hear things like new man. So, N-E-W man, or man of trans history or a man of trans experience, or formally trans. So all of those things might be how somebody describes themselves, or just man with no preface of anything. 0:20:50.1 MM: And I also wanna just branch a little teeny bit into when we're talking about male survivors, we might be talking about folks who were assigned male at birth and live more femininely. So their sexual assault may have happened when they were living or perceived as men. So those folks may be in a different category of language. And then there are also folks, again, from maybe different cultural backgrounds, like Two-Spirit Folks, that may fit somewhere in our discussion of this broad topic, or even Radical Faeries, the kind of gay male culture that embraces a lot of femininity, but folks are usually very male-identified, even within that feminine identity. So that's a really long answer, and a lot of words, and those are just a fraction of the words and the language that people might be using. 0:21:42.0 LM: Yeah, yeah, thanks. And I think that maybe to put a... I don't know, to put a button on it, if that's the right language, but to say that there are lots of words, using language like male survivors is complicated, using any language about people's identities and being and their experience with gender is complicated, and I know that a way of thinking about labels and terms and identities that I have learned from FORGE is by thinking of the terms paradox, which if maybe you'll allow me to say what I think the terms paradox is and then you can fill in what I missed, but this idea that terms are essential and terms are meaningless, essential in the sense as a service provider, as a human being, recognizing and using the words that somebody who wants you to use for them is just about basic respect. And terms are meaning in the sense of those terms also don't tell you everything you need to know about a person. How did I deal with that, Michael? 0:22:41.8 MM: That was fantastic. That was fantastic, perfect. 0:22:43.8 LM: Thank you. 0:22:44.8 MM: Yeah, and it's a concept that we use a lot, and it's a perfect way of saying we need to respect folks. And those terms, we know, tell us what we need to know to help serve people or to be with them. Yeah, perfect. Good job. 0:22:58.4 LM: Well, thank you and thank you for that knowledge, even before the context of this podcast, right? Well, that's actually a really great transition into thinking about reactions to sexual violence, and we're gonna do a part two to this conversation that's really more about services and advocacy, but before we do that I just wanna talk about reactions to sexual violence that may be especially relevant to trans-men and transmasculine people. So, for example, a trans man who was always told growing up that he is a girl, incorrectly, and that sexual assault is something that happens to girls and women, what issues around those messages and that socialization might come up for him? 0:23:46.7 MM: We hear so often from survivors, transmasculine survivors, trans-men, who really, really believe what you just said, that sexual assault is something that happens to girls and women, and if they are a real man it won't happen to them, or if they were a real man it won't happen to them. And this is a huge barrier, and we'll talk more about it in part two, of how that has some serious service implications. In thinking about this question, it's something that we encounter a lot, so we see sometimes that people transition to male in part because they believe that they'll be safer. So, not solely because of that, but if they're kind of wavering between, "Am I a non-binary person, am I gender-fluid, or do I wanna transition to male?" A lot of people that have that strong belief that sexual assault happens to girls and women, really believe that they'll be safer as men, and that's a really dangerous place to be, I think, because it really... A lot of times it ends up not being true. We know that a lot of times people that experienced sexual assault as children end up being sexually assaulted as adults, or having other forms of violence as adults, and that seems to be very true within trans communities as well as non-trans communities. 0:25:12.8 MM: So the belief that it won't happen as an adult if they're living as male is really a fallacy. And again, it kind of cuts off what did happen to them as children. I think that when we look at the folks that were sexually assaulted or abused as children and the world saw them as female or as a girl, they oftentimes are struggling to find a path to healing, and the therapist and providers working with them may feel really challenged in how to work with them. And that kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, about like the dead-naming and who embraces their past versus pushes there past away. And so there's a challenge for both service providers and for that trans person of how do we talk about, how do we work with sexual assault experiences and healing when some people wanna talk about their life that might have been perceived as a different gender, when they were living as a different gender, versus where they are right now. So I think that there's a big challenge with where that disconnect is, or where that connection is for folks. 0:26:26.2 MM: I also wanted to note that, again, I know we're talking about male survivors and what messages people get, but when we look at folks that were assigned male at birth and who are now living as female or as trans-feminine or something along that spectrum, they receive the same messages, because we're all receiving the same messages in our society, we're getting the message that it's girls and women who are abused or assaulted and men who are the perpetrators. And if that's the message that trans women are getting as well they may not be able to encompass what happened to them as a child as abuse, because they might have been perceived as a boy or being interacted with as a boy. And so that may not have been perceived as sexual assault, and so they're bringing that into their adulthood, into their female adulthood, and how does that get healed or resolved. 0:27:19.3 MM: So, when we look at both ends of where people are coming from and going to in their gender, there's a lot of healing implications for what they were told, which is pretty much the dominant narrative, versus what and how they were living when abuse happened or assault happened, and what gender they're living in now, whether it's binary gender or non-binary gender. So it's a complicated place to be of, where does healing happen? What messages are getting told, what do people take in terms of actions around it? And just one more comment, I think about the trans women, which I know seems like it veers off of trans-men, but I think it's part of it. 0:28:01.7 MM: There are a lot of trans-women who are assaulted as women in adulthood that believe it affirms their gender identity as women, because they believe that sexual assault happens to women. So again, what's happening when that messaging goes out, and how do they heal from that if they believe in that gender binary? So again, that kind of shifts us away from trans-men, but I think it's part of that in terms of how do people heal, what pieces of themselves do they need to bring forward, and masculinity for trans-women might be a piece that needs to get brought forward in their healing, just like for trans-men, their life, when being perceived as a girl or a woman, might need to come forward even if they're living and being affirmed as men now. Long answer. 0:28:55.2 LM: Yeah, I think it even sounds to me like part of what you're saying is that the gender binary or the idea that what we're assigned as birth, the wrong idea that what we're assigned as birth is who really are in some sort of essential way, is part of violence in its own right, and then is also wrapped up in sexual violence, that have a lot of implications for healing. I know that we have also talked about another language issue around the idea of passing, so if that's language that maybe listeners have have heard of, could you help kind of frame that and connect it a little bit to this idea of reactions to sexual violence? 0:29:46.5 MM: Yeah, totally. And again, all of these questions are complicated and all of these topics have, people that have strong feelings about them, so presenting in a neutral way, just acknowledging that passing as a word is really charged for some people. And it's either embraced or really pushed away, both within trans communities as well as within provider circles. So just for folks that may not be familiar with what passing tends to mean, it's almost always linked to a binary, so people are said, "Are you passing as a woman? Are you passing as a man?" So it's linked to, are you being perceived as your affirmed gender, or are people seeing you as trans or your prior gender or another gender. 0:30:38.5 MM: So, passing is something that really plays a role when we look at survivorship spaces. So if a space is created for male survivors, for example, like in a group setting or a retreat, or even a program like schools talk about harm reduction and they pull the boys in one group and the girls in another group, when we talk about passing, a lot of times what people look like is where they get assigned to a group. Now, that's not a good way of dividing people up in my opinion, but that is oftentimes what happens, and it happens sometimes when people are not knowing yet or expressing what their gender is, so the boys and girls that are in gender or sex ed, or healthy relationship ed or whatever is happening in grade school, if that kid is not out as trans or in their affirmed gender, what messages are they hearing? And they're hearing different messages if they're with the boys group versus the girls group, rather than just having a group that talks about what healthy relationships are or what healthy consent is, or any of those things. 0:31:41.6 MM: So when we look at passing, we clump people based on what we as external people are seeing someone's gender as. And I think this kind of relates to the whole concept of, why do we talk about male survivors. Right? Why do we talk about female survivors? Actually, we don't really talk about female survivors, we tend to think about survivors as female, it's an assumed thing, unless if we say a male survivors. And that leaves out so many, so many, so many different people that don't fit into either of those things. 0:32:14.5 MM: So, not to kind of mess up the whole purpose of the series on male survivorship, but it does complicate things for folks that don't fit within that, whether it's as an adult or as a child. So obviously, you can hear my opinions about how this is not necessarily a great way of looking at the world, because it doesn't always serve people in ways that are affirming to them. So when we look at survivorships and about what should be allowed or what should be encouraged, I'm hopeful that the victim-service providers in particular want to empower people, want to give people control and agency over who they are, to define their own narrative and to affirm what their identity is, what their language is, what their experiences are and what their healing is. So I think we need to look at all of that when we're looking at how do we explore male survivorship and how trans folks fit into that. 0:33:11.7 LM: Definitely. Michael, you're not ruining or interrupting or whatever language you used, the point of the series, you're complicating it in a really great way that I really appreciate, and you're leaving us on this great note of thinking about support groups and advocacy that we're really gonna delve into in the next part of our conversation. So, thank you so much for joining us today, and we invite listeners to check out part two of this conversation when we'll focus more on providing services to transgender man and transmasculine survivors of sexual assault. We also invite listeners to learn more about working with male survivors by checking out the links in the show notes. [music] 0:34:06.3 LM: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resource On The Go. For more resources and information about understanding, responding to, and preventing sexual assault, visit our website at www.nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.