Presenter Spotlight: Quai Nystrom, MSW November 27, 2009

A couple of weeks before the conference, RISE organizer Josie Harris had a chance to speak with Quai Nystrom, MSW, who presented on “Addressing Disparities and Intersecting Oppressions for Gender-Variant Individuals in Health Care” at RISE. Here’s Quai on what brought her to RISE, her values as a social worker and an activist, and how social workers can incorporate social justice into their practices.

Why did you decide to participate in RISE?
I saw RISE as a space for social workers and other service providers to consider how social systems often do not take into account life experiences that are impacted by oppression. Since service providers are often enlightened by individuals who share their life experiences and the conference is interdisciplinary it seemed like a great place to do a workshop where participants can reflect on their unique place in identifying trends in social issues and to support efforts to respond to them. I also have a personal connection to the topic I’m presenting on as a gender non-conforming woman who is interested in health care.

How do you define social justice, and how do you work towards it?
I view social justice as engaging in acts that bring injustice to the forefront and secure inclusive equity. In other words, I believe social justice is only possible when people become aware of privilege and oppression they experience as well as injustices of people who have different life experiences from them. Often well-intentioned work can generate or play into injustices when the focus rests on a sole form of oppression. I work towards social justice by supporting folks to find their own way to express social injustice and celebrate strides towards healing from, resisting and subduing oppression.

What are your personal guiding values as a social worker?
With an understanding that most folks have transactions with social workers because they encountered adversity in some form or another I believe I must offer opportunities for people to speak about their experiences from their personal and cultural perspectives. I believe the people and communities I come into contact with can shed the most relevant light on their needs and resiliency. I learn from them. I believe my role is not only to support folks in finding means to get needs met, but also to provide a place for them to explore institutional, cultural, interpersonal and internalized barriers. I try to be considerate of the power I have as a service provider and communicate to people I work with that when I make a mistake they have a right to call me on it. Lastly I make an effort to allow transactions with individuals to be holistic. I encourage people to share all the complexities of their experiences without replicating social systems that force people to contend with social issues in a fractured way.

What was the impetus for your project, “Exploring Health Care for Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals?”
People’s perceptions and expectations of gender have a great influence on social and professional interactions, yet we do not often spoken about it. Health care is an example where this silence has a deep impact on consumers’ quality of life. I did the project so that I would be better equipped to discuss the disparities in health care for gender-variant individuals.

In your paper, “Gynecological Health Care for Gender-Variant Individuals
Identifying Unmet Needs and Raising Awareness of Poor Treatment,” you discuss how gender variant individuals are an invisible population and in order to treat them with ethical care and competency that their needs and presence needs to be made visible. The project that you created, which sought to ascertain the state of health care for gender variant individuals is a great example of how social workers can take an active approach to social justice. What are your thoughts on other action type initiatives that social workers can do to not only work towards social justice but also actually incorporate social justice in their practice like you have?
Social workers can assist people to build perspectives and find their words or unique means to express and respond to injustice. Social workers can support them in placing those difficulties into a context that affords social injustices to be identified.

What do you hope that conference participants will come away from your session with?
I hope that conference participants will come away from the session with a greater ability to be responsive to experiences of gender-variant individuals, particularly of those who experience additional oppressive circumstances such as coming from a disadvantage community. I also hope participants will be able to use material from the session to dissect other social injustices and feel inspired to support those who resist oppression.

You can download materials from Quai and Vaughn’s session here.