• Confidentiality
  (what’s said here stays here)
• Non-judgemental / Withholding judgement
• Mobile phones on silent please
• Respect one another's names and pronouns
• Respect diversity of ideas, identities & experiences
  This can include: Diversity of experiences with, or interest in, sex and the subject matter
• “Don’t yuck my yum”
  (don’t make others feel bad for liking different things than you)
• Respect one another's boundaries
• One person speaks at a time
• Step Up / Step back (if you tend to speak more, challenge yourself to ‘step back’ to let others speak. If you tend to be more quiet, challenge yourself to ‘step up’ to speak)
• No pressure to disclose / Permission to pass
• Permission to pause
• There is no such thing as a stupid question (all questions are welcome)

🤲 POSSIBLE ACTIVITY TO USE:
Gender Unicorn (30 mins)

Acknowledge that people have a range of personal beliefs about diverse sexes, genders and sexualities. But this must be a safe space and meeting their needs whatever their sexual orientation, gender, sex or beliefs.

📗 Working definitions
Use the following definitions to talk through what each of the headings may mean for individuals in the room:

- Gender identity
This refers to your internal sense of gender and how you identify, based on the options that you think you have available to you. Some people don’t feel as though they have a gender identity.

- Gender expression
This is how you present your gender to the world. Gender expression can refer to social cues that people use to express their gender identity, including how someone dresses, their hairstyle, etc. Gender expressions are usually described as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ or ‘gender-neutral’.

- Sex assigned at birth
Most people are assigned a sex at birth. This means that a nurse, doctor or midwife would have looked at your genitals, and then given you a label based on what they saw. But your physical sex isn’t actually that simple. Sex can be determined by a combination of chromosomes (for example XX or XY), hormone levels, genes, and physical characteristics like genitals.

- Physically attracted to
This refers to who you tend to be physically attracted to.

- Emotionally attracted to
This refers to who you tend to be emotionally attracted to. This may or may not overlap with sexual desire.

Also see Youth site:
4.2 Unpacking queerphobia and heteronormativity

🤲 POSSIBLE ACTIVITY TO USE:
Pronoun Scenario & Discussion (30 mins)

🧐 TAKEAWAYS

• Each person is unique. Just as no two cisgender or straight people are the same, no two transgender, gay, lesbian, or bisexual people are the same. All of us, including LGBTQIA+ people, have intersecting identities. Some LGBTQIA+ people have supportive families and communities, others less so.
• No one should have to ‘prove’ how gay, bisexual or trans they are, in order to be affirmed. You don’t need to have had sex, nor to have had any surgeries or medical interventions, in order to be valid as you are.
• No one has to share lived experiences if they don’t want to. However, there is learning that can happen simply by knowing sex, sexuality, and gender diverse people.
• Reinforce allyship. It is exhausting for people in the queer community to be the only ones advocating.
• Allies have power to shift culture and change. There are responsibilities of having more power in society to support minority and marginalised communities. Be unapologetically supportive. Visualise and work toward building a world where everyone belongs.
• Challenges of young LGBTQIA+ people with intersecting identities who may not always come from supportive communities, including young people from mainstream cultures.
• Be unapologetically supportive of LGBTQIA+ people. Visualise a sense of place where everyone belongs.

• Being an ally means being there 24/7, even when it is difficult, and not just during Pride.
• Learning in this space also needs to be taken on as personal responsibility. You can’t expect the LGBTQIA+ people in your lives or the rainbow community as a whole to run sessions to teach you everything. It is an individual’s responsibility to learn and grow if they don’t know something. Asking questions to clarify is generally ok as long as the questions are genuine and not offensive (examples of offensive questions include “what are you?” “are you a man or a woman?” “have you had surgery yet?” or “what was your name before?”).
• Pronouns are a way to help express who we are to others. They are the words that we use instead of names when we refer to someone. Often people think of he and she, but can be singular they, zie, ve, etc. https://uwm.edu/lgbtrc/support/gender-pronouns/ Don’t be afraid to clarify someone’s pronouns. It is better than assuming. To clarify someone else’s pronouns, you can ask, but it is often easier if you share yours first.

📗Heteronormativity refers to the ways that most of society establishes straight relationships as the norm, and everything else is either invisible or seen as ‘different’ or ‘wrong’ in some way.

If you are LGBTQIA+, heteronormativity in society can mean you are seen as going against social norms, underrepresented or misrepresented in media, research and other areas, and you are often asked to explain yourself, or cater to mainstream sensitivities, while being told that your own sensitivities are ‘too sensitive’.

It can also mean being often asked insensitive questions, such as why you don’t have a boyfriend/girlfriend, how sex for you “works”, and other inappropriate questions.

📗 Queerphobia is an umbrella term to describe the ways that diversity in experiences and expressions of sex, gender and sexuality are actively discriminated against in society. Discrimination and hate that targets LGBTQIA+ people would be examples of queerphobia.

📗 Minority Stress

Explain that the structures in place to enforce heteronormativity and the –phobias are the cause of many negative health and wellbeing outcomes for LGBTQIA+ people.

One important example is minority stress. Minority stress refers to additional stress that members of a marginalised group experience because of the prejudice and discrimination they face in society. It can be tiresome for people in marginalised communities (marginalised due to being in the minority, or due to having less power in society in general) to be the ones who do the work of advocating for themselves constantly.

Minority stress is unique because it is not a stressor that is experienced by everyone. For example, starting a new job can be stressful for anyone but starting a new job and being afraid to mention your gender identity or the gender of your spouse and being alienated, judged or fired is not a stressor that straight and/or cisgender people will face.