1. AOSWPand Macro/MezzoPractice withthe TransgenderCommunity
Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice
And Mezzo/Macro Practice with the Transgender Community
Stephanie Cianfriglia
Culminating Integrative Seminar
Dr. Sinha

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I. Application of theory
Anti-oppressive social work practice is a theoretical framework specifically designed for
macro work, in that it is for the combating of systemic, societal oppression (Strier, 2006). It is
commonly associated with feminist and Marxist theoretical backgrounds and perspectives
(Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005), and is certainly grounded in the concepts of intersectionality (i.e.
that it is important to recognize an individual’s various privileged and oppressed identities and
how they interact (Mattsson, 2014)) and empowerment. Considering that my field placement and
the work that I am involved at it are of a macro-level, I considered it advantageous to invest in a
usage and understanding of this theory. (For the purposes of this paper, they/their/them(selves)
are used both to stay gender neutral in the naming of participants and in the context of the
singular they as a personal pronoun.)
My current long-standing project at field involves a combination of education and
engagement. I was put to task by my supervisor, the agency’s director of community engagement
of this local chapter, to help him research strategies he could employ to attract and retain a more
diverse sample of staff and volunteers. This would not only aid the agency in being more truly
multicultural, but it would aid the agency in being more representative and receptive of its ever-
diversifying home community. Finally, he wanted me to research and compile a list of agencies,
organizations, or groups that were representative of the community’s diverse populations, so that
we could eventually visit them to gain feedback on the community from diverse perspectives.
Upon collecting a list of roughly two dozen outside agencies, organizations, and groups, I began
to contact them on behalf of the agency and schedule appointments for volunteer-facilitated
“town hall” meetings. These meetings would grant the agency qualitative data on the quality of

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life in the community to be used in eventual intervention and evaluation via a collaborative team
of non-profits.
As one might expect, assessment, engagement, and evaluation on a macro scale can be quite
complicated. However, anti-oppressive social work practice gives practitioners the tools to do so.
When it comes to engagement and assessment in macro/mezzo practice that involves the coming
together of the staff and/or volunteers of an agency and a small group of community members,
each of whom have never met, in order to discuss the betterment for people’s lives in the
community, the task at hand seems daunting, indeed. Add into the mix a very vulnerable and
oppressed population encountering members of its oppressive group wanting feedback and
opinions, and there is potential for disaster. This practice situation must be approached with the
utmost tact, sensitivity, and mindfulness. Fortunately, anti-oppressive social work provides the
appropriate tools and lenses to make it possible, perhaps even pleasant. Critical consciousness,
and its active form, critical reflection, allow a practitioner to examine their inner biases,
stereotypes, and judgmental thoughts and language towards certain groups or clients in order to
examine themselves and to eliminate potential misconstrued, unintentional harm towards others
(Suárez, Newman, & Reed, 2008). Intersectionality, as explained above, helps to view self and
others through intersecting identities that may garner either privilege or oppression (Suárez,
Newman, & Reed, 2008). Via these frameworks, we can discover, reflect upon, and be aware of
our positionality, or our standing in societal structures of power and oppression (Suárez,
Newman, & Reed, 2008). Allowing each member of the incoming agency representatives to
undergo this process is a form of assessment on a person’s anti-oppressive, culturally competent
practice with marginalized populations. Proper, professional, and sensitive engagement is thus

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ensured, reducing potential anxiety on the part of the practitioner and inadvertent harm on the
part of the client population.
The process for evaluation I would choose, if feasible, involves incorporating a cultural
competency workshop and satisfaction survey into the above process. On the part of the
practitioners, the agency would utilize a cultural competency “guide” and presentation I helped
develop, preferably placed before the encounter with the client population. The volunteers would
then engage the population, afterwards taking a brief survey on how they would rate their
practice. A survey would also be administered to the client group asking their satisfaction with
the encounter, specifically inquiring towards how comfortable they felt, both as individuals and
as a group. Most transgender individuals report exasperation in dealing with a society that is
largely formed upon cissexist, bigenderist ideologies and norms: Body equals gender; physical
appearance traits point immediately and inarguably towards identity; and that male/masculine
and female/feminine are two mutually exclusive dichotomies that all society must conform to
(Gilbert, 2009). Cisgender individuals are typically sources of humiliation (intrusive questions
poised on gender, genitals, and/or sexual practices) or even physical danger. The agency taking
time to ask towards the feelings of participants would not only be advantageous for data
purposes, but for the sake of trust, comfort, and rapport on behalf of a group that generally feels
ignored, pathologized, or exploited by the larger society.
It is important to mention that this social work practitioner is all-too-familiar with the
naïveté and potential uneasiness of the average white, middle class, cis-hetero individual
completely uninitiated with social justice discourse. To ensure a non-judgmental, relaxed
environment in interaction with agency staff and volunteers, I would submit to their
consideration terms coined by Sakamoto & Pitner (2005). Agency volunteers who have white,

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middle class, and/or cis-hetero privilege who might take offense to being deemed “oppressors”
shall instead be referred to as the “agent” (Sakamoto & Pitner, 2008). The chosen client
population, oppressed for being queer and possibly impoverishes and/or persons of color, will
thusly be referred to as the “target.” These “soft” terms are meant to assuage the agency
volunteers’ apprehensions of feeling like unwelcome intruders, though they could be interpreted
as such by the client group if proper education and/or sensitivity are not demonstrated.
Loss and trauma are facts of life within the transgender community. Even as a scientific
tool was developed by social work researchers to measure one’s inclination towards transphobia,
or the irrational hatred of those who are transgender (Tebbe, Moradi, & Ege, 2014), measuring
bias is not the same as correcting it. It is an unfortunate fact that as of the time of this writing,
five transgender women of color have been murdered in the United States, and a petition with
over one-hundred-thousand signatures has been submitted to the White House to ban so-called
“conversation therapy” after it helped to cause the death by suicide of seventeen-year-old Leelah
Alcorn. Suicide, violence, poverty, and unacceptance and ostracizing, including on the part of
families, are a sadly a regular occurrence in this population. Although most states have legalized
same-sex marriage, policies that protect transgender individuals from discrimination at work are
slow forthcoming, and often, policies that are designed to discriminate against this population
arrive much more quickly.
It is the duty of cisgender allies within non-profit agencies, which come from said
agencies and venture out into the community, to use their power, position, and privilege in
society to rectify these wrongs done against the transgender community. However, these allies
themselves must engage those they wish to empower with the utmost discretion, awareness, and

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respect. They must come armed with the cultural competency and critical consciousness to not
err grievously, such as to misgender individuals, to create an atmosphere of distrust and disdain.
II. The Literature
A review of data by Stotzer (2009) paints a nightmarish picture in the life of a transgender
person. Starting at an early age, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and emotional abuse, both inside
and outside the home, occurs, particularly towards those who transition from male to female,
who report over half of all violent encounters occur within the home (Stotzer, 2009). Danger,
misunderstanding, and ignorance are also inherent in interactions with police, who have been
found to commonly verbally abuse transgender people and arrest them unjustly (Stotzer, 2009).
Of transgender rape victims, most do not feel safe reporting the crimes to authorities, for fear of
retribution and due to mistrust in the legal system (Stotzer, 2009). An astounding 85% of
transgender women reported feeling unsafe in cities, with over half saying that they often feel
unsafe in public (Stotzer, 2009). Indeed, across the board, transgender women felt more
subjected to violence and harassment, a phenomenon attributable to transmisogyny, the
intersecting oppression of transphobia and misogyny experienced by transwomen.
The solution to these alarming concerns lies in anti-oppressive social work practice and its
potential to dismantle the “top-bottom” nature of social work. It can be argued that if the social
work practitioner disables the egoistic need to be the “expert” on the micro level (Sakamoto &
Pitner, 2008), why not question and challenge the dictations of the non-profit industrial complex
and, by extension, the post-colonial state? Thus, by virtue of questioning the power of the state,
in keeping with anti-oppressive social work’s theoretical roots in socialism and feminism, the
social work practitioner would question the power of bigenderism, the mandate of the

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heteropatriarchy that there must be the powerful/active male versus the subservient/passive
female (Gilbert, 2009). If there is no need for the power and control dynamic of state versus
populous, and no need for male over female, then there would be no need for the gender binary.
Thus, bigenderism would crumble, allowing for the liberation of those who fall outside it.
Binary transgender individuals, e.g. transgender women and transgender men, often have
difficulties navigating relationships with family and friends who knew them before transition
(Rankin & Beemyn, 2012). The differences in dating, however, between transwomen and
transmen are stark: while transmen are often able to “pass” as cisgender to potential partners,
transwomen, who still retain male-body characteristics such as large feet, protruding larynxes,
and tall stature, often have no choice but to disclose their trans identity, which can lead to
rejection (Rankin & Beemyn, 2012). However, those who identify as non-binary (such the
writer) often have even more complicated social interactions. Genderqueer individuals may
combine traditionally male or female clothing to present themselves as androgynous, or may
change their gender presentation day to day (Rankin & Beemyn, 2012). While binary trans
individuals typically use classic pronouns in order to interact with others and address themselves
(her/hers/herself or him/his/himself), a genderqueer or other non-binary person may use others,
such as Spivak pronouns (ey/eirs/emself) or neopronouns (such as the writer’s preferred
kye/kyrs/kyrself). To use an incorrect pronoun or to mislabel someone’s gender, either
unintentionally or intentionally, is to misgender a person, a form of erasure and violence.
Again, anti-oppressive social work can be a tool to which to change the life outcomes and
experiences of non-binary transgender individuals. By dismantling and reshaping at the macro
level, clients at the micro level experience benefits at the micro level. In this instance, anti-
oppressive social work can challenge the pathologization of transgender existence within clinical

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practice, by shifting from “why” to “how” (Goldner, 2011). The argument has been made that
the DSM’s designation of “Gender Identity Disorder” as a diagnosis is similar to its past
pathologization of homosexuality, which was removed under overwhelming pressure in the
1970s (Goldner, 2011). Current critiques of GID argue that its inclusion came under a similar
inclination by biased professionals to pathologize difference in children (Goldner, 2011). Anti-
oppressive social work practice could do well to facilitate the necessary examination of these
stances—are they based upon oppression? Many within the transgender community would argue
yes, calling the diagnosis “gatekeeping,” that one would need in order to gain establishment
legitimization of gender rather than acceptance to declare gender oneself. The argument would
be that it is time to stop the antiquated sex designation of infants that shove individuals off onto a
bifurcated path that controls their lives down to their choice if restrooms (Gilbert, 2009) towards
a society that accepts that the diversity of human experience cannot be pared down to simply two
genders (Goldner, 2011).
III. Social work values and skills
I am in the somewhat difficult position of being a member of this client population that I seek
to practice with. Very recently, my ever-expanded knowledge brought me to the conclusion that
my anxiety-provoking discordance with the labels “female/woman” throughout my life pointed
to a desire and necessity to transition to a non-binary gender. It has been a liberating, cathartic,
yet intimidating realization that entails a long and possibly painful journey ahead of me. I now
identify as a neutrois (gender-neutral) demigirl, someone who has the barest of association with
femininity and identifies more closely with being non-binary.

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This discovery allows me to build a better rapport with transgender clients that I would have
been unable to as a presumed cisgender woman. Rather than being regarded with suspicion, I am
welcomed as “one of the family.” This strategic use of self-disclosure, however, is a catch-22 in
my practice. While it endears me towards and dismantles barriers between myself and
transgender clients, it also could lead to apprehension, discomfort, and a triggering of biases in
my work with the staff and volunteers of my agency that I seek to guide through a process of
cultural sensitivity. I wonder what to expect from what could be a very uninitiated group of
people, such as misgendering and other unintentional yet very upsetting microaggressions.
My best tools towards combatting the possible upsets I may face with my colleagues is
supervision. Although I am not yet “out” with my supervisor, there will come the time where I
will need to be. While he is somewhat uninitiated himself, he is also above my “trainees’” level
of cultural sensitivity. I understand that, despite having a large social support network at my
fingertips upon social media, it would be breaking confidentiality to delve into my doings at my
field placement with them. Or, I could use careful discretion to not go into too many details, but
it does seem more feasible and ethical to turn to supervision. Not only would speaking to my
supervisor not be breaking from ethics, but he is more initiated with the project at hand.
Although the term is new to me, I am actually quite familiar with the concept of critical
consciousness/reflection, as it has been presented to me via social media social justice work as
“check your privilege.” I am, by nature, what some may regard as a very pensive person. Before
I speak, I have gone through many possible scenarios and revisions within my mind. I am also
constantly on the watch for, and quite easily adaptable towards, language that is “politically
correct,” otherwise known as non-offensive. For example, I once used the term trans* in my
academic writings, until realizing that the non-binary transgender community considered it to be

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erasure. Subsequently, I ceased all my usage of the term, however noticed in my literature that it
was still being used. I feel that my skill of being very open and flexible with my language is a
strength, one that others in the field could stand to improve upon. Indeed, the language of the
literature is still very cisnormative and bigenderist, especially in reference to using “men and
women” as an all-inclusive term for clients. My hopes with this field placement is that I can
begin to challenge that language and discourage its use in social service agencies that aim to be
multiculturalist and inclusive.
IV. Ethical Issues
Most ethical issues inherent in this work are outlined above: countertransference and
transference with clients due to my membership in the marginalized population; running up
against the innocent unknowingness of colleagues still growing in their cultural sensitivity; and
knowing where to turn in order to process said difficulties. However, I would add a few more
potential ethical quandaries.
There is a very small population of transgender individuals in any given city, let alone within
my generally conservative suburban one in Upstate New York. While I go through the process of
transitioning fully into an openly queer individual, I will need my own social support network.
Therein lies the potential for dual relationships—if I am seeking out the transgender community
in both a professional and personal sense, could I encounter the same people in both spheres? It
is something that I have dedicated quite frequent and fastidious thought towards. I hope to find
some sort of resolution.
There is also the potential for pushback in terms of my identity. I have found through my
navigation through and interaction with the online transgender community some degree of

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infighting. The phrase “not trans enough” get passed around by non-binary individuals who
receive pushback from binary trans individuals, who seem to gate-keep, ostracize, or even
gaslight their non-binary siblings. As a “cis-passing” enby, through my anti-oppressive social
work practice I must be cognizant of the privilege garnered by this. I am an assigned-female-at-
birth (AFAB) with little-to-no likelihood of arousing cissexist suspicion from onlookers, unlike a
transgender woman. “Passing” as a woman by a transgender woman is considered a safeguard
against violence. My “coming late” into this arena of gender identity may also be seen as naïveté,
as I have not been out long enough to be harassed or the subject of scorn. I may be faced with a
“well, what do you know?” attitude from potential clients on the subject of transmisogyny and/or
transphobia. I must react from a place of understanding rather than bristling at such charges.
V. Issues of Diversity
While on the subject of infighting within the transgender community, there has also been
pushback from transgender people of color towards white transgender people. While community
leaders such as Janet Mock and Laverne Cox stand in the spotlight as shining ambassadors for
trans women of color, many such individuals still feel that a “whitewashing” is taking place
within activist spheres. As the total number of transmisogynistic murders at the time of this
writing of transgender women of color stands at seven just this year, this erasure and co-optation
of the transgender rights movement is, needless to say, an issue of hot debate.
As a white enby and an anti-oppressive social work practitioner, I am very mindful of the
struggle of transgender women of color to have a voice. As my practice is grounded on
multiculturalism and intersectionality, it is vital that I be an effective ally towards these
particularly vulnerable trans siblings of mine. My privilege and position in society garners me

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the opportunity to be the voice that these people need. It would not only be a disservice to shut
them out of my advocacy, but a death sentence.
I realize that to be a truly anti-oppressive social work practitioner with the transgender
community, my practice would be incomplete without an awareness and incorporation of an anti-
colonialist, pro-black and pro-Indigenous stance. With this in mind, I intend to instruct my
colleagues on a vital piece of cultural competency on the transgender community by making
them aware of the part colonialization played on the erasure of and violence towards diverse
gender identities within Indigenous populations. I will tell them that the cisnormative,
heteropatriarchal gender binary that they take for granted was in reality a subset of Western
colonial forced cultural assimilation. The Two-Spirit Native, what we in modern language would
describe as a third-gender person, was a proud and accepted member of their community. It was
the white man, violent encroachers and conquerors upon Native land, who declared that the
third-gender could not exist.
My cultural sensitivity will also highlight the oft-forgotten harbingers of the Stonewall
movement, Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transgender women of color. It will list
and name, to the best of my ability, the fallen members of the transgender community now used
as symbols for liberation, such as Islan Nettles. Finally, it will seek to explain the classist
undertones of the push to validate one’s transgender identity through surgery.
VI. Reflection on professional and personal growth
Anti-oppressive practice is not simply a theory or paradigm that I utilize as an up-and-
coming macro social worker—it has become a part of my identity, my soul, and my being. From
a very young age, I was very conscientious and cognizant towards issues of inequality and social

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injustice. My professional growth and education has only afforded me terms, schemas, and
techniques towards these highly personal, impassioned goals of mine.
More so now than ever before, I am aware of how my personal diversity and “leisure”
activism upon social media shapes who I am as a professional. My exploration and clarification
of my identity, as well as my declaration of label, has increased my confidence and assertiveness
ten-fold. My rapid ascent to the forefront of the Twitter social justice community and movement,
with my “celebrity” status of being featured on Huffington Post, TIME magazine, and Tumblr,
has had the opposite effect of inflating my ego, but emboldened me to be more of a voice for the
voiceless. I am an advocate. I am an educator. I am an agent. I can use my platform not to speak
for transgender people of color (including sex workers) who struggle to survive on the margins
of society, but for them to speak through my posts and my cultural competency work. I feel an
obligation and a calling to be a liaison between these marginalized people and the larger society
that either ignores and silences them or are simply ignorant to their existence and tribulations.
I went through a deep meditation on the personal and professional risks I might be
placing upon myself to come out as a non-binary transgender individual. And yet my
understanding of privilege and positionality afforded me with the realization that I did not have it
that bad. Anti-oppressive social work practice informed me on a personal level, and indeed, it
has now and shall continue to inform my professional practice. Loss also informed me, as I was
forced to contemplate the possibility of my parents grieving me, as if in death. I am no longer the
daughter they raised for a quarter of a century, but like a newly reborn infant. As I write this,
however, I think of Bri Golec, a transgender woman, only twenty-two years of age, stabbed to
death by her father in Acron, Ohio, and then misgendered by the press. I do have it lucky; but I
still feel that loss in my heart as if I have lost a part of me.

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I am still in the process of dealing with the loss of my beloved grandmother and cat.
Every one of us has dealt with loss. Perhaps that is the best way to appeal to my colleagues who
are uninitiated on the ravages of transphobia upon society, and all of these transmisogynistic
killings that never make the news. Albeit you have parents like the Alcorns who purposefully
misgender their dead children, in place of that, the worldwide transgender community mourns
every loss of life; that is why the international day of transgender remembrance exists. To appeal
to the hearts of the cisgender majority is to safeguard these lives, even if their life circumstances
remain insecure or unsafe. To change the minds of the masses using an anti-oppressive social
work stance is to preserve the lives of the vulnerable. To reshape and restructure a society that is
by and large cisnormative, cissexist, and bigenderist is to remake the world into a place that
accepts and loves its transgender (binary or non-binary) individuals. These are my personal and
professional aspirations, ones that will shift, grow, and become more obtainable alongside
myself.

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References
Gilbert, Miqqi Alicia. (2009). Defeating bigenderism: Changing gender assumptions in the
twenty-first century. Hypatia, 24(3), 93-112.
Goldner, Virginia. (2011). Trans: Gender in free fall. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 21, 159-171.
Mattsson, Tina. (2014). Intersectionality as a useful tool: Anti-oppressive social work and critical
reflection. Journal of Women and Social Work, 29(1), 8-17.
Rankin, Sue & Beemyn, Genny. (2012). Beyond a binary: The lives of gender-nonconforming
youth. American College Personnel Association, 2-10.
Sakamoto, Izumi & Pitner, Ronald O. (2005). Use of critical consciousness in anti-oppressive
social work practice: disentangling power dynamics at personal and structural levels.
British Journal of Social Work, 35, 435-452.
Stotzer, Rebecca. (2009). Violence against transgender people: A review of United States
data. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 14, 170-179.
Strier, Roni. (2006). Anti-oppressive research in social work: A preliminary definition.
British Journal of Social Work, 1-15.
Suárez, Zulema E., Newman, Peter A., & Glover Reed, Beth. (2008). Critical consciousness
and cross-cultural/intersectional social work Practice: A case analysis. Families in
Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 89(3), 407-417.

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Tebbe, Moradi, & Ege. (2014). Revised and abbreviated forms of the genderism and
transphobia Scale: tools for assessing anti-trans prejudice. Journal of Counseling
Psychology, 61(4), 581-592.