Sunday, June 8, 2014

>> King County Trans* Resource & Referral Guide

Check out this amazing resource!  Gendercast participated in the workgroup for this guide and is proud to share this first community DRAFT project with all of you!!



Summary
Seattle is an epicenter for trans* art, culture, and politics. Yet navigating basic services, such as healthcare, education, employment, and housing can present significant barriers for trans* people, their families, and communities. While state and municipal laws prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and expression, trans* people continue to experience vulnerabilities based on ongoing discrimination, stigma, isolation, violence, and related poverty.

The 2014 King County Trans* Resource & Referral Guide aims to educate and raise awareness of community needs and gaps in services, while strengthening partnerships between existing services and improving the system of referrals between organizations and groups county-wide.  The guide focuses on free or low-cost community-based resources and includes health and wellness services, peer support, advocacy groups, cultural and social connections, and more.

The guide was produced over six months in a collaborative process coordinated by the LGBTQ Access Project. A number of local stakeholders groups were involved, such as: Ingersoll Gender Center,  Gender Justice League, Gendercast, Gender Diversity, Gender Odyssey, the Washington Gender Alliance, NW Network of Bi, Trans, Lesbian, and Gay Survivors of Abuse, Asian Pacific Islander Chaya, Seattle HIV Vaccine Trial Unit, Teen Feed, and many others. The project is receiving support from King County’s Equity and Social Justice Initiative and the City of Seattle’s LGBT Commission.

GET A COPY:
The King County 2014 Trans* Resource & Referral Guide is available online at: demonstrateaccess.org/2014-trans-guide.

Downloadable PDF for booklet printing, larger font versions, and/or electronic embed codes are available upon request by email.

project contact
transresourceguide@gmail.com 

Saturday, November 30, 2013

gendercast episode 41!

  gendercast episode 41: interview with Jacks McNamara on a lot of awesome things


Join Jesse and Sean for an interview with Jacks McNamara about their work in radical mental health and with The Icarus Project, their writing and other projects they are involved in. We explore the concept of radical mental health, creating some analyses of the medical industrial complex and corporate psychology’s impact on the mainstream mental health system/pathologizing of people experiencing emotional distress or psychic impairments. Jacks discussed that emotional distress does not happen in a bubble, but rather, it happens within a social context where capitalism, racism, classism, ableism, transphobia, homophobia and many other isms are operating.

Jacks also draws some comparisons between gender nonconformity and mental health/emotional distress as “ a shared inability to fit into boxes” and will discuss how this is something that queer and trans people as well as people experiencing emotional distress have in common.  We will talk about the impact of labels (diagnoses) on both gender identity and mental health as a mechanism of access (to medications).  We also talk about disability justice and radical mental health. Jacks also talks about collective access, access intimacy and reads some of their poetry!

guest bio
Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer writer, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner living in Santa Fe, NM. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, a radical mental health support network and media project by and for people living with the dangerous gifts that our society commonly labels as "mental illness," and the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. In 2012 Jacks was selected as a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in March 2013. You can find out more about Jacks at http://redwingedjacksbird.net.

links

Jacks new poetry book Inbetweenland which you can buy here (Jacks reads Whether or Not You Fly and Lungseed on the podcast)
Icaruses Harm Reduction Guide To Coming off Psychiatric Drugs and Withdrawl (you can download the pdf free)
Icarus Project blog
Jacks' article on access intimacy

links to other badass projects that jacks talked about