Listen to Episode 1 of the SCSG Podcast!

Episode 1

[Intro Music Playing]

Mark: Welcome to the first episode of the SCSG Podcast. My name is Mark King, I am an intern for SCSG which is the Silberman Center for Sexuality and Gender, and I will be your host for today. In this first ever episode of our podcast, we would like to introduce you to our team. So without further ado, let’s meet the other faculty and interns at SCSG.

SJ: Hi, I’m SJ Dodd, I use she/they pronouns, I’m a faculty member at the Silberman School of Social Work, and I am the Founding Director of the Silberman Center for Sexuality and Gender, SCSG!

Jama: Hi, my name is Jama Shelton, I use the pronouns they/them and I am a faculty member at the Silberman School of Social Work.

ana rikki: Hi, my name is ana rikki, I go by they/them and she/her pronouns. I’m a MSW student at the Silberman School of Social Work under the Community Organizing track.

Leo: Hello, my name is Leo O’Driscoll, I use the pronouns he/him/his. I am in my first year of the MSW program on the Community Organizing track.

[Transitioning music]

Mark: Thank you, everyone! Now let’s begin our interview with our first question. Why do you feel it’s important for social workers to be competent in the areas of sexuality and gender?

Jama: I think it’s important for social workers to be competent around sexuality and gender because every single individual or community that social workers work with, sexuality and gender is a component of who we are.

Leo: No matter what type of social work you are practicing, it’s imperative that you have an understanding of these concepts and how policies, individuals, and institutions all interact with sexuality and gender.

ana rikki: Because it’s so prominent in everyone’s experience, even if you are someone who is cisgender and heterosexual. Sexuality and gender play a part in all of our lives. Though, certain aspects of, say, sexuality have been seen as “too taboo” to talk about, it doesn’t change the fact that those aspects of our experience influence our well-being, influence our relationships, influence our self-esteem, influence our communities. There’s so many aspects that are important. Instead of shying away from these topics, it’s really important for social workers to dive right in and to be upfront with these topics so they can feel comfortable working with clients and working with communities.

SJ: Our overall well-being is related to our sexual well-being and they are intimately connected. And I also think that we’ve been socialized to have sexuality be a taboo, and so typically mental health professionals have avoided engaging with the sexual dimension in practice, and so I think it’s really important to equip people to attend to the sexual dimension of the biopsychosocial. I also think, as a profession, we were quite slow to engage with gender-affirming practice and really honor the range of people’s experiences related to gender identity.

[Transitioning music]

Mark: These are all great points about the value of the work that SCSG does. And now on to question number two, what do you think is the best part about SCSG?

Leo: The best part about SCSG is the opportunity to learn on a deeper, more academic level about topics that relate to sexuality and gender, whether that’s BDSM, sex and the aging population, transgender and non-binary, people who experience homeless. Being part of SCSG allows me to have access to a ton of research and information that is really awesome and important.

ana rikki: The best thing about SCSG is this center is specifically designed to handle the topics that come around when we discuss sexuality and gender. It gives resources to practitioners and social workers to give more affirming and competent care to their clients and communities.

Jama: The best part about SCSG is that I get to focus on things that I care deeply about every single day in my work and do that with people that I care deeply about and work really well with.

SJ: I get to collaborate with interns, and faculty, and people from other universities, and people engaged internationally. And so I really love the breadth of the umbrella that SCSG has put up and the range of topics, whether it’s people engaging with sex work, or looking at LGBTQ homelessness, or thinking about ways to engage people related to attachment styles and the way that that impacts their sexuality. We have so many different opportunities.

ana rikki: Something like this center is so necessary in a world and in a society where these topics have so much misinformation, a lot of, again, taboo ideas around them, taboo perspectives.

[Transitioning music]

Mark: We’re down to our final question, which is – what are some projects you’d like to see during your time at SCSG?

ana rikki: One project that I’m really excited to see in the future of SCSG is actually one that I’m personally involved in. It’s around BIPOC sexuality, and we’re still ironing out the details of that, but basically the idea is that sexualtiy and ideas around sexuality and how it presents show up very differently for BIPOC populations. And for anyone who doesn’t know, that means Black, Indigenous, and people of color populations, as opposed to white populations where currently a lot of the research and literature, and even in our media, white people are the face of sexuality, white people are the ones who are able to get different identities and get to play with different things, whereas BIPOC people, and BIPOC communities, we’re not given that same representation, we’re not given that same consideration in therapy, we’re not given that same consideration in classrooms our in our communities. So, the point of this research is to kind of go deeper into this to see where the disparities are so that we can have that information as social workers to, again, give better affirming care to communities who are consistently not included.

SJ: I want to continue to provide resources for social workers engaged with people who are in sex trades or in kink or poly communities, and also, I really want to look at mental health provider’s comfort with sexuality and gender and competence with sexuality and gender, and work on increasing the capacity so that the majority of therapists are capable and competent when it comes to working with people around sexuality and gender.

Jama: I would really love for us to have a team of students who are interested in research and policy analysis and campaigns. And that this team, in addition to our interns, we have clearly some fantastic interns, but that we have a participatory research team that is addressing issues related to sexuality and gender in the profession of social work broadly and in social work education specifically.

Leo: A project that I hope to see come to fruition during my time at SCSG would be the Mentorship Program where students at Silberman Hunter at partnered with other students in a non-hierarchical framework so that informal learning and community building can occur. I’m really excited to be a part of this program and this is a program that is in its second year and should be relaunching in the Spring semester. So, get excited!

[Transitioning music]

Mark: That’s the end of our show for today! If you want more information about SCSG, which you definitely do, please check us out on our Instagram and our Twitter @SCSG_SSSW or on our website: silbermanscsg.com.