Welcome to Summer 2020! It has been and continues to be a terrifying, difficult, and inspiring year, across the pandemic, police and other state sanctioned violence, and powerful justice work with the Black Lives Matter movement. At the start of the new year, much of our focus as a section was on trying to understand how Section 4 can be the best possible professional home to our members. As the year has unfolded, we hold to that goal, as well as make it explicit that to be the best professional home, we must take actions to fight anti-Black racism, xenophbia, anti-immigrant discrimination, and all the arms of systemic oppression to truly support queer and trans psychologists. In line with these goals, we have two invitations.
First, we want to collect information from our membership (and people who are interested in joining the section) about what kinds of resources and programming would be valuable for queer and trans people in psychology across career stages. To serve this purpose, we are holding an online social on Tuesday, August 6th from 4-5pm EST at the upcoming 2020 APA convention. Before, during, and after this event, we hope to collect data about what folks are looking for from their participation in Section 4, and to build some resources to meet those needs. Please be on the lookout for an email on the listserv that will contain links to surveys for folks to complete about their professional needs and wants. We will circulate this survey during our APA social and you can access it through this link as well: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/APA35Section4
Second, the section Executive Committee (EC) has begun discussions about ways in which we can concretely support justice work as a section, and in particular the fight for Black queer and trans lives. I welcome any and all feedback and suggestions for ideas on how to pursue this as a collective. If anyone is interested in joining one of our EC meetings to join this discussion live, please be in touch and I can forward that information. To give feedback and suggestions by other means, please reach out to me at cflander@mtholyoke. edu.
In addition to these invitations, I encourage anyone to reach out to me with any requests, feedback, or questions you might have about the section. We will add this to our APA data to direct our future development. I cannot wait to hear more about how the section can serve emerging and established queer and trans psychologists, and how we can work together to foster a supportive and powerful professional home. I look forward to hearing from you, and I’m best contacted via email: cflander@mtholyoke.edu.
Corey
EDITOR’S NOTE
As I write this column, I reflect on how much our lives have changed since the last publication of PERSPECTIVES. Chances are most of us, if not all, have been home quite a lot these days. We learned to teach live classes remotely and to improvise to the drop of a hat, got a crash course on telehealth and now sort of like it, realized deliveries of groceries and homemade cooking can be the way of the future, and figured out, begrudgingly I must say, there are numerous (previously unrecognized) ways to be social yet physically distant from most humans we interact with on a daily basis. I enjoy spending time at home, have fulfilling work I can do remotely, and have multiple hobbies and a partner who keeps me entertained; so I haven’t felt truly lonely in these times of social distancing. Yet, I still miss the warmth and belonging I feel when I am with friends, family, and colleagues. Instinctively, human beings know there is safety in numbers, so it is no wonder, as an immigrant and queer person, that I rely so much on my communities for support to help me keep functioning well and thriving in the midst of these stressful times. I imagine many LGBTQ people are feeling the same these days, and the need for us to reach out to offer support to one another has never been greater. I am grateful for the technologies that afford us the opportunities to do just that—keep in touch, lend a hand, and remind queer folk that it gets better.
As a home for LGBTQ members of Division 35 and allies, Section 4 wants you to know we are still here, continuing the work we started, and we would love to see you at convention this week. Isn’t it great that we can still meet virtually? We invite you to join us at convention to talk about what’s happening with our LGBTQ communities nationwide, and discuss how psychologists can help bring understanding of new human/social phenomena to create solutions for the real problems of our lives. We start this issue of PERSPECTIVES with a message to you from our president, Corey Flanders, and information about the convention (pages 3 through 6). Next we feature five articles about a range of LGBTQ related topics (pages 7 to 18), a book review (pages 18 and 19), a column about the Section’s 2019 symposium on emerging areas of research in LGBTQ psychology (page 20), a column about the Section’s 2019 award recipients (pages 21 and 22), and information about awards and grants we know are of interest to our members (page 23). If I don’t see you at convention, stay safe and keep in touch. Perhaps you would like to write something for publication in our next issue of PERSPECTIVES? We would love to hear what’s on your mind these days.
Cristina
