Subverting the “Default Settings” of Cis-Heteronormativity in Social Work Praxis with Trans Clients

Abstract

ABSTRACT The past several years have brought about a steep increase in hostile legislation targeting queer and trans people, specifically policies that threaten the ability of trans people to receive gender-affirming care. Social workers provide more services related to addressing psychosocial needs than any other group of mental health professionals, and as the number of trans people continues to rise, so will the need for providers who are competent in working with them. Transness is currently an identity culturally and clinically defined by suffering, but that does not need to be the case, and in an ideal future it will not be. In considering how to reconceptualize social work praxis to decenter cis-heteronormativity, the field can look to theories of disability, sexuality, gender, race, and abolition for models of how practitioners can work with trans clients from an asset-based perspective, at once more effectively supporting them and creating a less oppressive and repressive society for everyone. Social workers who identify as allies to, or a part of, the queer and trans community must move away from a posture of performativity, which often perpetuates notions of normativity, and instead work toward substantive social change by subverting the “default settings” we are all socialized into. Achieving this end requires meaningful engagement with trans people and their varied lived experiences, internal, interpersonal, and in their interfacing with institutions, as well as a commitment to challenging our society’s rigid values surrounding gender, to reconceptualize social work praxis with trans people.