"Family Takes Care of Family": Transgender Social Workers' Experiences In Practice

Background and Purpose: Social work education, theory, and practice often engages identity differences as something social workers will encounter in practice, rather than something they themselves might hold. This reveals a core assumption of the profession: social workers are taken for granted as being from only majoritarian groups. This project sought to trouble this a priori assumption by exploring the experiences of transgender social workers, with the goal that understanding their unique perspectives could offer a pathway towards understanding how we might work across difference and understand the differential impacts of our current moment of societal change.

Methods: This hermeneutic phenomenological project involved in-depth interviews with 20 practicing social workers, who were selectively chosen for maximum variation. This project primarily sought to answer the research question: “how do transgender social workers experience intersubjectivity in their practice?” This resulted in three primary themes: Authenticity as “breathing room,” “Land mines” and other intersubjective fractures, and “Family takes care of family”: intersubjectivit in the trans-trans dyad.

Results: Three primary themes arose from the analysis. First, participants highlighted how central authenticity was in their practice, expressing that it created “breathing room,” a sense of spaciousness that not only allowed them to practice differently but also allowed for a different type of intersubejctive experience. They also noted several experiences of intersubjective ruptures, which they experienced as “land mines” or being “thrown off track.” Many of these ruptures stemmed from a core experience of visibility as fracturing, with transition in particular being experienced as a point of potential rupture. Finally, participants highlighted the experience of intersubjective connection as being in the “right temperature water.” This connection was particularly potent between trans practitioners and trans clients, creating a strong sense that “family takes care of family.”

Conclusions and Implications:Ultimately, trans practitioners have experiences in practice that, while striking, are not unique to them: as one participant expressed, transition allows one to “see the code in the Matrix,” but this ability isn’t just available to trans social workers. Instead, trans social workers’ experiences make differently apparent the core role authenticity, connection, and recognition play in the social work relationship. Therefore, this research illustrates a potent way social work scholarship might re-define issues: by starting from the point of view of an often-overlooked population of practitioners, it is possible to make critical issues clear in a new way.