COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL HEALTH
HAVING A SOCIAL LIFE THAT MEETS OUR PERSONAL NEEDS IS IMPORTANT TO OUR OVERALL HEALTH AND HAPPINESS
It’s not always easy to find friends that we can share important parts of our lives
with. This can become even harder when we can’t or don’t want to talk about our
sexual or romantic lives.
We may feel like we aren’t being honest enough with our family or people in our social circle, classmates, or colleagues. On the other hand, we may feel shunned by guys who are in the gay or queer ‘scene’ for being discreet or less out. This isolation can make it feel like being less out makes us less worthy or less-than.
This leaves us in an in-between space where we feel isolated and unwelcome on all sides.
“When I was going through my breakup, my friends and family would see that I’m very sad but had no idea why and I couldn’t talk about it with them because I wasn’t out which made me even more sad”
Community member in Vancouver
Not having traditional support systems like family or school friends to turn to, we
need other support systems that can be understanding of our unique stresses and
struggles. Being less out shouldn’t determine how accepted we feel in GBT2Q
communities, and this is why we think it’s so important to build empathy and
understanding about different ways to be out and degrees of outness.
LET’S TALK IT OUT
Let’s Talk it Out is an interactive workshop that aims to challenge participants’
assumptions of and deepens understanding of how GBT2Q communities
experience outness.
When we talk about outness as a binary– ‘out’ vs ‘not out’– do we take into
account that we make choices every day to be out to the new people that we
meet? Do we consider that in different places and in certain situations it’s
unsafe to share that sexual selves? That our family and culture shape how we
think about being out? That we may not feel comfortable telling a doctor or
nurse about our sex lives, and how that may affect the medical advise, services,
and treatment, we get?
Let’s Talk it Out builds compassion and develops skills for navigating outness
for all GBT2Q community members, regardless of our relationship to outness.
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
SCHEDULED WORKSHOPS
We delivered 13 Let’s Talk it Out workshops to community members and service providers from February 2020 to August 2020.
Check out HIM’s Events and Workshops calendar for other social groups.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at outness@checkhimout.ca if you have any questions.
WANT TO HAVE A LET’S TALK IT OUT WORKSHOP
IN YOUR COMMUNITY?
We look forward to continuing the conversation beyond HIM. We want to deliver
or support other GBT2Q organizations in delivering Let’s Talk it Out in your
communities.
Interested in Delivering Let’s Talk it Out Yourself?
HIM has developed a standardized facilitation guide and Powerpoint presentation free to community organizations that share HIM’s values and that can be scaled, adapted, and tailored to different contexts.
Are you a BC organization in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, or near Kelowna, Prince George, or Victoria? HIM has GBT2Q facilitators across BC trained to deliver Let’s Talk it Out.
If you are interested in using our facilitation guide for workshops in your communities, or if you are interested in hosting HIM facilitators to deliver this workshop, send an email to outness@checkhimout.ca
LET’S TALK IT OUT COMMUNITY DIALOGUE
Let’s keep the conversation going! HIM will be hosting a community dialogue in the coming months on outness and some lessons learned from OutsideIN.
Stay tuned for more information!