Every day, LGBTQ students ask this question within the school system. This book shines a light on the marginalization and bullying faced by LGBTQ youth, offering a new conceptualization of school safety. Donn Short treats students as the experts on what happens in their schools, giving them a chance to speak for themselves. They identify what it would take to make a school truly safe--insightfully explaining that safety doesn’t come merely from security cameras, ID tags, and dress codes, but from a culture that values equity and social justice. Revealing the reality of going to school in an environment that implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) endorses homophobia, heterosexism, and heteronormativity, the students share their ideas about how to change school culture. They envision a future in which LGBTQ youth are an expected, respected, and celebrated part of school life. Am I Safe Here? explores what needs to be done to create equitable and inclusive schools--but it is not strictly about formal professional development plans. Rather, it draws from the informal, spontaneous, timely, and relevant words of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students to show that nothing less than a total culture change is needed.

Scholarship on sexual minority (SM) and transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) psychology has exploded in recent years, with unprecedented impact on practitioners and researchers, as well as the social and political compass of the nation. At the same time, best practices for mental health professionals who work with SM and TGNC clients continue to evolve rapidly. Experts in the field examine how the concepts of gender and sexual orientation are both socioculturally-constructed and can be informed by biologically-focused research, thus setting the stage for flexible, affirmative mental health services. Chapters cover a range of practice-focused, theoretical, and empirically-based contemporary perspectives, while highlighting themes that include an appreciation for complexity in identity, minority stress, and stigma management.

This is both a personal book that offers an account of the author's own trans* identity and a deeply engaged study of trans* collegians that reveals the complexities of trans* identities, and how these students navigate the trans* oppression present throughout society and their institutions, create community and resilience, and establish meaning and control in a world that assumes binary genders. This book is addressed as much to trans* students themselves - offering them a frame to understand the genders that mark them as different and to address the feelings brought on by the weight of that difference - as it is to faculty, student affairs professionals, and college administrators, opening up the implications for the classroom and the wider campus.

Written by and for trans and non-binary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, Written on the Body offers support, guidance and hope for those who struggle to find safety at home, in the body, and other unwelcoming places. This collection of letters written to body parts weaves together narratives of gender, identity, and abuse. It is the coming together of those who have been fragmented and often met with disbelief. The book holds the concerns and truths that many trans people share while offering space for dialogue and reclamation.