Publications

Peer support from transgender and gender-diverse people who have used services themselves is increasingly valued, but rarely studied systematically. This article reanalyses qualitative data from virtual, semi-structured interviews with 35 transgender and gender-diverse people in two Canadian cities who had sought, received, or provided peer support, using an abductive grounded theory approach informed by critical resilience and intersectional scholarship. The analysis suggests peers strengthen gender-affirming care by validating diverse bodies and experiences in health decisions, building networks of safety, support, and advocacy beyond formal services, and opening space to challenge and reshape health systems. The authors use this to argue for community-driven gender-affirming care.

How people feel about their own genitals shapes their sexual satisfaction, but researchers had not examined whether it also colours what they believe their partner feels. Two studies, with 475 and 234 participants, tested links between genital self-image and both personal and perceived partner sexual satisfaction. The second study additionally examined whether exposure to a mindfulness intervention changed those links. In both samples, a more negative genital self-image was significantly associated with lower satisfaction for oneself and lower perceived partner satisfaction, both at the time of measurement and across a two-week period. Mindfulness exposure did not moderate the pattern.

Peer researchers, hired for their lived experience, are increasingly common, but their own perspectives are seldom examined. This participatory qualitative project interviewed 34 people who had worked as peer researchers across four intersecting communities: mental health service users, consumers and survivors; people who use drugs; racialized people; and trans and non-binary people. Many described racism, transphobia, ableism, and classism from colleagues and institutions, alongside pressure to perform academic professionalism while representing communities their workplaces disparaged. Participants resisted in various ways, sometimes allowing themselves to be tokenized in hopes of community benefit, and were harmed again when those benefits never arrived.

Epidemics land unevenly, and COVID-19 was no exception. Engage-COVID-19, a mixed methods study in Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal, included two rounds of qualitative interviews between November 2020 and October 2021 with 93 gay, bisexual, queer and other men who have sex with men. Fifty-nine identified as Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour, and they described repeated discrimination during the pandemic. Participants did not report discrimination tied to sexual identity, but racism shaped how they were treated within sexual networks. East Asian and Black participants most often reported verbal harassment in public and online, including for wearing masks.

Photovoice hands cameras to community members to surface strengths and inequities, and COVID-19 pushed the method online. Reflecting on a large study of 110 men's perspectives on equitable, sustainable intimate partner relationships, this article weighs the case for and against virtual photovoice across three themes. Online work widened recruitment and cut data collection costs, but introduced phishing risks and uneven internet literacy. Participation itself changed, with some sourcing third-party or archived images, choosing audio-only interviews, or restricting photo use. Large multi-site datasets raised fresh analysis questions. The authors expect a continuum of virtual, hybrid and in-person approaches.