Educational Resources

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GenderFail, A Decade of Queer and Trans Liberatory Writings is an anthology publication featuring 20 essays spanning a decade of work by GenderFail Press. These 324 pages encompass the best of our ongoing work. If you are new to GenderFail this is the perfect publication to start to explore our work.

At the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic we released our first GenderFail Reader. This first edition compiled essays from previously published zines and other written essays by Be Oakley and their partner Yvonne LeBien. In the last three years they have published four volumes of their GenderFail Reader series. This book is a capstone of all four volumes, including essays, artworks and ideas that have helped to formulate GenderFail during the last 10 years of the project. These essays speak to the interests, research and passions that drive GenderFail and highlight the powerful agency behind self and small publishing. Their hope is that these essays inspire you to future actions, dreams, hopes and new worlds that center people and communities fighting for a world without colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism and heteronormative oppression.

This flyer offers a summary of a joint OCASI PSI and ACAS (Asian Community AIDS Services) event entitled "What's Goin On in Ontario Schools?". This resource addresses concerns within newcomer communities around 2SLGBTQIA+ policies in schools. The speakers from the virtual event (watch the recording here) were Christine Hsu, Narina Nagra, Alice Te, and gitanjali lena.

As a follow up to our webinar "What's Going On in Ontario Schools", hosted in partnership with ACAS, OCASI PSI welcomed three wonderful speakers on March 21 to continue discussing the impact of recent transphobic legislation in several Canadian provinces, and how to support queer/trans people in our communities in the midst of transphobia and homophobia. Allos Abis, Noon Ghunna, and Beverly Bain offer important insights on sociopolitical dynamics between newcomer communities and the far-right effort to garner support for transphobic and homophobic legislation and policies. They also present perspectives that consider the bigger picture of transphobia and homophobia within and surrounding newcomer communities. 

This joint OCASI-PSI and ACAS (Asian Community AIDS Services) was held on February 1st 2024 and invited four local experts to discuss and address concerns and disinformation among newcomer and diaspora communities around trans and nonbinary curriculum, policy, and practice in Ontario schools. 

The attached recorded includes presentations from three out of four of the event's speakers, responding to questions, such as: 

How has recent legislation in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick around parental consent impacted Ontario?

What are common myths circulating within newcomer communities around LGBTQIA+ content in schools?

How can we support queer/trans youth in schools as parents/community members?

Why are some parents uncomfortable with gender neutral facilities in schools?

Where does fear/ resistance to inclusive school policies come from?

For reasons of necessity, urgency, and sometimes choice, queer Africans cross borders and find their lives unfolding in diasporic spaces. Refugee claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity persecution make up 12% of all refugee cases in Canada, with queer African refugees constituting the largest group within this category. With this in mind, we now have to ask, “what kind of history will be written about the collision between queer Africans dislocated from post-colonial nations and the Canadian settler nation?” In this study, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the individual lived experiences of queer African refugees, with a focus on the intricate realignment of sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual politics, and sexual desire that inevitably emerges through forced migration and the refugee process in Canada. The deep meaning of life experiences is captured in the participants’ own words, providing detailed, in-depth insights into the complexities of their lives, their reflections, and their subsequent responses.

These narratives call attention to the specific features of queer African refugees, who test the limits of the current homonational refugee apparatus. Participants’ experiences of resisting social roles, structures, identities, and expectations that limit queer African refugees and keep them “in their place,” both in their countries of origin and in Canada, are interrogated. The construction of boundaries that decide who belongs and deserves protection within Canada and who does not provides a foundation for engaging in research as a practice of freedom, in order to counter the global narrative of refugee life that excludes queer Africans.

The findings in this research require us to look at practices of exclusion and inclusion in the Canadian refugee system and the tensions that emerge for queer African claimants. In the end, we are left with strategies for how to engage with the politics of knowledge production and advocate for an agenda of social justice and transformation for queer Africans globally.

In 2023, the City of Toronto collaborated with Social Planning Toronto to initiate a capacity-building project. Through this collaboration, Social Planning Toronto developed a "Community Playbook" designed to assist community leaders with concrete knowledge and tools they could use in their local community engagement work across the city. The Community Playbook is an interactive guide with more than 100 pages of resources for residents involved in community engagement projects within their respective networks and neighborhoods to help them in their planning, engagement, funding applications, project coordination, and more. It also incorporates intersectional lens on queerness, gender, race, and class for community engagement projects.

The Community Playbook is not intended to be an exhaustive document but rather a dynamic and interactive resource that supports and motivates community leaders in delivering and monitoring community engagement activities, projects, and events. It helps create engagement strategies and reinforces connections among leaders and community members. 

In this interactive webinar, Anya, and Stephanie discuss gender identity and autism, and talk about ways to support your queer and gender-diverse autistic children.

Stephanie is a cis-gender social worker who has years of experience working with autistic youth, teens and adults, and their families.

Anya is a non-binary person, consultant, and educator who has years of experience supporting queer and gender-diverse youth, adults, and families in the 2-SLGBTQIA+ community. Anya brings a genuine and authentic voice to this discussion to further support families along their journey to understand and affirm their children.

Together, they provide with the language and skills to help service providers build strategies for supporting, children to live their authentic selves.  

This webinar is appropriate for parents and caregivers of autistic youth as well as professionals working with autistic youth.

In this webinar organized by OCASI-PSI in December 2023, psychotherapist, writer, public speaker, and community organizer Rahim Thawer (he/him) explores the tensions that affect the mental health of 2SLGBTQIA+ Muslims, including managing homophobia and coming out, reconciling sexuality and faith-based identities, both being critical of Islam and fighting Islamophobia, seeking and creating affirming spaces, acculturating as asylum seekers and Canadian-born 2SLGBTQIA+ Muslims, and religious-cultural factors affecting access/understanding of mental health services. Rahim's talk draws on academic literature, personal lived experience, and community organizing work with two queer Muslim groups based in Canada. 

This infographics summarizes the key points of 3 articles on supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ Muslims authored by Rahim Thawer and published in Medium in 2022 & 2023. It is created by Seyhan Kogukoglu from Riverdale Immigrant Women's Centre in collaboration with the OCASI-PSI team. While it is meant to complement the 2SLGBTQIA+ Muslims and Mental Health webinar by Rahim Thawer, it can be used as a stand alone resource as well. The infographics includes publicly accessible articles and videos on 2SLGBTQIA+ Muslims. 

This webinar was organized by From Borders to Belonging and took place on November 2nd, 2023. 

The webinar begins with a cross-country check in. Advocates will share what they are witnessing in their cities and its impacts. We see that the current wave of Anti-2SLGBTQI hate is well organized and well funded. Similar strategies are being deployed in Canada and internationally. Locally, we see that newcomer communities are being targeted with misinformation. We raise the question of how to address the current rise of Anti-2SLGBTQI hate without further entrenching harmful xenophobic and colonial discourses of racialized communities as “backwards” and threats to a presumed progressive Canada.

Our panelists will then share strategies for organizations and invite discussion of how we can organize collaborations and coalitions that promote respect and safety and counter hate.