BIPOC Community Relations Policy
Version 1.0. Last updated 27 April 2022.
Written by Jada Gannon-Day
Acknowledgements: With thanks to Laura Horak, Evie Johnny Ruddy, Kate Higginson, Kit Chokly, Cara Tierney, and Cáel Keegan, along with the TMP’s working groups on Decentering Whiteness and Indigenous consultations, for contributing ideas, discussion time and editorial suggestions to this policy in 2021–22.
Table of contents
1. Context: Situating the Transgender Media Lab
3. Implementation: Guidelines and Protocols
3.1. Transgender Media Portal Database and Website
3.2. BIPOC Trans Filmmakers Page
3.4. Social Media and Public Presence
1. Context: Situating the Transgender Media Lab
We recognize that the Transgender Media Lab and its primary research project, the Transgender Media Portal, are operating within a settler colonial structure, built upon the exploitation of the land, labour, and bodies of Black and Indigenous peoples and other people of colour. The Transgender Media Lab, based at a Canadian university, operates from a basis of institutional power and privilege on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin-Anishinaabe territory, and thus must remain actively and consciously committed to anti-racist and anti-colonial action within our lab, our external initiatives, and the greater community.
We recognize that the oppression, exploitation, and criminalization of BIPOC people is not a passive or past event, but an ongoing process with a structural basis. The implications of these structures are far-reaching and intrinsically tied to our lab’s work and public presence. As they impact us as community and team members, artists, and consumers, these structures define the nature and role of our continued work.
This policy aims to not only acknowledge but also to address our institutional position and subsequent responsibility to BIPOC communities and individuals, to ensure our position not as passive observers of oppression but as active players in anti-oppressive work. The goal of this policy is not completeness, nor excusal, but to lay a foundation and to make clear, plan, and sustain our values in our work.
2. Guiding Principles
- Highlighting: The Transgender Media Lab prioritizes the scholarship, media, and campaigns of BIPOC trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, & gender-nonconforming individuals.
- Redirection: The Transgender Media Lab will use its institutional positionality and resources to bring attention to, support, and corroborate the work and activism of BIPOC trans creators and community members.
- Orientation: As a project which is receiving grant funding from academic and government sources, we ethically orient towards BIPOC communities. We use our position to challenge systems of domination, rather than engaging in them.
- Acknowledgement: The Transgender Media Lab internally and publicly recognizes and effectively compensates the labour of BIPOC people who we may consult and engage with. We are committed to representing and valuing the emotional and mental labour of BIPOC artists and community members.
- Recognition: We are committed to rejecting Western settler epistemology as the sole method of conceptualising gender and producing cultural identity. The Transgender Media Lab recognizes Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous communities’ definitions and codings of their own identities.
- Transparency: We accurately and honestly represent our project and the work associated with the development and management of the Transgender Media Portal to challenge the institutional division between our lab and the communities we aim to represent. We will make our intentions and values known.
- Receptiveness: The Transgender Media Lab refuses to be a static organization. We will be proactive and not reactive in our efforts to make ourselves available to community feedback on our actions, orientation, and structure. We will take necessary steps to correct any behaviour that deviates from our core value system.
- Consciousness: The Transgender Media Lab and its members will be conscious in their interactions with BIPOC individuals and communities; we are aware of our internal and external engagements with BIPOC people and organizations and will take active steps to prevent objectification, tokenism, and other relational microaggressions.
- Amplification: The Transgender Media Lab will authentically represent BIPOC trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, & gender-nonconforming artists. We will engage with and highlight BIPOC trans creators and their content, rather than speaking for them.
- Authenticity: The Transgender Media Lab challenges the dehumanizing and eliminatory nature of colonial white supremacy by prioritizing the humanity of BIPOC trans artists. We will represent the unique, varied, and complex experiences of BIPOC trans, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, & gender-nonconforming people beyond abstract concepts and debates, instead representing real and meaningful experiences of complete people.
3. Implementation: Guidelines and Protocols
We will implement and maintain our values within multiple areas, including our website, public presence, internal operations, and community engagements. These plans, however, are based on the current status and position of the Transgender Media Portal and thus, are to be continuously updated as our structure, presence, and operations change.
3.1. Transgender Media Portal Database and Website
As the Transgender Media Portal develops new content and applications, we will represent our solidarity with and commitment to BIPOC trans artists within our database and on our websites. In recognizing our guiding principles and positionality, we will take steps to ensure that the Transgender Media Portal is consistently developed in accordance with the needs of BIPOC trans people in mind, with respect for BIPOC trans activists, organizations, and communities.
Some of the steps involved in this commitment include:
- Representing the faces of Black, Brown and Indigenous trans creators, and actively taking steps to decenter whiteness on the TMP and TML websites.
- Using the News page on the Transgender Media Lab website and our social media feeds to make statements on social issues, injustices, and movements relevant to BIPOC trans artists. This means sharing and properly citing information from the artists and activists engaged in the issues and prioritising information from within the communities and movements. In order to examine the relevant issues and determine when and whether we will make collective statements in them, we commit to devoting enough time within our team meetings to these important discussions.
- Keeping our “Support Trans Artists” page up-to-date and accessible to encourage users to financially support BIPOC trans artists and community organisations.
- Creating and maintaining our “Find Support” webpage that lists up-to-date resources and support available for trans artists.
3.2. BIPOC Trans Filmmakers Page
3.2.1. Statement of Intent
The BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page first and foremost works to bring the names and work of BIPOC trans and Two Spirit artists to the forefront of our project. This list challenges the history within trans media of white trans artists being disproportionately represented over BIPOC trans artists. This list works to give those marginalized deserved recognition and to acknowledge the labour that is often undervalued within dominant society. This is also the list that we offer when festivals or organizations ask us for recommendations of trans filmmakers. This is part of our project’s ongoing effort to promote and centre BIPOC trans artists not just on this page but throughout our website, database, and social media platforms.
3.2.2. Policies
Representation is not a singular, outward act, but a commitment to a larger internal and external process. The Transgender Media Lab is committed to not only hosting the BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page, but to actively maintaining the page to accurately represent and amplify the voices of BIPOC trans creators, activists, and community members. We will do this by:
- Regularly updating the BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page with new artists that we become aware of (from our research, archiving of trans film festival programs, and requests or materials received from new artists and users of the database).
- Being conscious of who we are publicly promoting. If we become aware that a person or institution we are promoting is no longer in line with our core values or is engaging in antagonistic behaviour with BIPOC communities and individuals, we will remove them from our website. Also, if a filmmaker requests to be removed from our website, we will promptly remove them.
- Taking necessary steps to accurately represent diverse and complex cultural identities on our BIPOC Filmmakers page and within the TMP database.
- Using culturally-specific terminology, as requested.
- Allowing and encouraging filmmakers to correct, update, and challenge the language, descriptions, and labels we have used.
- Including Two-Spirit people, and other culturally-specific gender identities, in our database, while recognizing that Two-Spirit identity is complex and culturally-specific. Building a page dedicated to Two-Spirit filmmakers both to highlight artists and recognize Two-Spirit people who do not identify as trans.
- Making space for open and closed identity labels. To encourage self-identification while maintaining searchability, as we develop the database and update the BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page, we will commit to using both closed vocabularies (with limited, pre-defined terms) and open vocabularies (with unlimited options) for describing the gender and race/ethnicity of filmmakers.
- Ensuring that BIPOC trans artists have the ability to choose the language and terms used to describe their identity on our BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page and database.
- If we have direct contact with the filmmaker, we will send them a survey where they will be given the opportunity to identify themselves as they see fit.
- If we do not have direct contact with the filmmaker, we will use the language with which they self-identify on their own website, social media platforms, and/or in sanctioned interviews.
- If an artist contacts us to change or update terminology, we will promptly update their biography or other data on the BIPOC Trans Filmmakers page and in the TMP database.
3.3. Template
We have developed a standard template for writing biographies for the artists included on our BIPOC Trans Filmmakers webpage.
The template includes the following information:
- Name
- Pronouns in parentheses
- An initial sentence which starts with their name, followed by their title/role and identity information. (e.g., Kat Blaque is a Black trans illustrator and youtuber).
- A subsequent sentence with additional relevant information (if available), including what type of artist they are or what their overall work represents. We want to limit bios to a total length of 3 lines.
- List of up to 3 recent works. Format for this is: “Films Include:..” followed by the film titles (hyperlinked if possible) and the release year in parentheses. We can include a title that is not yet released. For those with many years of experience that cannot be encapsulated by listing 3 recent films, we will add a note encouraging users to check out their other works.
- In our definition of “film,” we include any audiovisual-type production, including genres like youtube videos. If the artist creates other types of media works we can also list these (e.g., “Works include…” instead of “Films include…”).
- We hyperlink the works wherever possible to make them easily accessible for people visiting our page.
- Lastly, whenever possible, we add a link to the artist’s website, distributor, IMDb and/or social media platforms (generally up to two links per listing).
Example:
Carmen LoBue
(they/them) Carmen LoBue is a queer nonbinary Afro-Pilipinx American filmmaker. Works include, but are not limited to, Cheer Up Charlie (2019), Will You…Hold My Hair Back?” (2020), and Pink & Blue (2021). Website.
3.4. Social Media and Public Presence
The Transgender Media Portal’s public presence impacts both our organization and our greater communities. The Transgender Media Portal will take the following steps to reflect our core values in our engagement with social media (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook):
- Using our social media platforms to highlight the work and amplify the voices of BIPOC trans artists.
- Using our public platforms to make statements on social issues, injustices, and movements relevant to BIPOC trans artists.
- Sharing, reposting, tagging, and linking to community activists, artists, and organizations.
- Promoting BIPOC trans artists and organizations using our “Support Trans Artists” and “Find Support” web pages.
- Being conscious of who we are directly and indirectly promoting through shares, follows, reposts, and likes.
- Not sharing images and posts with racist language, imagery, and connotations.
- Not following, sharing from, or engaging with creators with antagonistic or hateful relationships with BIPOC individuals and communities.
3.5. Community Engagement
As a community-focused research project, the Transgender Media Lab’s commitments extend beyond our audience and into the greater communities that we aim to represent and support. The Transgender Media Lab strives to build and maintain positive and collaborative relationships with BIPOC trans communities, organizations, and community members. We will do so by:
- Ensuring that we value the labour of BIPOC individuals and groups, and the emotional impact of dealing with and discussing racism. If we ask for labour from BIPOC individuals, that labour will be acknowledged, valued, and compensated.
- Recognizing the unique needs and diverse forms of compensation, such as moneyless trade within Indigenous communities, we will make diverse forms of compensation available and respect the cultural protocols involved and the individual preferences of the recipient.
- Being available and receptive to feedback; remaining willing to update, alter, or remove policies, values, and public posts if they are challenged by community members.
- Engaging with BIPOC people in ways that do not reduce them to their racial or ethnic identities. We want to see them as whole individuals and not tokenize or engage in any other microaggressions that would reduce them to their ethnic or racial identity. At this point in time we don't have specific steps implemented for ensuring this, just an ethic or commitment towards not letting it happen.
- We plan on instituting transparency by making sure both our BIPOC community relations policy and our BIPOC Trans Filmmakers webpage statement of intent are public (on our website) so that this background is available to anyone interested. We hope this will help bridge gaps between the project and the public, and allow for direct community feedback on our policies and improvements to these in the future.
3.6. Maintaining Group Values
The Transgender Media Lab is relatively new (founded in December 2019) and hired its first full group of team members for the 2021–22 academic year. The lab is in the process of developing and implementing an expanded set of core values to foster a safe environment for members of the lab and the general public. We recognize that it is important that these values be reconsidered, updated, and continuously implemented as the project and team continue to expand. We will do this by:
- Implementing community feedback on the Transgender Media Lab’s reports, policies, descriptions, and other team documents.
- Prioritising the feedback of BIPOC communities, community members, and activists.
- Making our policies available and accessible to the public wherever possible.
- Maintaining BIPOC and Indigenous-specific committees within the lab which have Black and Indigenous members. These committees will meet together and separately to review the Transgender Media Portal database, our public presence, internal trends, and community engagements, and will provide updates and guidance to the larger TML team.
- Training team members to engage consciously and appropriately with Indigenous communities (e.g. Carleton’s Kinàmàgawin Indigenous Learning Certificate).
- Upholding Indigenous language, behaviour, and identification standards, with guidance from our Indigenous consultations committee.