Exploring Queer & Trans Joy

SOWK 4545 also incorporates developmental case studies that approximate the experience of working with clients and systems that evolve over the course of the therapeutic relationship. During the week focused on policy, for instance, a trans “client” shares how the state and national discourse on trans rights affects them.

“When therapists and clinicians don’t have awareness of the [LGBTQ+] community and the struggles it goes through, it is so harmful,” says Teaching Assistant Max K., MSW ’23, who discussed Lama Rod Owens' ideas around therapy and liberation with the class. “If you’re queer or trans or pan or bi, if you’re the only person in your group within that community, everyone is going to look to you as if you’re the encyclopedia for the community. It’s the same thing for race or ethnicity.”

“People need to do their own antioppressive work” rather than relying on people with marginalized or oppressed identities to do it for them, Max adds. “When students sign up to take this class, it says they’re willing to do the work.”

The course was piloted for students in the MSW@Denver online MSW program in the fall, and this spring it will be offered in the Denver Campus MSW program as well. The geographic diversity of students in the MSW@Denver course has enhanced the class experience, Walls says. “It’s great to have people talk about what’s happening in their state,” he says. “It reinforces how important it is that social work students think about the political context they’re practicing in.”

Holloway agrees. “Most of my students are living in Southern states where policies are impacting queer and trans people more,” he says. “It’s been really interesting to hear students grapple with the policies in their states.”

The course content spans micro and macro practice and covers emergent policy topics such as anti-trans legislation as well as issues such as weight stigma and anti-fatness; diverse types of relationships, such as polyamory; and mutual aid and imagining a future that emphasizes collective care.

“I’m a queer and trans person, and the class has felt very healing for me,” Holloway says. “This is a class I wish I would have had the opportunity to take as an MSW student. Even though the course is an LGBTQ course, there’s so much depth that goes beyond most courses I’ve ever taken or taught.”

Courses like SOWK 4545 are needed, Holloway adds, because “queer and trans people are everywhere and exist in all spaces. Having this well-rounded education will benefit every social worker in our program.”