Contact person: Zack Marshall
Country: Canada
Organization or group name: Gay/Bi/Queer Trans Men’s Working Group, Ontario Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance
Contact information (e-mail and telephone):
Email for Zack Marshall:
Telephone for Zack Marshall: 416-801-4447
Email for working group:
Website for working group:
Case study authors: Zack Marshall, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Ayden Scheim
Project Description
In 2004, Ontario launched the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Alliance (GMSH), a provincial coalition of gay men and allies working in the community in response to the sexual health needs of gay, bi and other men who have sex with men. The GMSH recognized at its inception that there was a serious lack of research and services for trans men who have sex with men (trans MSM) related to our sexual health. The Gay/Bi/Queer (GBQ) Trans Men’s Working Group was formed in March 2006 as part of the GMSH, to ensure that trans men were leading efforts to address this gap. We wanted to improve the sexual health of trans MSM, accounting for social determinants of health including homophobia, transphobia, and racism that impact our lives. At least 75% of the working group is composed of trans MSM from across Ontario, with additional representation from the provincial government and AIDS Service Organizations (ASOs).
The key players who helped start and operate this project were: Alex Adams, Broden Giambrone, Matt Lundie, Zack Marshall, Connor McCollum, Nik Redman, Kyle Scanlon, Ayden Scheim, Syrus Marcus Ware and Brady Yu. Frank McGee (Manager, AIDS Bureau, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care) and James Murray (Senior Policy Analyst, AIDS Bureau, Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care) along with others involved in the GMSH worked as allies to support the working group through project funding and ongoing administrative support.
The project has had four key successes:
1) Increased official inclusion of trans MSM in HIV/AIDS prevention and support programming in North America
2) The creation of Primed: The Back Pocket Guide for Trans Men and the Men Who Dig Them and the accompanying website
3) Getting Primed, a community-based needs assessment of the HIV prevention needs of trans MSM in Ontario
4) A series of trainings and presentations with service providers to increase their competency in providing sexual health services for trans MSM and their partners
As the first guide of its kind for trans MSM, Primed: The Back Pocket Guide for Trans Men and the Men Who Dig Them (Primed) has been an essential resource for trans MSM communities and has received worldwide attention. Primed, which was officially produced in English and (Canadian) French, has been adapted into Korean, Australian English, German, French, Russian, Hebrew, and Norwegian by trans community members internationally. Because of its popularity, the GMSH has funded three print-runs and the resource has been added to a national distribution program run by the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange.
While working on Primed, the GMSH also provided funding to conduct a community-based needs assessment to better understand the HIV-related experiences, knowledge, risks, and resource needs of trans MSM in Ontario. Based on the results of the needs assessment, we developed a series of recommendations focused on improving HIV prevention work with trans MSM. Results were published in the report: Getting Primed: Informing HIV Prevention with Gay/Bi/Queer Trans Men in Ontario (Adams, Lundie, Marshall, Pires, Scanlon, Scheim, & Smith, 2008).
We have been invited to present our findings at conferences and summits for researchers, educators, service providers and community members, such as Gender Odyssey (Seattle, 2007), the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference (2008), the International AIDS Conference (Mexico City, 2008), Europride (Stockholm, 2008),, , and the Canadian AIDS Society Skills-Building Summit (Montreal, 2010). We have also hosted workshops for service providers in Ontario in order to build capacity amongst ASOs and other service providers to work with trans MSM communities. We have witnessed concrete changes inspired by our work, including the development of trans-specific sexual health kits by ASOs, inclusion of trans men in gay men’s HIV research (such as the national M-Track study), and the creation of HIV prevention resources, programming, and research for trans MSM in North American contexts (such as Trannywood Films; UCSF Centre for AIDS Prevention Studies; San Francisco Stop AIDS Project, Street Outreach Services).
Perhaps the most significant contribution that the GBQ Trans Men’s Working Group has made is that trans MSM now have accurate and detailed information about HIV prevention and living healthier with HIV/AIDS. When we first began working on Primed, there was virtually no HIV prevention information for trans MSM. After the development and dissemination of Primed, and its subsequent translation into multiple languages, essential HIV prevention information is now available to our communities. The strategic use of images of racialized trans MSM in Primed has also helped to ensure that it is welcoming to a marginalized subgroup within the larger community of trans MSM.
The project has faced the following challenges:
1) Ensuring representation of diverse trans MSM: While our group includes several members from racialized trans communities, we continue to seek additional participation of racialized trans MSM in our work. As an HIV prevention project, our group also seeks increased involvement of seropositive trans MSM and we aim for broader representation from across our province, including smaller cities and rural communities.
2) Sustainability: The project is a part of the broader GMSH network. As such, we have received access to resources that supports our meetings and travel costs as well as financial support for discrete projects including Primed and Getting Primed. We remain mindful of broader impacts of decreased funding in relation to gay men and HIV on our work. Another important factor is that most trans members of the working group participate as volunteers. This has meant that often work has taken longer than initially anticipated, and management of staff has been difficult. The commitment and personal engagement of working group members has been key to the success of our projects.
The group is currently working on funding applications for a larger qualitative research project to investigate the situations, cultural practices and discourses, and safer sex decision making that increase or reduce HIV risk among trans MSM in Ontario. We are also working to support the implementation of more social-educational programming for trans MSM in the hopes of building on our history of creative, sexy resources for our communities.