Heaps Good: PASH.tm
By Katie Winten
We talk to PASH.tm after their official launch at The Bearded Tit last week. Its Australia’s first sexual health campaign for gay, bi and queer trans men. Check it out.
Tell us a little about PASH.tm?
The Peer Advocacy Network for the Sexual Health of Trans Masculinities (PASH.tm) is a group keen on addressing the sexual health needs of trans men and trans masculine people who have sex with men (trans MSM). We formed PASH.tm as a result of the first ever trans networking zone at the conference ‘AIDS2014’ because we saw a great need for work in this area.. We gained support from the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO) and its members, and have continued to build momentum. We’re all volunteers, doing this in our spare time with only passion to spur us on, but we have a fab time doing it!
Who are we?
We are gay, bi and queer trans men and trans masculine folk. We come from all corners of Australia and have an impressively diverse range of backgrounds including grass roots activism, community organising, health promotion and advocacy, sexual health, alcohol and drugs, media, youth and social work…
What do we believe in?
We believe that advocacy, research and health promotion is best delivered through community engagement and peer-led programs. We operate with a mentality that honours sex positivity and prioritized the destigmatisation of drug and alcohol use. We work from and contribute to a growing evidence base and we firmly believe that making sexual health campaigns relevant to minority priority populations like trans MSM is a health priority for everybody.
What’s most important to PASH.tm right now?
Right at this moment we’re crazy about the roll out of our first major national campaign: GRUNT.
GRUNT is our sexual health resource targeting gay, bi and queer trans men, and comprises of a website (www.grunt.org.au), a booklet, some posters and a postcard.
We are hosting launch events in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide over the coming months, which is super exciting. Our website and Facebook page (/PASH.tm) have been going off since they went live a few weeks ago. It’s pretty obvious to us that what we’ve created is not just good stuff, but also really necessary – our target population are accessing our content and sharing it with their networks.
How are you going about achieving that? what do you do on a day to day basis to accomplish your goals?
While all these exciting GRUNTs are shared across Australia and the globe, we’re still doing the advocacy and policy framework that comprises our bread-and-butter at PASH.tm. There are 6 of us in the working group, from WA, VIC, QLD and NSW, and we communicate online frequently and smoothly to develop our work, operating from a grassroots style framework. We work hard to build and maintain positive relationships with key organisations, researchers and senior leaders in health promotion and the HIV response. Tangibly, we present at workshops, write policy directives, submissions to health bodies, present at conferences, weigh in on medical and pharmaceutical discussions, and a stack more; go check out out the “About” and “Notes” section of our facebook page www.facebook.com/PASHtm for more content. It’s totally readable!
How are things going with it? What struggles or successes have you had?
Most of the time the response we get is extremely positive and we have started seeing a cultural shift in the understanding of how important it is to try and reflect our community diversity, even if it’s tough. Problems arise when people think they’re playing the inclusion game but haven’t really listened to what we’re saying. For example, advertising an event as open to ‘gay, bi and trans men’ when it’s really just a simple gay thing. Mixing sexualities and identities like this makes it seem like gay trans men are separate from cis gay men (cis = not tran). ‘Gay and bi men (trans-inclusive’) is better. This is why peer-advocacy is so important and it’s really crucial for everyone – from health ministers to LGBTIQA party promoters – to listen to trans voices when we advocate for meaningful
GRUNT is a huge success for us and it’s been a really long time coming.
Where would you like to be in the short term or long term? What are the long term goals?
In the short term we’re pretty focussed on GRUNT. Rolling this out and making sure it reaches the people and clinics it needs to will help gay/bi/queer trans men everywhere to feel empowered in having awesome and informed sex with men of all varieties.
Our longer term goals are to continue to build the evidence base that can be used in advocacy and to deliver programs. We’re looking at develop dedicated resources for sexual health clinicians to assist them to provide safe and inclusive care for trans MSM.