This session is an introduction to the 2024–25 UUA Common Read, Authentic Selves, which highlights the stories of thirty-five people and many of their families. It establishes the group’s covenant and uses videos, exercises, and discussion questions to provide a basic understanding of sex, gender, and gender identity, allowing participants to begin the subsequent sessions with a common understanding of concepts that may be new to some.

As participants arrive, we suggest that you have Shea Diamond’s (she/her, name pronounced SHE-UH) section of the Authentic Selves YouTube playlist playing in the background. If you do not wish to use the entire playlist, please consider having the videos for “Seen if All” and “Presence of a Legend” playing on repeat.

ShaGasyia “Shea” Diamond is a singer and transgender advocate.

Materials

• Laptop or other way to show videos
• Chalice and a way to light it
• Name tags and markers
• Copies of Handout 1-1: The 8 Guidelines for Equity and Inclusion, and Covenant; Handout 1-2: Some Definitions; and the multi-page packet, Handout 1-3: Understanding Privilege
• Pencils or pens
• Blank paper for journaling
• Pocket folders

Preparation

• Prepare a handout, sheet of newsprint, or slide with the words of the chalice lighting.
• Print out a color copy of the Gender Unicorn for each participant, or display the image for everyone to see.
• If you know that some members of your group are trans or nonbinary, share Handout 1-3: Understanding Privilege in advance, because some may find it dysphoric or triggering. Tell them they will have options to (a) skip part of the exercise, as indicated on the handout; (b) listen or journal quietly while the rest of the group works through it, or (c) leave the room during that exercise. They need not decide in advance whether to leave or stay, but make sure they know in advance that they will have the choice.
• Prepare a handout, sheet of newsprint, or slide with these discussion questions for the Understanding Privilege activity:
  • Did you learn anything about yourself and the privileges you might have when reading the checklists?
  • Did it change your perceptions on issues affecting the transgender umbrella of communities?
  • Which item in the list surprised you, by uncovering a hidden privilege you either have or do not have?
• If your institutional culture or the members of your group are sensitive to, or at risk of being triggered by, alcohol and drinking culture, consider whether to skip the second video in the Conversation about Contrasts activity, the whiskey commercial.
• Prepare to show the videos as directed by the links provided in the curriculum.

Session at a Glance

Chalice Lighting (5 min.)

Ask people to make name tags for themselves as they arrive, and invite them to share their pronouns on their name tags. Before moving on to the chalice lighting, ask if anyone requests that the name or pronouns they have shared be kept confidential within the group during participation (this is an important protection for transgender or nonbinary people who might not be out publicly).

Display or distribute this chalice lighting text written by UUA minister and transgender leader Julián Jamaica Soto. It is written as a call and response, but you can also invite participants to go around the circle, each reading a line in turn.

Leader or first speaker: All that we are, together and individually, is part of the abundance of the universe.

People or second speaker: We are made of stars. We are made of earth.

Leader or third speaker: All that we have comes from earth, from the labor of those in our communities...

People or fourth speaker: ...from the cities, farms, and oceans that enliven us. The world, and those who live in it.

Leader or fifth speaker: We are surrounded by blessing, by grace, and by possibilities.

People or sixth speaker: We are reflected in every other human being.

Leader or seventh speaker: We respect and honor one another’s differences.

People or eighth speaker: We celebrate our interbeing with abundance and the practice of generosity.

Everyone in unison, or ninth speaker: We light this chalice together.

Light the chalice.

Welcoming In (10 min.)

Open with a check-in and introductions, inviting people to share their name, their pronouns, and what brought them to this session today in a single short sentence. It should look something like this:

“Hi, my name is Ama. My pronouns are ze/zey, and I am here today because I want to learn more about transgender people.”

or

“My name is Bow and I do not use pronouns. I came today because I enjoyed this book and wanted to discuss it.”

Covenant: Setting the Table for Healthy Engagement (15 min.)

This section will establish the covenant for all four sessions. Start by saying something like:

When we engage in community with each other, we center that engagement like we are the tides in a body of water. We come forward to speak, but then we withdraw to allow others to come forward to speak, each in turn, until all have had an opportunity to share. Like water, we move forward in gentleness and withdraw to allow more waves of transformation to keep brushing our communal shore.

In doing this we do not seek agreement with others, and our goal is never to change someone else, but to each do our own work in seeking truth and understanding. We create a space to hear, to listen with our minds and our hearts, allowing others to seek their own places of authenticity and purpose.

We do this by centering compassion and hospitality as our commitments to shared space as we build a deeper community.

Henri J. M. Nouwen wrote in Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life:

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.”

Tell participants that, as you engage with these materials together, you will keep some guidelines as part of your covenant. Distribute pocket folders and Handout 1-1: The 8 Guidelines for Equity and Inclusion, and Covenant and explain that the guidelines in it are based on ones developed by Visions, Inc. Say that you will read a brief explanation of each guideline aloud, and invite the group to read the full descriptions in their own time. Then the facilitator should read aloud:

1. Try on. This is an invitation to be open to others’ ideas, feelings, worldviews, and ways of doing things so that greater exploration and understanding are possible.
2. It’s okay to disagree. Disagreement not only is inevitable but can help individuals and groups produce better outcomes.
3. It is never okay to blame, shame, belittle, or attack others or ourselves. Most of us have learned to show our disagreement by making the other person wrong.
4. Practice self-focus. Our learning about differences can be accelerated and maximized when we listen to our internal thoughts, feelings, and reactions: not necessarily processing them in the group, but setting them aside to process later.
5. Notice both the process and the content. It’s important not just to notice what we ourselves say or do, and how and why we say or do it, but also to notice and incorporate how the group reacts.
6. Practice both/and thinking. Rather than seeing reality as strictly either/or, with each idea right or wrong, good or bad, this or that (dichotomous thinking), remember that several ideas and perspectives can be true at the same time (diunital thinking).
7. Be aware of both the intent and the impact of your actions. Especially in cross-cultural interactions (across race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender, political beliefs, etc.), our intent may not match our impact.
8. Respect confidentiality. We honor personal sharing and do not repeat personal details outside of the group.

The group should spend a few minutes establishing a covenant. This covenant will guide participants’ interactions and conduct in all the sessions. Say something like:

“Unitarian Universalists like to say that we are a covenantal faith, and many of us may have participated in the creation of, and been members of, many covenants. And yet sometimes these covenants become a forgotten poster on the wall or a mere formality. And, even more harmfully, our covenants may reflect the dominant culture of white supremacy, patriarchy, and cisheterosexism in ways that center those with privilege in this culture and harm those marginalized by it. Today we seek to approach the creation of our covenant with beginners’ minds, being open to new ideas of how we can be together.”

As a start, center the covenantal commitments from the UUA Small Group Ministry Network that are included in Handout 1-1. In addition, and specific to this Common Read, we suggest adding the following:

“We will respect everyone’s names and pronouns.

“We will speak from our own experiences, using ‘I’ statements.

“We will encounter new information on gender with the spirit of ‘a beginner’s mind.’”

A covenant created in community, by participants, is much easier to hold than one imposed from outside. Invite people to share any additional suggestions and track those suggestions by writing them on a piece of newsprint that can be displayed in future sessions.

Word Bank and Basic Understandings (5 min.)

Distribute Handout 1-2: Some Definitions and have participants spend a few minutes reading through it together. Make sure to specifically note the difference between gender, gender identity, and sexual identity or orientation.

Mention that gender, like race, is something constructed by humans and is specific to their social and physical locality. Judith Butler says this means gender is something we perform, not something that is biological. The effects of settler colonialism mean that most of the world has adopted European gender norms, but many cultures recognized different gender identities before colonization.

Distribute copies of the Gender Unicorn or display the image. Say something like:

“Gender is one of those things everyone thinks they understand, but most people don’t. Gender isn’t binary and it isn’t biological. It’s not either/or. In many cases it’s both. A bit of this, a dash of that. Gender is also not sexuality. Gender and sexuality are both spectrums of identity, but gender focuses on how a person sees themselves and sexuality refers to who a person is attracted to in a romantic or sexual way. And neither of them depends on the other. That means a person can be, for instance, both transgender and heterosexual (attracted to men if they’re a woman, or to women if they’re a man), or both nonbinary and asexual (with no sexual attraction to others), or any other combination; a person of any gender identity could have any sexual orientation.”

Themes in Authentic Selves (5 min.)

Show the video “What We Wish People Knew.”[Link to video—still needed]

Tell participants that all three of the people who were hired to collaborate with UUA staff as consultants to develop this curriculum are transgender, nonbinary, or in family relationship with someone who is, and they each hope the project generates greater knowledge and understanding. Say something like:

“On page 186 of Authentic Selves, Jerry Koch-Gonzalez writes, ‘What people need is to find ways of spending enough time together so that assumptions and stereotypes get replaced by actual experiences with real human beings. It is only then that we can realize that we are all seeking to meet the same universal human needs and that we are inevitably all interconnected.’

“Many people in this country have never met anyone who is nonbinary or transgender. While it cannot provide ‘actual experiences with real human beings,’ this book and the stories shared within it will introduce readers to an incredible group of people. We hope you will enjoy the stories, and that the stories encourage participants to dig deeper.”

Tell participants that the curriculum of this Common Read will explore three themes of Authentic Selves: what it means to tell your story, the importance of families (both families of origin and chosen families), and what authenticity means.

An Introduction to Gender Identity (20 min.)

Show the following three videos, which offer some basic education about gender. Allow 3 or 4 minutes after each of the first two for comments and reactions.

• “Gender Explained,” (YouTube) from CBC Kids News
• “The Science of Being Transgender,” (YouTube) from AsapSCIENCE
• “An Introduction to a Small Author’s Panel of Book Participants”

After the last video, allow 5 minutes for questions, comments, or reactions to it and in general. If someone asks a question about transgender or nonbinary experiences that you do not know the answer to, just state that and move on.

End by reading this comment by Ben McLaughlin on page 107 of Authentic Selves:

“What is the difference between being ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ versus being a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’? Is an identity an immutable category that simply ‘is,’ or something that needs to be enacted?”

Ask participants to carry these questions through the rest of this session and spend some time considering them before the next one.

Exploring the Impacts of Privilege (15 min.)

Say, in these or your own words:

One of the hardest things for humans to understand is how privilege affects our lives, our relationships with others, and our communities. In its basic definition, a privilege is something that provides a benefit or advantage to one person or group to the detriment of people from another group, creating a barrier to their ability to access things like housing or educational opportunities in the same ways those with the privilege have. This exercise will help us explore the privileges we each have, and how cisgender privilege affects the life of those who are transgender, nonbinary, or intersex.

Read one or both of these quotations from Authentic Selves or invite volunteers to do so:

From Feroza Syed (she/her), p. 145: “I was privileged to rarely be misgendered by cisgender people, my appearance initially helped me stay safe. I say “initially” because although I was allowed to blend into society because I appeared to be a cisgender female, it also caused issues for me when it came to disclosure. Over the years, I have [been subjected to violence], always at the time of disclosure to men that I was a trans woman.”
From Tynan Power (he/him), member of the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence in Massachusetts, p. 325: “I also became very aware of my privilege. I could list the ways I was marginalized, but I was suddenly struck by the enormous privilege I had as a white [Muslim] convert, and even as a trans man who would probably never face the violence that many trans women experience.”

Distribute Handout 1-3: Understanding Privilege and a pen or pencil. Give the group around 10 minutes to work through the list on their own (you may suggest they spread out if the meeting space allows it) and carefully consider whether each statement is true or false. Give them permission to not rush to finish all the statements, inviting them to take it with them to finish later if they wish.

When the group comes back together, ask them to respond to the following questions.

• Did you learn anything about yourself and the privileges you might have when reading the checklist/s?
• Did it change your perceptions on issues affecting the transgender umbrella of communities?
• Which statement surprised you the most, uncovering a hidden privilege you either have or do not have?

When all who have wished to speak have done so, extend the discussion into "implicit bias." Ask:

Privilege is closely connected to implicit bias. Implicit bias is when we form attitudes towards others or form associative stereotypes about groups of people without our conscious knowledge, often based on our privileges or membership in a specific social group or construct. We often do not know we have privileges that have led to these implicit biases until an “ouch” moment when harm comes to another person because of them. Why do you think understanding our privilege helps us uncover our own implicit biases?

When you are finished with the discussion, encourage people to explore the implicit bias links at the end of the handout.

A Conversation about Contrasts (10 min.)

Say that in this activity you will watch two videos (or one, if you chose to skip the whiskey commercial). Both dramatize experiences of some transgender people with their families. Tell participants that the first video shows brief nudity and emotional violence, and encourage those who might be triggered to leave if they need to. If you have chosen to show it, tell them that the second one is a whiskey commercial.

Show the first video: “The Village,” (YouTube) by Wraebel, featuring August Aiden.

Allow a moment for people to catch their breath.

Show the second video: “J&B Rare Whiskey Commercial” (YouTube).

Give participants a few minutes to react. Then tell them that the world we hope to create through this year’s Common Read is a hope for future generations.

Closing and Chalice Extinguishing (5 min.)

Use the following words as you extinguish your chalice:

“We extinguish our chalice using the words of Rhett Bolen on page 136 of Authentic Selves: ‘You are allowed to take as long as you need to be you. Never stop discovering yourself.’”