Name: Sylvie Malamet
Social Justice Group: Trans Rights: Gender Affirming Care (B)
Date of Fieldwork: January 13, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Paul Silverman
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
Alex, my citizen action project partner, and I interviewed Paul Silverman, a queer therapist. I got in contact with him from my dad. He facilitates the parent group of a teenage trans group therapy that I got to once a month. The program that he works for is called Gender Family Project, GFP for short, and that is part of the Ackerman Institute. As well as that group, he also has a private practice where he sees clients individually.
Alex and I decided that it would be better for us to set up for the interview ahead of time, so we didn’t have to rush and mess up. We went up into the learning lab at 9:40 to be prepared for the 10:00 meeting. As we logged on to the zoom meeting, I noticed that it was a bit glitchy, but I didn’t think too much of it, and when Paul finally showed up, he was too glitchy. We had to move into the other room of the learning lab to get help from Susannah and Mala. Susannah quickly gave us her computer to log in with so that it would work better, and right away, it stops glitching. When we got settled in, we restarted the meeting and calmed down.
The first few questions we asked Paul about were more focused on how he got into being a therapist. He told us that he always knew he wanted to help people in that way and that he was super passionate about it. He said that he specifically works with trans people because, as a gay person, he felt like his journey was very much so connected to other queer people, including trans people. We talked about the ways he can help his clients other than mental health support and he talked about how he can send letters to doctors, give recommendations to his clients for other types of therapy, and he can talk to parents. He told us about his opinion on how gender affirming care will be affected by the past election, and ways that he wants to help his clients with those new challenges. We also asked him if he had any people he knew that lived outside of NY and how gender affirming care would be different there then here; he told us that most of the people he knew in other states, moved or are planning on moving to NY for better support.
By the end of the meeting, we had learned many things, including how to not panic when put in a stressful situation, and we felt very accomplished.
Finally, Alex and I thanked Paul and said goodbye.
