Having Hard Conversations with Your Family on LGBTQ Experiences
The Hmong Minnesota Student Association (HMSA) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) hosted their 11th Annual Hmong Minnesota Leadership Conference (HMLC) on Saturday, April 6th. The conference invited local Hmong community and organizational leaders to speak about their experiences and present and facilitate workshops for developing, young Hmong leaders and professionals.
AAOP Executive Director Linda Her and Community Organizer Vang Xor Xiong presented and facilitated their workshop at the conference, titled: “Understanding Your Power & Leveraging Family Dialogue on LGBTQIA Experiences.”
The workshop built upon foundational LGBTQ allyship concepts and asked allies to further their power and privilege to shift conversations with their family members, especially their parents.
While AAOP has done previous Hmong LGBT-centered workshops at HMSA’s past leadership conferences focused on LGBTQ 101, Allyship 101, and Hmong LGBTQ and Politics of Liberation, Her says they aimed to center current and future workshop and training on LGBTQ conversations with parents and family.
Xiong says, “We wanted to do less ally education and more on having difficult conversations — that was when the workshop really started to take shape.”
Her adds: “We wanted to facilitate and create a learning experience for non-LGBTQ family members, who feel uncomfortable or not experienced when having conversations with parents and family members about LGBTQ family members or issues. This workshop’s intent is to help them understand where their discomfort comes from, and that they are capable of talking and starting a conversation on LGBTQ related issues. These difficult conversations need to be more explicit and public, meaning existing in a workshop with young Hmong students, schools, workplace and community organizations.”
To Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn
HMLC’s theme this year is to learn, unlearn, and relearn, which fits into the way the workshop was presented, Her says.
“This workshop created an environment for students to critically think about how they would approach the conversation,” she says.
While many people may understand what LGBTQIA might stand for, more in-depth educational resources like the Genderbread is very useful.
“The majority of folks in the room have not heard of the Genderbread,” Xiong says. The Genderbread is a tool that explains how gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender performance may differ and how it may appear to someone.
“This workshop also exposed students, in a controlled environment, on how to have those hard conversations,” he adds. “The workshop itself is designed in a way that kind of emulates a general family vibe in how the mom/dad respond to the issues. It’s not how every individual responds, but it’s a general vibe and that’s us drawing from the understanding of cultural structures, and our experiences around folks responding to these issues.”
A part of the workshop also included roleplay, which allowed participants to really imagine themselves in a situation where they would have to have those hard conversations with their parents. This roleplay section came after a power and privilege exercise that asked participants to understand their place in their’s or a traditional Hmong family hierarchy. An understanding of their family dynamic’s power and privilege helped informed the conversation in the roleplay.
Recognizing the Impact of Power
“The student participants recognized how the traditional, hetero-patriarchal Hmong family structure impacts their familial relationship, role, decision making and influencial power,” Her says.
While many Hmong families prioritize the oldest male in the family, that power shifts when marital status comes into play. Oftentimes, that power can shift over to prioritizing a younger brother simply because he is married.
“The power and privilege activity allowed for the students to see how that power shifts and how a trans child may have no power at all,” Her says.
Xiong also adds that this role play helped encourage students to try new ways of navigating the conversation. The role play eliminated that barrier to help students grow.
He also adds that one of the attendees highlighted that while she didn’t necessarily have decision making power, she was still able to influence and access a different power — emotional power.
This was crucial especially in supporting the parent in these hard conversations.
“Overall,” Xiong says, “it’s really important for students to be exposed so that, in the future, when they do have hard conversations, they are able to draw from this workshop to really navigate those conversations.”
“Understanding Your Power & Leveraging Family Dialogue on LGBTQIA Experiences” is one of a series of gender and racial justice workshops AAOP plans and facilitates. If interested, please contact us directly at info@aaopmn.org.
