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“The only true voyage…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is…” (Proust, 2003, p. 343). This wonderful quote from Proust seems like a fitting place to begin because I wish to take you on an autoethnographic journey of discovery so that you can see for yourself what it was like for the participants and me as we found ourselves in strange and sometimes frightening territory. We realized that we were, sometimes unexpectedly, in positions of support to our friends or lovers who were uncomfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth. Most of us would describe ourselves as lesbian and, when our partners began to explore the possibility of sex reassignment, struggled with our established identity. My friend Christopher was the inspiration for this exploration. We were domestic partners before and during his early transition from female to male. Both Christopher and I were public figures in the small town in which we lived and our lives were somewhat on display. Christopher founded an organization called Trans Connect to provide support to those who present their gender in alternate ways and to provide education to service providers as well as to schools with regard to transgender issues and is well known in that town as well as in the larger gender diverse community as a trans man. Because of this, he has agreed to waive anonymity. The body of this work includes the entire texts of three papers I have written during the course of my studies as I navigated the path to this research. All of these papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I have used these papers to illustrate my autoethnographic journey toward the discovery of diverse gender presentations, to describe the state of knowledge in the discipline of nursing regarding this issue, and to demonstrate how autoethnography works. The centre of the work is the novel I have written based upon the stories the participants and I have shared with one another. The novel is written in everyday language and aims to show, rather than tell, the stories of ten women who love and support trans men. In many parts of the dissertation I have used dialogue, both internal as well as conversation among created characters, as a way to bring to life concepts under discussion. This is in keeping with an autoethnographic style. The dissertation is organized into three parts. Part one is a description of the process and methods I undertook in order to arrive at the novel. It consists of eight chapters that are placed in a more or less linear way, although the process was not at all linear, from the beginning of my exploration, to a discussion of the overall voyage. Part two consists of the novel, which is the story of experiences of women living with trans men during their transition or consideration of transition, disguised as having been experienced by fictional characters. Part three contains four chapters that are the analysis, a description of how I managed the information gathered, a discussion of evaluation for such a work as this, and some consideration as to the distribution and future for the study. My research questions were: • What is it like to be in loving relationship with an FTM during and after some of his transition? • What are the effects on the relationship for the female partner during this time? • What happens to the supportive partner’s ideas of her own identity? • Does the balance of power shift during this transition, and if so, how? The novel poignantly addresses all these questions. To be in a loving relationship with a trans man in the early stages of transition can be very challenging, and for the participants and me, often ended in a breakdown of the relationship. It can be a difficult time for women supporters because their adjustments and struggles with identity and sense of self and community are frequently overshadowed by the enormity, and for some, curiosity of sex reassignment. Often the relationship shifts from egalitarian to one that resembles more of a male-female binary where the male exerts power over his partner. Half of the participants in this study said they would not enter into another relationship with a trans man. That leaves the other half who said they would. The novel might serve as a help to those considering such a relationship as well as to those already walking the sometimes slippery, sometimes exhilarating road of partnership with a trans man. There are no easy answers to these questions. My aim is to reveal a glimpse into the lives of people about whom not much is known. / Graduate / 0569 / merryfeather@shaw.ca

This thesis provides a synthesis of knowledge about inclusive networking in an international context, derived from the experience of stakeholders in education in countries of the South. It is suggested that inclusive networking facilitates the telling of stories, challenges stereotypes, humanises headlines and promotes contextually relevant research. The research question: “What are the key principles for the development of an inclusive international network?” was developed as a guide to this study. Using a process of autoethnographic analysis, I identified my tacit knowledge of inclusive networking through a continual analysis and cross-referencing of the ten publications presented here, and a wider search of the literature. This thesis is presented as a narrative in three parts. In the first part I trace my motivation for becoming involved in international networking as a strategy to address global inequality, review the literature on networking most relevant to this thesis, and identify some of the barriers to publishing faced by education stakeholders in the South. In the second part, a case study of the Enabling Education Network (EENET) is presented and a wide range of networking dilemmas identified, related to the way information is collected and shared across diverse Southern contexts. The overarching dilemmas of northern dominance and deficit thinking are discussed in the context of oral culture and the global digital and communication divide, and the difficulties in promoting genuinely critical conversations. In the third part, it is argued that contextual detail and transparency about authorship are critical to the construction of stories and accounts if they are to be meaningfully networked across diverse contexts. However, it is suggested that investing resources in the development of documentation, reflection and analytical skills in education stakeholders is an essential part of inclusive networking, if ‘promising’ practice is to be captured from a Southern perspective. Following this, the penultimate chapter puts forward four key principles relating to the development of an inclusive international network that emerged from the analysis of publications and the wider literature: 1. sharing of information, knowledge and stories between contexts; 2. knowledge creation: through reflection, documentation and analysis; 3. balancing insider and outsider knowledge and perspectives; and 4. developing appropriate responses at community level. I conclude with some possible future directions for research, and with a personal story which encapsulates the theoretical framework of this thesis.

Ethnodrama has been identified as an effective and innovative qualitative research method and dissemination tool which aims to improve and inform society through theatrical performances. Researchers are increasingly utilizing ethnodrama in their work; however it is relatively new and remains unexplored. The lived experiences of this method have not been extensively documented in prior research.<p> Specifically, I focus on a project which involved ethnodrama workshops for women experiencing arm problems after breast cancer. The ethnodrama workshops revealed that women were feeling: 1) there is a lack of support, 2) a sense of isolation, and 3) a need to heal after breast cancer. The workshops began to break that isolation, provide support, and start a journey of healing. They also provided an unexpected finding that yoga is an effective and sought after method of healing for women after breast cancer. This finding moved the workshops into the creation of healing yoga program for women after breast cancer, instead of a research based theatrical performance (ethnodrama). <p> Phenomenological interviews took place with a yoga teacher, dramatists, and researchers who had lived experiences of ethnodrama. The researchers spoke of the challenges involved in ethnodrama creation including time, funding, participant recruitment, and data collection. I also focus on the themes of emotional connectivity, building trust, healing, breaking isolation, and social change as they were found to resonate across all their experiences with the method.<p> I also use the methodology of autoethnography to connect the common themes across the experiences of ethnodrama with my own experience. My participation in an ethnodrama project allows me to connect my participant and researcher involvement with this method.<p> Ethnodrama is an effective knowledge translation strategy for audiences; however I have found that it is also a method which emotionally connects researchers and participants. There are challenges to this method, but I learned they did not outweigh the benefits. The themes of healing, breaking isolation, building trust, and social change show that ethnodrama is a method which positively impacts researchers and participants involved.

Ethnodrama has been identified as an effective and innovative qualitative research method and dissemination tool which aims to improve and inform society through theatrical performances. Researchers are increasingly utilizing ethnodrama in their work; however it is relatively new and remains unexplored. The lived experiences of this method have not been extensively documented in prior research.<p> Specifically, I focus on a project which involved ethnodrama workshops for women experiencing arm problems after breast cancer. The ethnodrama workshops revealed that women were feeling: 1) there is a lack of support, 2) a sense of isolation, and 3) a need to heal after breast cancer. The workshops began to break that isolation, provide support, and start a journey of healing. They also provided an unexpected finding that yoga is an effective and sought after method of healing for women after breast cancer. This finding moved the workshops into the creation of healing yoga program for women after breast cancer, instead of a research based theatrical performance (ethnodrama). <p> Phenomenological interviews took place with a yoga teacher, dramatists, and researchers who had lived experiences of ethnodrama. The researchers spoke of the challenges involved in ethnodrama creation including time, funding, participant recruitment, and data collection. I also focus on the themes of emotional connectivity, building trust, healing, breaking isolation, and social change as they were found to resonate across all their experiences with the method.<p> I also use the methodology of autoethnography to connect the common themes across the experiences of ethnodrama with my own experience. My participation in an ethnodrama project allows me to connect my participant and researcher involvement with this method.<p> Ethnodrama is an effective knowledge translation strategy for audiences; however I have found that it is also a method which emotionally connects researchers and participants. There are challenges to this method, but I learned they did not outweigh the benefits. The themes of healing, breaking isolation, building trust, and social change show that ethnodrama is a method which positively impacts researchers and participants involved.

Much research has demonstrated the positive impact sport plays in individuals??? lives; however, there are gendered rates of participation. In particular, adolescent girls participate in sport at a lower rate than their male peers. The withdrawal from sport for adolescent girls has been linked to gender and heteronormativity but the current literature does not adequately explain the attrition rate. Therefore, utilizing autoethnography, this research studied the gendered and heteronormative sporting context, specifically the recreational sport inside and outside the school, of adolescent girls. My own memories, sport memorabilia, conversations with my parents, and present-day experiences have informed the creation of my narrative. The findings from my autoethnography support the notion that gender intensifies during adolescence and presses femininity and heterosexuality onto adolescent girls. Coupled together, gender ideology and heteronormativity influence the negotiation of sport participation through peers and perceived peer appraisals, and lead to specific behaviour to demonstrate appropriate gender and sexual orientation. Heterosexual adolescent girls and athletes are not guarded against the lesbian label, a prevalent and powerful description of female athletes as a result of the femininity/athleticism conflict. Described in this research were my motivations to avoid the label, as well as, the ways in which I did so. Given that gender intensifies during adolescence, these negotiations are occurring when identity formation processes are taking place, which has implications for impending adulthood and sport participation. As such, the withdrawal of adolescent girls from sport has implications for Canadian sport and policy provisions to create a positive and gender inclusive space for adolescent girls.

“The only true voyage…would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is…” (Proust, 2003, p. 343). This wonderful quote from Proust seems like a fitting place to begin because I wish to take you on an autoethnographic journey of discovery so that you can see for yourself what it was like for the participants and me as we found ourselves in strange and sometimes frightening territory. We realized that we were, sometimes unexpectedly, in positions of support to our friends or lovers who were uncomfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth. Most of us would describe ourselves as lesbian and, when our partners began to explore the possibility of sex reassignment, struggled with our established identity. My friend Christopher was the inspiration for this exploration. We were domestic partners before and during his early transition from female to male. Both Christopher and I were public figures in the small town in which we lived and our lives were somewhat on display. Christopher founded an organization called Trans Connect to provide support to those who present their gender in alternate ways and to provide education to service providers as well as to schools with regard to transgender issues and is well known in that town as well as in the larger gender diverse community as a trans man. Because of this, he has agreed to waive anonymity. The body of this work includes the entire texts of three papers I have written during the course of my studies as I navigated the path to this research. All of these papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I have used these papers to illustrate my autoethnographic journey toward the discovery of diverse gender presentations, to describe the state of knowledge in the discipline of nursing regarding this issue, and to demonstrate how autoethnography works. The centre of the work is the novel I have written based upon the stories the participants and I have shared with one another. The novel is written in everyday language and aims to show, rather than tell, the stories of ten women who love and support trans men. In many parts of the dissertation I have used dialogue, both internal as well as conversation among created characters, as a way to bring to life concepts under discussion. This is in keeping with an autoethnographic style. The dissertation is organized into three parts. Part one is a description of the process and methods I undertook in order to arrive at the novel. It consists of eight chapters that are placed in a more or less linear way, although the process was not at all linear, from the beginning of my exploration, to a discussion of the overall voyage. Part two consists of the novel, which is the story of experiences of women living with trans men during their transition or consideration of transition, disguised as having been experienced by fictional characters. Part three contains four chapters that are the analysis, a description of how I managed the information gathered, a discussion of evaluation for such a work as this, and some consideration as to the distribution and future for the study. My research questions were: • What is it like to be in loving relationship with an FTM during and after some of his transition? • What are the effects on the relationship for the female partner during this time? • What happens to the supportive partner’s ideas of her own identity? • Does the balance of power shift during this transition, and if so, how? The novel poignantly addresses all these questions. To be in a loving relationship with a trans man in the early stages of transition can be very challenging, and for the participants and me, often ended in a breakdown of the relationship. It can be a difficult time for women supporters because their adjustments and struggles with identity and sense of self and community are frequently overshadowed by the enormity, and for some, curiosity of sex reassignment. Often the relationship shifts from egalitarian to one that resembles more of a male-female binary where the male exerts power over his partner. Half of the participants in this study said they would not enter into another relationship with a trans man. That leaves the other half who said they would. The novel might serve as a help to those considering such a relationship as well as to those already walking the sometimes slippery, sometimes exhilarating road of partnership with a trans man. There are no easy answers to these questions. My aim is to reveal a glimpse into the lives of people about whom not much is known. / Graduate / 2015-06-05 / 0569 / merryfeather@shaw.ca

“What does a hug mean in counselling practice?” In this autoethnographic research, I explore the role and implications of physical touch in therapeutic practice. Researchers argue that the use of hugs is controversial, as the fields of counselling and psychotherapy do not provide either a culture in which physical touch is regarded to be an appropriate therapeutic tool or where it is suitably introduced via generalised training that best prepares professionals to appropriately apply touch in practice. Yet, I argue that the reasons behind practitioners' potential struggle with the use of touch are much more complex and involve both the personal and professional spheres. In this qualitative study, I utilise autoethnography as my research method which illuminates the dynamics between my own sociocultural values, my personal relationship with my mother and my professional experience with a counselling client who requested a hug. I also employ poetry and storytelling as I argue that these creative methods assist me to recollect, analyse and present difficult memories, which implies that reflective practice helps to reveal potential issues that may arise in our interaction with therapeutic clients. By doing so, I demonstrate how these interactions formed and deformed my subjective notion of what it means to hug a client in a therapeutic context and show how the meaning and use of touch is significantly influenced by both sociocultural factors and subjective experiences. Thus my research illustrates that a practitioner’s potential struggle with the use of physical touch in practice can be a symptom of dissonance between his/her professional and subjective perceptions of and experience with touch. This autoethnographic study aims to show psychotherapists and counsellors how they may better understand the use of touch in professional practice by reflecting on their own personal and socio-cultural experiences with physical contact in various contexts.

Using autoethnography, this dissertation explores the relationship between my experiences through the treatment of papillary thyroid carcinoma and crip-queer theory. This dissertation seeks to bridge queer theory, disability studies, and medical discourse through personal experience. Additionally, by employing autoethnography, this study creates nuanced narratives of living with chronic illness at the intersections of disability and queerness. In Chapter One I provide a rationale and provide a cursory explanation of crip-queer theory. In my second chapter I employ Robert McRuer’s notion of the origin story to chart the development of crip-queer theory by looking to the similar activist histories of disability and sexuality within the United States. In Chapter Three I examine my solo performance Orphan Annie Eyes: Overcoming Narratives of Cancer and Loss, arguing that the performance challenges common narrative tropes surrounding disability. In my fourth chapter I use autoethnography to explore my experiences going through cancer treatment. Finally, my fifth chapter explores the implications of this dissertation and seeks to identify future research studies using crip-queer theory.

As a point of political and ethical contestation in U.S. American discourse, the “abortion debate” asks us to consider questions of choice, life, morality, and identity embedded with/in unequivocally conflicting axiological matrices. Consequentially, women who’ve had abortions are left caught in-between the cultural chasm between stigmatizing discourses. Framing abortion narratives within Turner’s (1969) conceptualization of liminality, this project aims to nuance the conversation from a performative autoethnographic orientation (Spry, 2011) which attends to ethical, aesthetic, and epistemic dimensions of narrative (re)construction. Layered narrative and poetic fragments (re)constitute the ruptured “truthfulness” of my abortion experience (Žižek, 2008) while (re)centering epistemological foundations of abortion discourse through subjugated corporeal knowledges (Foucault, 1980). By “talking back” (hooks, 1989) to neoliberal postfeminist discourses, this autoethnographic project seeks to performatively (re)construct the abortion experience through a language of liminality and explore the potentials of an alternative “imaginary” (Irigaray, 1991; Cixous, 1976, 1998).