Pre-Requisite: Being Brave Together: A Transfaith Primer (free) frames dialogue expectations for all OtherWise Academy discussion forums.

• Being Brave Together is strongly recommended as a way to understand our dialogue expectations. However, you can begin the OtherWise 101 series without that 15 minute experience, if you are too eager to wait.

Certificate Program: Transfaith for Allies (free).

• The Transfaith for Allies introductory course is also a good place to start your journey through the Transfaith for Allies certificate program and provides a different kind of starting point.

Designed for: English-speaking adults, regardless of religious affiliation or professional aspirations. 

• The content may also be appropriate for younger audiences who are prepared for references to sexuality and body parts in an educational context.

Hours of Video: approximately 1.5 hours of video in total, with transcripts provided

OtherWise Voices: Mx Chris Paige, Rev. Louis Mitchell, Geo Soctomah Neptune, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Abby Stein, Gigi Gorgeous

Status: Open Access

Objectives: 

1. Identify four aspects or themes in conversations about gender
2. Recognize the relationship between sexuality and gender
3. Explore your own stories about gender and sexuality
4. Practice listening cross-culturally to different stories of gender

Description: This course includes our best recommendations for learning the basics about how sex, gender, and sexuality fit together. It also provides some important background to put those ideas in historical and cross-cultural context. 

This is an accessible survey of concepts drawing from our favorite resources available on the internet. There are also opportunities to apply these concepts while listening to short videos of OtherWise folk talking briefly about themselves.  

The material here is curated to take you step by step through an introductory experience. Each section includes approximately 15 minutes (some more, some less) of video around a particular theme with captions and/or transcript available. You can move through the content at your own pace. Meanwhile, checkpoints at the end of each section provide an opportunity to review and reflect on what you have been learning.

While there are short references to specific religio-cultural contexts, this course is designed for everyone regardless of religious background or professional aspirations.

What People Are Saying:

It's a really great resource! 
I loved the personal stories with the questions after 
that made you rethink what was explicitly said vs. what you might assume. 

The Koosh ball metaphor highlighted the complexity of gender 
and helped me reflect on recent conversations
 about transgender participation in sports. 

The section on science opened up some good conversation for our family!