MindBalance Mental Health Care
Disrupting the Cisgender Default
Examining and Dismantling Cisnormativity in Clinical Practice
Training Description
Gender, like many aspects of identity, often escapes deeper consideration by those whose experiences align with dominant norms, particularly cisgender individuals whose experiences reflect the assumed default. Cisnormativity, the belief that everyone is or should be their sex assigned at birth, operates quietly, guiding the brain to make quick, automatic assumptions about others based on binary gender expectations. In a fraction of a second, we categorize people based on voice, appearance, movement, or another subtle cue, typically without conscious awareness. The snap assessments follow us into the therapy room, where they influence how we interpret client presentations, form clinical impressions, and engage in treatment planning, even before a word is spoken.
This session invites clinicians to explore how their own gender identity and socialization impact their clinical worldview. Participants will reflect on how gender was introduced in their lives, how it operates in professional settings, and how these internalized frameworks affect interactions with clients and colleagues alike. Through curiosity and self-examination, we will uncover where gendered assumptions live in our thinking and learn how to question and shift them in real time. The goal is not only greater awareness, but a deeper, more expansive understanding of gender categorization as central and unnecessary detail to providing affirming clinical care with all genders.
Knowledge You Will Gain
At the conclusion of training, participants will be able to identify gendered social factors that may unintentionally disrupt the therapeutic relationship, and outline internalized gender ideologies that shape clinical assessment, diagnosis, treatment planning, and client outcomes. They will have the tools to recognize and challenge gender biases that arise in interactions with clients and colleagues, and possess the skills to examine the ways internalized gender constructs may create harm across all genders. Additionally, they will learn to conceptualize client needs through a gender-updated lens, recognizing how gendered socialization influences client presentation, and subsequently, use the insight to support therapeutic growth without pathologizing gender-related experiences.
About the Trainer
Evan Rosenthal (he/they) is a white, able bodied, transgender guy who “grew up with cornfields in every direction,” (Chris Housman, “Blueneck”), and began thriving when they moved to the Twin Cities metro. He has firsthand and clinical experience navigating gender identity exploration and expression from a young age, through adulthood, with insights into local, state, federal, rural and metro systemic impacts on individuals. Evan is a mental and chemical health therapist licensed in MN and WI, currently providing individual therapy at a group practice in Minneapolis, focusing near exclusively with queer and trans clients. They also do independent consulting, training and program development specific to LGBTQIA+ affirming care within justice and correctional, academic, and medical systems through Queer Vision Consulting.