My Professional Bio & Positioning Reflection

Practitioner positioning reflections / statements are an evidence-informed and internationally recognised form of ethical self-disclosure in Anti-Oppressive Clinical Practice. Learn more about positioning reflections and/or about me and my work: https://pacfa.org.au/portal/News-and-Advocacy/News/2022/Introducing_Gávi_Ansara.aspx

Professional Bio

I am grateful to work on unceded Wurundjeri Country in the Kulin Nations. I have over 20 years of Anti-Oppressive/Liberating Practice experience alongside people and communities with lived experience of marginalisation and oppression.

One of my areas of focus is polycule-centred, BDSM/kink-knowledgeable relationship therapy practice. I have over a decade of experience providing clinical supervision and therapy that value and prioritise people, families, polycules, kinship systems, and communities involved in polyamorous, multi-partner, and/or BDSM/kink relationships. I also have specialist qualifications in complex trauma and dissociation, family and community trauma, youth and refugee mental health, emotionally aware child caregiving, BIPOC-centred ecotherapy, Autistic-centred Autistic Wellbeing, neurodivergent-affirming practice, and group facilitation.

I currently serve as the Senior Clinical Supervisor (Multi-Site Contractor) for QLife. I have received the American Psychological Association’s Transgender Research Award for original and significant research, the UK Higher Education Academy’s National Psychology Postgraduate Teaching Award for excellence in teaching psychology, and the University of Surrey Vice Chancellor’s Alumni Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to standards and policies in international human rights and social justice.

Positioning Reflection / Statement

Last updated: 2nd August 2023

I am a multilingual, mixed/hybrid polycultural, polyamorous, neurodivergent polyennic (a neurodivergent-affirming concept coined by Raven Cochrane, instead of the pathologising “ADHD” language), and androsexual man of faith from multiple racialised cultural backgrounds outside of white Anglo colonial Australia. I grew up in urban and rural China, on the unceded lands of the Eora Nation, and elsewhere. I have multiple names in multiple languages, and they are all my “real” names.

My polycule contains secure attachment bonds that include several queerfamilial kindred and other consensually co-developed chosen family roles. My polycule combines aspects of non-hierarchical egalitarian, polycule-centred Relationship Anarchy, and Kitchen Table polyam relationship configurations.

I have over 20 years of lived experience in lifestyle D/s and as a BDSM/kink Mentor. I strive toward sustaining a consistently anti-oppressive, violence-informed, trauma-aware, intersectionally feminist, anti-racist, survivor-centred, body-positive, and social justice approach that models Explicit and Ongoing Prior Consent practices in all domains of my life, including but not limited to my work within BDSM/kink communities.

I have lived experience of chronic pain, disability, homelessness, migration, intergenerational forced displacement, poverty, being targeted for racist violence, and gender, body, kinship, and sexuality oppression. In addition to the above, I am also of Deaf experience and influenced by Deaf Pride; although I am currently hearing, I have some auditory processing and communication influences from Deaf culture.

I strive toward cultural humility regarding my literacy, educational, allistic (non-Autistic), binary gender, sighted, speaking, singleton (not a plural person), and non-Aboriginal privileges.

I am not from a white Anglo Australian background, have had variable skin tone in my life, and experience frequent racist harassment in white-dominated public spaces in colonial Australia. I am also aware that I often benefit from lighter-skinned privilege in a white-dominated society that treats people differently depending on their skin tone. I do not have the privilege of not having to think about how others are racially perceiving me in everyday life due to this being important to my safety in public, which is one of many ways in which racialised people’s lighter-skinned privilege differs from dominant culture white privilege.

In white-dominated spaces, I am often identified as an outsider and have been told to “go back to where you came from!” or asked “what are you? where are you from?” by white Anglo people in colonial Australia. I have also experienced invisibility and erasure when people from my racialised cultures do not recognise my languages and cultures solely from my appearance. Sometimes, multiple people in the same situation at the same time interpret my appearance differently and have contrasting racialised assumptions about me. As a mixed polycultural person, I am racialised differently when I travel depending on the region where I am travelling, so my racialised privileges and marginalisation vary by location more than those of monocultural people. Being mixed, polycultural, and having multiple primary languages means racialisation, racism, and racialised privileges are at work in complex and multi-dimensional ways in my life.

I currently appreciate the privilege of having rental housing, relative food security, indoor plumbing, electricity, a sit-down flush toilet, hot water, clean drinking water, and a private room with a door that shuts, although there have been many years of my life when I did not have some or all of these privileges.