Touchstone as an organisation is committed to supporting the 16 days of action to end the global violence experienced by women and girls. The campaign runs from 25th November (UN Day For the Elimination of Violence against Women) to 10th December 2021. The 16 Days of Action campaign is an important opportunity to raise awareness and call for changes at an international, national and local level to end violence against women and
November 13th-19th is Trans Awareness Week, culminating in Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) on 20th November. TDOR is an annual observance that honours the memory of trans people whose lives have been lost due to transphobic violence. We at Touchstone stand in solidarity with our trans, non-binary and gender-diverse communities. Bigotry, exclusion, discrimination and hate resulting ultimately in the death of fellow human beings demonstrates the ongoing need to consider the rights
Intersex is an umbrella term and describes variations in sex characteristics from the stereotypical ones medically and socially associated with “male” and “female”. Differences in sex characteristics are a normal and natural part of the human experience, and much of the oppression faced by those who are intersex is caused by society and the medical community’s insistence on placing us all into two distinct categories. Variations can affect any sexual
Intersex is an umbrella term and describes variations in sex characteristics from the stereotypical ones medically and socially associated with “male” and “female”. Differences in sex characteristics are a normal and natural part of the human experience, and much of the oppression faced by those who are intersex is caused by society and the medical community’s insistence on placing us all into two distinct categories. Variations can affect any sexual
Asexuality can mean different things for different people. You can be asexual and find sex disgusting. You can be asexual and find it to be on par with doing the laundry. You can even be asexual and have lots of sex! As for me, not until I had spent a month in my first well-established relationship, did I look at a person and think “Oh yeah! I’d have sex with
Black maternal health awareness week runs from 13-18th September 2021 and is dedicated to raising awareness about the disparities in maternal outcomes for Black women and birthing people. It was founded in 2020 by Five X More [footnote 1], “a grassroots organisation committed to changing Black women's maternal health. Black Women and birthing people in the UK are four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth [footnote 2].
Touchstone is a mental health and wellbeing charity that specialises in eliminating health inequalities in underserved and marginalised communities, including Black African, Caribbean and South East Asian communities, refugees and asylum seekers, and LGBTQI+ groups across West and South Yorkshire. The Leeds-based charity not only delivers vital services to meet these groups’ mental health and wellbeing needs but uses its expertise to amplify the voices of vulnerable groups with service
Everyone has and are still going through their own Covid-19 pandemic journey. To support Sikh Elders Service Users the Team delivered over forty Wellbeing Kits during the month of April 2021. I could always sense the Service User’s loneliness and isolation during the regular phone calls I made to check up on their wellbeing. The same question “When are you opening up CDC sessions again?”, “When can we meet up
This blog is about pronouns, and it will include a game to practice using they/them pronouns. You can read our Pronouns 101 blog here to find out more about pronouns. Example of she/her pronouns: I went to see a horror film with Sarah. She jumped at all the scary bits so it’s a good job I went with her. After the film, Sarah drove us home in her car and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHahV5Ts56o Click on the video above to listen to the audio version of the below blog. What are gender identity, gender expression and biological sex? Gender identity is an individual’s sense of their own gender. Their internal sense of being a man, a woman, both, neither, something in between, or something else entirely, irrespective of their biological sex. Gender expression refers to the way a person shows their gender externally,