Gender outreach

[cosmolinguist]

An online pal posted this, later dismissed it as drunk thoughts, but I love it and as LGBT staff network co-chair I wanna run this at work.

workshop specifically for cis people to “discover their gender”

workshop consists of reflections on questions such as:

• how would you describe your gender?
• what makes you feel that way?
• what attributes are prescribed to your gender, and how do you (or do you not) align with those?
• how about those around you?
• how do others perceive your gender?
• how would you change how others perceive your gender?

everyone knows trans people exist but they consider their gender separately to trans people and innate to themselves. put a stop to it.

Comments

[otter]

I like it

[fayanora]

I love the idea! Unfortunately, the only problem with that idea is that the only cis people who would take it would already be allies.

[barakta]

I've seen this kind of thing work well at a BiCon's "trans 101 for everyone" which usually gets a few trans folk, a trans facilitator and people who genuinely want to learn attending.

I'd love to see this kind of thing run in a non LGB&T space as a "intro to trans/queerness" as it gives mucho vibes of the Heterosexuality Questionnaire which seems to have been written in 1977 for straight folk about homosexuality... I did actually use this as the basis for a discussion with my 6th form college principal who was deeply interested and caring about queer teens but was saying he didn't understand why we were all so messed up. By posing some of the questions I got him to understand how heterosexism is the norm and WHY LGB (we didn't really know about T then) people were so scared and screwed up. I think he got it, as I say, deeply principled man who wanted all students to be safe and happy. (Not always what you'd expect from Roman Catholics, but they were very "live by the principles of the gospels" and meant it deeply within their faith).

I want to attend this workshop

[jesse_the_k]

...so much!

(Reminds me of the Institute for the Study of the Neurologically Typical)

[angelofthenorth]

Sounds like a brilliant idea

[sfred]

I approve.

[liv]

There are quite a few good resources for cis people to do gender discovery. Meg-John Barker's zine turned printed book I've heard good things about, I'm a fan of theirs in general. S Bear Bergman's stuff isn't specifically aimed at cis people but it doesn't exclude the cis either and would probably be very relevant.

I think the issue with running a workshop, at work, for cis people is that you either put pressure on people to out themselves or you go into it assuming everybody is cis. It's not necessarily the same, but I've been to more general LGBT+ training at work that was all about how straight people could be better allies to those people over there and it was really frustrating. Particularly when it went into things like: this is a safe space to ask all the weird questions about gay people that you might feel ashamed to ask. (Because everybody here is straight and totally comfortable with their straight professional colleagues asking the trainer 'how do lesbians even have sex?' or 'how come gay people have a different accent from normal people?')

[sennashi_dorei]

how would you describe your gender?

Sometimes I wear rengarb, like a boddess. If you look at my chest, you might not be thinking about my gender at all, depending on what you know.

what makes you feel that way?
それって何でですか？

what attributes are prescribed to your gender, and how do you (or do you not) align with those?
One of my favorite topics is thst of selection around prescriptions. "Are you a doctor?"

how about those around you?

🐬🎐🥏

how do others perceive your gender?

🪸性別発表🪱


how would you change how others perceive your gender?

🎑🪅🦁

[meepettemu]

I teach a lecture on gender and sexuality and one of the tasks I set is “without reference to your anatomy, how do you know what your (relationship to) gender is?” And it’s ALWAYS fascinating. Most of my students are cis and have never thought about this before :)

[arlie]

Hi. You don't know me, but this got signal-boosted by ysabetwordsmith so I followed it home.

As a cranky more-or-less agender person, now more commonly referred to as an "enby", I don't feel it's useful for people like me, including those of us who are cis-by-default and have never thought about it.

My gender is whatever my neighbours or the government insist it is this week. On Tuesday I'm clearly masculine, because I love math and sciences. On Wednesday I'm feminine, because I know how to cook. On Thursday I'm a nasty person who fails to send signals clear enough for the neighbours to parse. This year the government has solemnly decided to determine my gender by checking what I have between my legs - going back to the system in place when I was born. Except now they are explicit that changing what's between my legs won't change my gender, rather than acting like they are unaware that this is possible.

[silveradept]

This feels like something that would have to be given with the authority of needing to pass and administered in such a way that the people taking it flippantly have to keep taking it until they do it seriously. They don't have to conclude they're anything but cis, but they have to actually treat the process seriously.