Teacher on Transphobia in Schools →
A genuine reaction by a friends Biology teacher to the story here “Trans teen banned from exam reads teacher her rights”
This is the sort of teacher we should encourage in our schools.
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Game-changing by Refusing to Play
Ellen addresses her JC Penney critics
As always Ellen manages to use extensive charm and humour to make a mockery of critics. Wonderful example of the best way to fight back… by not fighting back..
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One teacher’s approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom
This is a totally awesome blog posting- and such a great set of stories. I wish I’d had someone like this around when I was at school.
Deserves to be read and shared widely.
Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”
She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.
“My ponytail,” she cried.
“Can I see?” I asked.
She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.
“How’s that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.
‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’
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De-Gendering conversations
You know you do it, without thinking. Every day.
You immediately decide if a person you meet is ‘he’ or ‘she’ and start to use that within conversations, writing etc. You use gendered pronouns based on just a name, sometimes.
Yet how does this allow for the genderqueer amongst us. Does this make it harder and more obvious when someone is moving from one gender to another? That stress of ‘did I use the right pronoun’ moments.
I had a Head of Diversity report proudly that they had stopped using pronouns with me (either using my name, or a plural). I smiled and asked why only for me. Why not do it with everyone.
It was like a lightbulb had lit up.
How to De-Gender?
I avoid using the artificial third person, one, zie, hir, mostly because with a decent NZ accent, 99% can’t tell between “her” and “hir” when I say it.
De-Gendering english is not trivial, but it can be done without loosing too much grammatical sense. Reword the sentence into a different tense, use names rather than pronouns, or if you get stuck, use a plural. Most people won’t notice the plural pronouns.
The more you do it, the more natural it becomes. Don’t berate yourself for any slips, just try for an hour not to use gender or gender pronouns in speech or writing. After than hour or so, your brain will be much more aware of pronoun usage, and more able to remove it.
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Gender in the corporate world
At a workshop on Gender Play I was part of a number of conversations on how to be one’s self in a world that wants you to be otherwise.
People talked about the desire to start being more masculine or feminine, to show who they really are, but could not because they felt they need to hide who they were in a corporate environment.
Which got me thinking. If the HR policies say there is no discrimination based on Gender (Presentation), how does the corporate world manage the ‘uniform’ issue?
How can a corporate world manage for female employee who prefers trousers more often, with open necked business shirts? Or for the male employee who wears softer collars and more tailored coats?
Can we talk about being non-discriminatory based on Gender (Presentation) and still enforce a strict dress code with “Men must wear ties … Women skirts below the knee”. I have friends reporting that a plain pink shirt is a little beyond the acceptable limit, and the height of a shirt collar quite a serious concern.
Before we head into the SciFi world of identical polyester knit outfits, is there room in the corporate hand book to allow for the non-conforming gender?
If I want to appear in clothes I feel more comfortable in, do I need to go to HR to get a special note? Or have one of those difficult conversations with my manager about gender etc, when I am not in a transition journey?
I don’t have the answers. I don’t pretend to. I know that the way I dress pegs me as different in the office. When I meet with the Heads of Diversity of a number of Fortune 50 companies, the fact I dress professionally but not within the standard uniform code, is very obvious.
So, what are your thoughts on Gender and dressing for the corporate job?
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Trans Day of Remembrance
Last Saturday/Sunday was the Trans Day of Remembrance.
When members of the trans community, their allies, friends and family join to remember those who have died in the past year.
But it’s not just died, it is those who were murdered, for being who they are. Many times murdered in acts of despicable violence.
This year this happened to over 200 people around the world. Mostly countries where the conservative right wing, or neo-conservative wings of religion have taken hold. Where tolerance is removed in the name of religious observance.
We sat in a room and had a solem ceremony of reading the names of the dead, however we could barely pronounce the names and the places all seemed so far away.
Then you hear places you know, Dallas, Washington, Seattle.
Last year we had Brighton, and the year before London.
This isn’t something that happens to people out there, it is something that can happen to the people in the room.
We sit and gain strength from each other and move out into the world.
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Welcome to Genderboffin
This is Genderboffin- a home for my thoughts and opinions on gender, and also a log of what I am doing around gender.
I claim to be no authority, and I’m putting things down here because it makes sense to communicate these things to the wider world. If you are working to resolve corporate or personal battles, you can feel very alone, but by telling people about what you are doing you can gain much strength.
About me- well if you must know, genderqueer. Not really one or t’other. Very much a girly boy or is that a boyly girl?
I go by the name of Dr J as it is genderneutral and removes some of the expectations. I’ve had more than enough of the “oh, you aren’t what we expected <insert shock/astonishment/bewilderment>”
I’m also a corporate worker- makes me feel like someone from a William Gibson novel saying that, but I worked within corporates for 15 years, and now work in a small agency, which works with corporates.
