Back To the Main SiteTeachers of Tomorrow
Today I participated as part of a panel of LGBT educators and youth workers to a graduate class of teaching students at the University of Canberra. The other presenters were excellent. Two educators presented on having non-normative family structure, and a youth worker presented on homosexuality and bisexuality. I attempted to speak about supporting gender non-conforming children in their roles as teachers.
I’d never spoken on this topic before, but unfortunately I was the only person available for the presentation. I felt very nervous, and probably should have made more effort to prepare before hand. Still, people seemed to be into the presentation, and I gave out our website address, so that hopefully some of the people in the room will be able to come here and find some more useful information.
Talking to people who genuinely want to be able to help trans people is something that really makes this gig worthwhile. Sometimes I get frustrated, and burned out, and wonder if anyone actually cares about this stuff… and then I present somewhere, or speak to someone who is curious, and interested, and wants to be helpful. The vibe I got from this presentation was amazingly positive, and I really appreciate that the teachers at the University of Canberra are making the effort to equip their students to make life a bit easier for the next generation of gender non-conforming and queer kids going through our schooling system.
Emergency Support Services
I have added a page of emergency support services to the main website. So far we have financial services, legal advice, and emergency accommodation listings. I urge you to go and have a look at it, and if you know of another service that should be listed there, and isn’t, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
Emergency services that are safe and accessible for trans people are not common in Canberra, and this places us in a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ situation with some service providers. There are some services that may be problematic for trans people who do not pass, for sex/gender diverse people who are bisexual, genderqueer and intersexed people who identify outside of the binary and so on. This is unfortunate, but A Gender Agenda’s dealings with other organisations, as we urge them to adopt more inclusive policies, will never prevent us from redirecting sex and gender diverse people in need to an organisation that may be able to help them.
All that said, if you do approach an organisation that is listed on our website, and have a negative experience with them, please let us know. This allows us to not only modify our listing, but to contact the organisation, and try to work with them to create a more accepting environment for sex and gender diverse people. I firmly believe that most issues arise out of ignorance on the service providers part, and education can do much to eliminate difficulties for sex and gender diverse people in community organisations. After all, people don’t work in community orgs for the money! They do it because they are good people, and want to help the world be a better place!
The directory of support services will expand as time goes on, we plan on adding sections for medical practices, counselling services, domestic violence and rape crisis centers, support services for people with disabilities, indigenous people, youth, and financially disadvantaged people. If you have suggestions for any of those sections, also let us know!
Comment Function Working Again
Hi everyone,
I got a bit curious earlier today as to why I hadn’t had anyone comment on the A Gender Agenda blog since I upgraded the Wordpress software to the latest version. I had checked just after the upgrade, and I was able to post comments fine, logged in as the administrator, but I hadn’t checked if regular users could add comments!
It seems that the comment function has been broken for about 2 weeks. Its fixed now though, so if you had something to say, and it had disappeared into oblivion, try posting it again, and I should get it!
A Gender Agenda on LibraryThing
Currently we’re working hard on getting some kind of physical premises where we can open our Gender Library. We have now spent all the money from the grant, and so there are several boxes of books in my lounge room right now. The sex and gender diverse community has donated a spectacular number of books to this project, and we are immensely grateful for everyone’s support!
Setting up a library is quite a lot of work! Even though we don’t have a premises, and so wont be loaning the books out for some time, there are still plenty of tasks to keep me occupied. I need to input each books information into our library software, cover each book so that it doesn’t get damaged, and put stickers on the ones that are not for loan, and warning labels on heinous titles like ‘The Transsexual Empire’ by Janice Raymond.
Tonight I created a LibraryThing account for the Gender Library, so that I could access their nifty ‘recommendations’ feature, and reviews of some of the books I haven’t read, so that I could put appropriate information into our software.
There are currently 117 books listed, which is by no means all of the books we have. We also have a number of pamphlets, zines, and magazines that are published by small community groups, and so do not have ISBN’s, and we have DVD’s, and a few Aussie books that just weren’t listed in the US Databases. Not to mention the books we purchased from Melbourne which I still need to collect!
Anyway, if you would like to have a look through the books listed, this is our Profile, and this is our list of books. Feel free to make recommendations of titles, or let me know if there is a book in the collection that I should put a ‘Warning: Transphobic Content” label on!
Study Calling for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Parents
Have you ever sought and used health care services for your children? We would be interested in hearing about your experiences of this. We will ask you some questions about your experiences, as well as some about yourselves, during interviews which can be held at your convenience.
Would you like to be part of this study? If you would, could you email or ring one of us at Curtin University
Many thanks
Dr Rose Chapman, PhD, MSci (Nursing), Lecturer, School of Nursing & Midwifery.
Professor Linda Shields, PhD, F.R.C.N.A., F.R.S.M., Professor of Paediatric and Child Health Nursing,
Email: r.chapman@curtin.edu.au or l.shields@curtin.edu.au
Telephone: (08) 9266 2095
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