Back To the Main SiteOctober Picnic Fun
We had our October picnic on Saturday. The weather was beautiful, the food delicious, and the company fun! We had some new faces there, so it was nice to chill out and make some new friends.
We wont be having any more events for a couple of weeks, as the SpringOut Pride festival swiftly approaches. Watch this space for advertisements for our events during November though!
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!
The AGA Youth Group
The A Gender Agenda youth group met for coffee this evening at Tosselini’s. I fucking love our youth group! Its for people under 30 who are trans, intersex, gender questioning, queer, genderqueer, and the friends and partners of any or all of the above. We’ve only had two meetings so far, but each one was heaps of fun, and we’ve already made four new friends, who I hope keep coming along.
Canberra is a pretty sleepy little town, and even though we’re national leaders with regard to Gay and Lesbian rights, we tend to be a bit behind the times when it comes to queerness and gender diversity. There seems to be a pretty persistent belief that all trans people are straight elderly ladies who started out as boys. Tonight as I sat at a table with a pair of cute radical queer dykes, young trans men, and young queer trans women, I felt very at home, and mused that most people don’t even realise that we have this many gender diverse and radically queer people in Canberra, let alone this being a rather smallish gathering of a narrowly defined demographic. I really hope that AGA’s youth group continues to grow, both in numbers, and in diversity of genders, sexualities, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and abilities.
We started talking about what kinds of things we might do in the future, and floated such ideas, as having a glamorous and highly silly dress up party, a craft-a-noon, going bowling, or just meeting up for another coffee. We’ll also be adding a mailing list for the youth group to use for discussion and organising, so no doubt things will start to happen.
I’d like to finish off this post, by thanking Robyn and Gabrielle for taking over the task of organising the Youth Group. You are both AWESOME!
Community Picnic: October 09
A Gender Agenda love our picnics. They are laid back, family friendly, low pressure, and tend to be lots of fun. Our last picnic attracted close to 70 people across the afternoon, and everyone seemed to have a ball!
This picnic is intended to be a fun day out for the entire alphabet soup. You don’t need to be trans to attend, you don’t even need to know a trans person. If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, genderqueer, intersex, asexual or questioning your gender or sexuality, or know someone who is, you are more than welcome to come along and join in the fun.
Remember that you can bring your whole family, parents, partners, kids, and pets. Its a day out in a park, and there’s a playground for youngsters to play on. There are also BBQ facilities for those who want to cook food.
We try to be as inclusive as possible, so if you have a disability or other special requirements that we might be able to help with, please shoot us an email, and we’ll do our best.
WHAT: A Picnic
WHEN: 10th of October 2009, 12.30pm
WHERE: Glebe Park in Civic
WHO: You, and your family
WHY: To get to know other people of diverse age, sexuality, gender identity and expression, in a fun and family friendly environment.
Another reminder will go out closer to the event, but pencil the date into your calendar now!
Coming up for A Gender Agenda
SpringOut 2009
Its that time of year again… the run up to November, the month of Canberra’s local Pride Festival. A Gender Agenda and NewCTN are holding a joint stall at SpringOut’s Fairday this year. We’ve got lots of fun activities and events planned for the day, so come along and check out the festivities!
Also during November we have planned an Art Exhibition of Trans Political Art, with the grant kindly provided to us by Pink Tennis, the local Gay and Lesbian Tennis Club. This will be shown both in the Legislative Assemblies Exhibition Space, and in another Art Gallery, that we are still confirming.
There will also be an A Gender Agenda Picnic on the last Saturday of November, so mark the 28th of November in your calendar, and keep it clear!
In less cheerful news, we will be marking Transgender Day of Remembrance again this year. TDoR falls on the 20th, which is a Friday this year. We are hoping to have a ceremony inside a building, but again we haven’t yet confirmed locations. More details will be posted closer to the date.
Anyway, we hope to see you at an event soon.
Gender Diversity Day BBQ – A Huge Success!
We had our Gender Diversity Day BBQ at Glebe Park on Saturday, 28th of February.
WHAT A FANTASTIC TURNOUT!!!!
It was fabulous to spend the afternoon with such a diverse range of people.
The vibe was amazing – a truly honest celebration of diversity with a sense
of community that felt REAL…
Thanks to everyone who attended and made it such a wonderful day.
(and of course we encourage even MORE people to attend our next event!)
– Peter
As Peter said, the BBQ was a great success. We had a whole host of people we’d never met before rock up. There was such a good vibe over the entire day. We had WIN News show up and film us for a while, but we haven’t seen that broadcasted yet. If anyone knows when that will be aired, please let us know.
So, a toast to new friends and old! I hope to see even more new faces at our next event.
- Ryan
Recent Comments