Gender diversity help?

[liv]

So my brother (here known as Screwy) is a sessional teacher in a university. He decided, on the advice of a trans friend, that he would include asking for preferred pronouns during the intros in the first class of term. However, one fresher in his class, whom Screwy read as trans but who isn't out, was made visibly uncomfortable by this. This student later wrote in Screwy's teaching evaluation that this exercise could potentially out them, and respectfully requested that Screwy should not do that again.

As a result, Screwy feels really bad because his good intentions of making his class a safe space for people with diverse gender expressions backfired and actually made one of his students directly unsafe. He asked me to mobilize my right-on gender queer friends and seek advice for how he can do this right in future. I definitely share Screwy's aim of wanting my classes to be gender diverse safe spaces, but I have never dared ask for pronouns at the same time as asking for names, even though I can see the arguments for why it's good practice. So we would both like to know, what would be the most sensitive and helpful way to make both genderqueer people and gender normative, stealthed trans people feel safe?

I would prefer advice from people who have some personal experience or at least informed activist background with this stuff, rather than random speculation from cis people. I mean, I can come up with plenty of random speculation on my own. However, I fairly obviously don't want to out people or in any way force you to state your trans credentials to be able to comment. I think the best way round this is to encourage people to comment anonymously if you are willing to help but don't want to put the complexities of your identity in comments to a public post. I certainly welcome PMs if you have some advice that you don't want to put in the comments even anonymously.

And to give people as clueless as I am something to talk about, I also note that my uni LGBTsoc has declared November to be Trans* Awareness Month. They have Transgender Day of Remembrance shoehorned in there somewhere, but mostly it seems like they're showing a lot of films with trans themes, some of which seem to me to be quite, um, problematic, things like Priscilla queen of the desert and TransAmerica and Rocky Horror. They also sent round a survey to students and staff which basically assumed everybody answering the question would be cis, and had a lot of questions about whether people feel informed about trans* issues, the most egregious being Do you feel confident you could politely address a trans* person? which is making me very much side-eye. I can't figure out whether I should attend some of the events to show solidarity, or studiously ignore them because I don't want to pat myself on the back for supporting "diversity" by means of watching a bunch of chasery, cis gaze films. Maybe just go to the TDOR ceremony, but even that I've seen seriously criticized by activists. The vibe of the whole thing really does feel like it's aimed at making cis people feel good about themselves, but at least actively including trans* stuff within LGBT events is a small step in the right direction. And maybe I'm too cynical, maybe it will help actual trans* students as well?

Any ideas?

Comments

[ceb]

I would prefer neither to misgender nor out you. I would prefer not to misgender or out anyone else either, or to make them/you feel like they/you have to talk to me about what gender they/you are, or to make them/you feel uncomfortable that I'm assuming things about them/you. I do not know how to achieve all these things at once (I'm not sure it's possible without being telepathic), so I do the best I can.

I would greatly prefer if society in general made fewer assumptions about people based on, well, all sorts of things really, but biological sex and gender stereotypes are particularly relevant to this conversation. So I act accordingly. I use the names and pronouns that specific people prefer, according to the contexts they prefer, whether those are explicitly requested or the ones that they use of themselves. I meet a lot of people briefly or in contexts where it's not possible to have those conversations or make those judgments, so I don't make assumptions about what gender they are. In the context of a teaching setting then maybe the teacher can ask people privately about preferred pronouns &c., but maybe some of them will think it's none of the teacher's business, and most of life is not that structured. So what else can I do?

[(Anonymous)]

So first, sorry that my last comment was phrased so snarkily. You are right that there is no way to avoid all the negative consequences in your first paragraph. I bristled because it felt as though the negative consequences which affect me specifically were being casually dismissed.

I appreciate that an approach which minimises assumptions has advantages, especially in terms of increasing safety and comfort levels for genderqueer, mixed-gender and agender people, and I don't necessarily think you ought to change it. But it isn't unproblematic; it does hurt people like me, and that needs to be acknowledged if it's to be presented as a solution.

[ceb]

Thanks, and point taken. But I'm not quite sure how you're imagining I speak. There are so many many different ways of getting information across; I'm just picking one perfectly good sentence formulation over another. I might have (and indeed often do) have so many other reasons for making the same choice of sentence. I really don't think it's the case that everything I say comes across as CLANG I AM MAKING A POINT. Not least because often when you're avoiding saying something it's really unhelpful to do it in a way which draws attention to the fact there's something to be avoided!