New study finds genderqueer people face unique patterns of abuse and discrimination »

neutrois:

The study, A Gender Not Listed Here: Genderqueers, Gender Rebels, and OtherWise in the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, was just published by the LGBTQ Policy Journal at the Harvard Kennedy School. It examines the experiences of genderqueer individuals and others who clearly identified as neither a man nor a woman.

You can find the summary and full report at the link above or at the Williams Institute website.

"I just don't understand how you can be non-binary-gendered. That is, not female or male." »

adravet:

I want you to lie for me. If you’re a woman, say “I am a man.” If you’re a man, say “I am a woman.” Say it out loud. Say it to your reflection. Do you feel that little disconnect there, where the sentiment you’re articulating doesn’t match up with the reality you experience? You know you’re lying. Even if someone else comes up and says “Hey! That’s right! That’s definitely what you are,” you will still know you’re lying.

I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s what happens to me when I try to place myself as either male or female. I could stand up and say “I am a man,” and know, to my bones, that I was lying. Just as I’d be lying if I said “I am a woman.”

It’s not a matter of thinking, “I can’t be a man/woman if I want to do or like these things.” I know that as a woman, I could still have a career, join the military, roughhouse, be athletic, be great at science – all those stereotypically male things. I know that as a man, I could still stay at home, raise kids, bake, knit, show my emotions easily and often – all those stereotypically female things. My gender identity is not about what I want to do, it’s about who I am.

This is not a new idea. Cultures across the globe have acknowledged more than two genders, from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt to the Lakota of North America, from Mayan civilization to the Siberian Chuckhi. References to persons neither male nor female date back to some of humanity’s most ancient written records, such as the Sumerian creation myth, and survive in seminal religious texts such as the Ramayana and the Halakha.

If you want to learn more, the citation list on Wikipedia’s article on “Third gender” has links and references to scholarly articles, books, studies, and excerpts which might help you get an idea of the nature and history of various non-binary identities. Or you can look at more contemporary accounts, such as Neutrois.com, or the discussion on AVEN’s site on “What it feels like to be trans, genderqueer or genderless”. Remember that no single narrative will be able to represent all people, and different nonbinary people may have different preferred terms, explanations, and experiences.

(via neutrois)

Gender Neutral Bathroom Challenge »

practicalandrogyny:

fuckyeahftmsofcolor:

The challenge: Don’t use any gendered bathrooms or change rooms for the month of April.

What are “gendered bathrooms”? Gendered bathrooms are designated for “men” or “women” by a sign. This challenges includes ALL multi-stall and single-stall washrooms, and the bathrooms at work, schools, libraries, bars/restaurants, and everywhere, really.

There are multiple purposes for this challenge:

1) To give people who don’t find going to gendered bathrooms a difficult/unsafe experience a small idea of what it is like for trans and gender variant people to navigate this world. Hopefully, with some real life experience, you will have a broader understanding of how gendered this world really is. But,

DOING THIS DOES NOT GIVE YOU AUTHORITY TO SAY WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE TRANS OR GENDER VARIANT.

2) To inspire people to fight for more gender neutral bathrooms.

Tips: 
- Don’t drink a lot of liquid if you are leaving the house for long periods of time
- Try to figure out where some gender neutral bathrooms are in your town/city, and plan your day around using a gender neutral bathroom.
- Remember, you can use gendered bathrooms again in May. Some people can’t. 

And, even if you really have to go to the bathroom, try to not see gendered bathrooms as a possible place to go.

If you are interested, feel free to write your experiences down and send them to gnbchallenge@gmail.com. With your permission, they will be included in a zine on the topic of gendered bathrooms.

We also recommend fighting for gender neutral bathrooms in one (or more) public space(s). Often the fight for this aspect of bathroom accessibility is only fought for by trans and gender variant people; It would be nice if other people fought for it too.

(There’s also a Facebook event:https://www.facebook.com/events/209510742488108/)

—-

PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST!

kyrianne adds:

It would be an interesting caveat to add if you can’t find a gender neutral bathroom, you have to use the one you normally wouldn’t use, but that could cause some actual violence (which happens to trans* people on a regular basis, obviously, but for a thing like this that’s probably not the best ever)

I guess if you want the full experience you could add that to it?

Practical Androgyny: Androgynous model sought for London-based project »

Signal boosting. This project could produce valuable nonbinary visibility materials:

practicalandrogyny:

Practical Androgyny has been contacted by Charlotte, a photographer working with a student from the London College of Fashion on a not-for-profit project that aims to challenge people’s perceptions of gender. If you’re in the London area or able to travel there, and you’re of androgynous appearance, please consider volunteering to model for the photoshoot. No experience required.

Our project explores the way that we perceive positions of political power.  We will be be portraying a fictional presidential figure in a way that challenges people’s assumptions about gender.

We’re looking to explore the way that traditional images of powerful political figures could be subverted to show a future where ‘the president’ appears to be androgynous - or in some way not fitting in with most people’s expectations of binary gender.  We’re looking for someone who could wear the traditional uniform of presidential power (i.e. a smart, dark suit) and present as an extremely attractive individual, without giving the usual cues as to their gender.  We’ll be working with a stylist and a makeup artist to achieve the right look, with our model looking as natural as possible. 

We’re heavily influenced by models like Andrej Pejic and we’d like to envisage a time where people who subvert the gender norm are in public positions outside the fashion world.

We’re going to shoot on Friday 24th or Saturday 25th of this month in South London and unfortunately, we can’t offer payment or travel expenses.  Everyone involved is working on a time-for-images basis, so you’ll get copies of all the final images to use as you see fit.

We very much want to make the best use of the photographs and we are hoping to have them accompany a piece on gender identity for publication and we’d like to offer the whole thing to a magazine as a package on a not-for-profit basis.  You need to be comfortable with this and you’ll be asked to sign a standard model release.

If you’re interested in the project and you think the way you look might fit with our creative vision, please send some recent photos to charlotte<at>lyope<dot>com 

Please reblog and signal boost this request.

Nonbinary gender identity and expression outside of the transgender community

practicalandrogyny:

Today is UK trans* activist organisation Trans Media Action’s Trans Camp event, bringing media and IT professionals together with trans* people to make positive change.

As part of the preparations, trans* people from across the UK were asked to give one minute video responses on the topics of childhood, media, comedy and family.

This is my response to the question of media representation. As a nonbinary person I felt erased or misrepresented by recent media coverage…

I’m nonbinary, that means I live as something other than a woman or a man. It also means I have next to no representation in the media.

Even in documentaries featuring trans* people with genderqueer or gender binary challenging identities or histories, like some of the participants in My Transsexual Summer, these are simplified, glossed over or completely edited out in fear of ‘confusing’ the general public.

If my life experiences are ever touched upon, they’re simplified to the point of misrepresentation. If I’m to be hinted at, it’s in the suggestion that some people are ‘in between’.

My gender and my body are not ‘between’ anything. My gender is not a balancing act. I’m not in the middle ground, I haven’t gone halfway and stopped. I am not half a woman and half a man, I’m not following two sets of sexist stereotypes. I do not ‘pick and choose’ about gender. And I’m not ‘on the fence’. And I’ve definitely not ‘de-transitioned’.

I’m a trans* person, I’m doing what I need to do to be true to myself.

Of course not all nonbinary people object to being described as ‘in between’; that’s an accurate description of some people’s gender identities. But there are many more people besides me whose experiences of being agender, bigender, fluid gender, genderqueer etc are erased by that simplification.

In my case, I experienced gender dysphoria and I did what it was necessary to do to become comfortable with my body. Doing so didn’t fix my social dysphoria though. I tried to be a ‘classic transsexual’, I tried to pretend to be a gender I didn’t truly feel I was. But I found ‘passing’ made me just as socially dysphoric as my assigned gender role had done.

It turned out that transition just wasn’t the perfect ‘package deal’ I’d been sold in the brochure, I had to go off the beaten track to find my own way to authentically express myself to the world.

It would be nice to see this represented in the media at all, especially on TV shows where some of the participants have similar feelings.

(And no, ‘androgyny’ and ‘androgyne’ don’t have to mean ‘in between’; the dictionary definition boils down to ‘having both male and female traits’, and anyway that’s my appearance not my gender).

See further one minute video responses on childhood, comedy and family from an androgynous nonbinary trans* person

Trans Camp: UK Trans Media Action needs your videos »

The UK trans* activist organisation Trans Media Action is running Trans Camp on January 13th at the offices of Channel 4.

Trans Camp will bring together trans* people, developers, designers and innovators to come up with ideas to improve the lives of trans* people using web technologies and the media.

In order to make sure the widest range of experiences are covered, they’re looking for one minute video responses from trans* people around the UK explaining their experiences:

Although around half of the participants will be trans there will also be people there who have never knowingly come across a trans person.

So, we want your short video responses to one or more of these questions. You can use your phone, webcam or something fancier – it doesn’t matter as long as we can hear you and see you (or whatever you choose to film while you’re speaking or subtitling.)

Your videos will be played at Channel 4 on 13th January to the participants of Trans Camp. They will also be put together on a website for people to see in the run up to the camp and afterwards. Your videos will be public so you must be sure you’re happy for them to be seen by anyone online.

Why? We want to give those who are new to trans issues an idea of the diversity within the trans community. We want to bring to life some of the questions we’re asking with real people’s voices.

QUESTIONS: Answer ONE* question per video – max 1 minute

1. CHILDHOOD: For those of you who knew, what was it like growing up as a trans child?
2. MEDIA: How does media coverage of trans people affect you?
3. COMEDY: How do comedy portrayals of trans people affect you?
4. FAMILY: How have you experienced support, or lack of, from family and friends?

*You can answer more than one question if you like, just make a separate video.

If you’re in the United Kingdom and trans* nonbinary, genderqueer or otherwise gender variant or gender nonconforming, please consider submitting a video to make sure the full diversity of trans* experiences are represented in this important project.

Full instructions on how to submit your video responses

* The asterisk at the end of ‘trans*’ denotes that this is the wider inclusive form of trans that includes all transgender, transsexual, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender variant and gender nonconforming people regardless of gender identity or expression.

Nonbinary.org Wiki »

New year, new web presence! Nonbinary.org now hosts a nonbinary gender community wiki with forums coming soon!

Get involved by expanding stub articles or creating wanted pages.