![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[36/365] trans and trains
Feb. 5th, 2021 10:02 pmI had an interesting time at a new kind of blindie meeting -- this is the kind of volunteer I am for the RNIB, I go to meetings. Some are local disability groups, which are mostly about feeding stuff back to my volunteer manager at the RNIB so they can keep up with what people are concerned about, and some are where I'm representing the feedback from the RNIB to groups that are being consulted on things like covid.
This was a new thing, though, where a train company just wanted some blind people to ask about stuff. It was nice to have a meeting that wasn't just whinging or hobby horses (though there was some of that, because trains; I hadn't heard people talk in that specific level of detail since I used to go pubs with Lib Dems!) but someone whose job involves asking us stuff and taking what we said back to board meetings.
It was most interesting to me because one of the things that got mentioned, in talking about disabled toilets, started out as a tangent; another person said something like "transgender people might use the disabled toilets too because they feel more comfortable there than in the ladies' or the men's," a fairly neutral comment potentially but I kinda wanted to nip that in the bud (especially with rampant TERFery meaning we have to talk about toilets a-fucking-gain (UK people please respond to the consultation trying to take away toilets and therefore public life from many people, cis and trans)). I said something like "that's me, I'm trans, and I have suggestions about how we can be inclusive" which the person running the meeting seemed kinda surprised by but very positive about.
So I explained my suggestions, including thinking of and labeling them as accessible toilets rather than disabled toilets, and since we'd already reached a consensus on making it explicit that not all disabilities, I sort of briefly alluded to the social model of disability (without calling it that in case the terminology was unfamiliar enough to be offputting to anyone there) and explained that in the same way as we're disabled not (just) by our impairments but how society treats us as disabled people, trans people also have problems that aren't inherent to them but based on how society treats them, etc. There were positive noises and no one argued, which was a relief.
I'd already emailed the organizer because I had such a hard time getting Teams to work (fucking Teams! I hate it! Zoom is so bad but yet somehow it's the least bad?!) that I was about fifteen minutes late to the meeting, so I emailed her to say sorry, I am trying to get it to work, I do want to be there. And she didn't see it until after I'd, obviously, joined the meeting and after I'd said all this stuff, so part of her reply was "thrilled you have been able to work it out and join, Thank you for being so honest and talking about your situation. It has been really helpful" and I think "your situation" is the best way she knows to say "saying you're trans."
It was really cute and in a way a good sign because I think I'm dealing here with a person who means well but isn't up on this, isn't comfortable talking about it. And she handled it perfectly from a meeting-organizer person-doing-a-job-about-integration point of view. So it's nice to see that can be done not just by people who are 100% Clued Up and Confident, but also just people who are new to this.
It's easy to think from Twitter and from the fact that they dominate UK media that TERFs and their terrible ideas are everywhere, but they're really not. It felt good to have a positive real-world example of that today.
This was a new thing, though, where a train company just wanted some blind people to ask about stuff. It was nice to have a meeting that wasn't just whinging or hobby horses (though there was some of that, because trains; I hadn't heard people talk in that specific level of detail since I used to go pubs with Lib Dems!) but someone whose job involves asking us stuff and taking what we said back to board meetings.
It was most interesting to me because one of the things that got mentioned, in talking about disabled toilets, started out as a tangent; another person said something like "transgender people might use the disabled toilets too because they feel more comfortable there than in the ladies' or the men's," a fairly neutral comment potentially but I kinda wanted to nip that in the bud (especially with rampant TERFery meaning we have to talk about toilets a-fucking-gain (UK people please respond to the consultation trying to take away toilets and therefore public life from many people, cis and trans)). I said something like "that's me, I'm trans, and I have suggestions about how we can be inclusive" which the person running the meeting seemed kinda surprised by but very positive about.
So I explained my suggestions, including thinking of and labeling them as accessible toilets rather than disabled toilets, and since we'd already reached a consensus on making it explicit that not all disabilities, I sort of briefly alluded to the social model of disability (without calling it that in case the terminology was unfamiliar enough to be offputting to anyone there) and explained that in the same way as we're disabled not (just) by our impairments but how society treats us as disabled people, trans people also have problems that aren't inherent to them but based on how society treats them, etc. There were positive noises and no one argued, which was a relief.
I'd already emailed the organizer because I had such a hard time getting Teams to work (fucking Teams! I hate it! Zoom is so bad but yet somehow it's the least bad?!) that I was about fifteen minutes late to the meeting, so I emailed her to say sorry, I am trying to get it to work, I do want to be there. And she didn't see it until after I'd, obviously, joined the meeting and after I'd said all this stuff, so part of her reply was "thrilled you have been able to work it out and join, Thank you for being so honest and talking about your situation. It has been really helpful" and I think "your situation" is the best way she knows to say "saying you're trans."
It was really cute and in a way a good sign because I think I'm dealing here with a person who means well but isn't up on this, isn't comfortable talking about it. And she handled it perfectly from a meeting-organizer person-doing-a-job-about-integration point of view. So it's nice to see that can be done not just by people who are 100% Clued Up and Confident, but also just people who are new to this.
It's easy to think from Twitter and from the fact that they dominate UK media that TERFs and their terrible ideas are everywhere, but they're really not. It felt good to have a positive real-world example of that today.