Mastodawn

Today is the annual #TransDayOfVisibility.

*waves at all the lovely trans people here*. I am delighted to share this space with you.

There is still so much more than we - cis people - can and must do to make the world safer and friendlier for trans people.

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Neil Brown 14h ago

Practical thoughts:

1) actively encourage trans people into your community and spaces. Be explicitly clear that they are welcome.

2) promote and enforce robust codes of conduct, and ask for this in events to which you contribute.

3) report anti-trans content to your own instance admins, and to the hosting instance admin if it makes sense to do so.

4) buy stuff (if you are in a position to do so) from trans people. Loads of trans people in the fediverse have small shops selling cool bits and pieces (drawings, books, jewellery, and more).

5) if you control the design of forms and systems, do not collect gender information unless necessary (and I don't have a good example of when this might be, but someone might)

6) push back against laws and policies which discriminate against, or make life harder for, trans people. Write to your MP, and be vocal in your support.

#TransDayOfVisibility

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Persephone 13h ago

@neil

re 5:

you're probably actually asking for pronouns or titles so you can address someone correctly in a invoice or email template. Ask for that directly, rather than asking what shape genitals they have, cos that's freaking weird dude.

Outside of medical or sex work contexts I can not think of a reason you really really need to know someone's gender.

"We need it for the advertising profile" isn't as good an excuse as you think it is. Splitting billions of people in to two buckets isn't an effective marketing strategy.

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Alyssa Coghlan

@mindpersephone @neil And even in a medical context, I need to know *why* the question is being asked, as "we need to know what your hormone levels were like as a teenager", "we need to know what your hormone levels are like now", "we need to know your genital structure" and "we need to know about your sex chromosomes" are all *different* questions, but all too often presented on forms as just "Sex (M/F): ...." or "Gender (M/F): ...."