Advice for a queer officer?
October 27, 2018 1:37 AM Subscribe
Imagining I was a queer officer at a university, undergraduate, a Student Representative Council related role, what would be some good advice for me? Across the year 2019, but some elements will kick off earlier than that. Good things I should be doing, potential pitfalls I may have missed, anything that people with more experience in life may know to consider that I don't.
I hope this isn't too chatfiltery. I know some previous officebearers from the last couple of years and at other universities and I'm asking them for advice as well where possible, but I'd nonetheless appreciate any insight anyone offer into such a role.
If anyone's not familiar with a queer officer, here is one at another uni not unlike mine, although not identical. There's a lot going on, I don't really need ideas for potential campaigns unless you think it's something that would have been missed, there's about a dozen ongoing campaigns on campus already across a range of issues though. This is maybe more for warnings, accessibility concerns often missed, safety issues and ideas (a way of running meetings you think works really well?), anything like that.
I'm already aware to an extent to be concerned about petty politicking, that's as will be and I avoid it as best I can, there's two officers so if there's factional or personal concerns there's other places for people to go.
We do opt-in pronoun rounds, acknowledgements to country, but anything along these lines that you think is worthwhile, any reading groups you think we should do. The Red in the Rainbow I've heard is good, people have also suggested Towards a Gay Communism which I don't know much about, I was thinking maybe sections from this MeFi project, of course the actual choice would be democratic.
I'm concerned online harassment will be an issue again, historically there's been a lot of anger from Zionist trolls and TERFS, white supremacists and hardcore Christians, depending sometimes on what you've done recently, sometimes on things done 8 months ago they dig up somewhere.
Right now they're mostly just blocked and sometimes reported, I don't think threats aren't reported or anything unless they're unusual. I don't know if maybe there's some tool we should be using, my new co-officer is interested in "dialogue and reaching out" which I'm hoping can be dissuaded, but we'll see.
As far as the politics of the people involved, it'll be a drop-in drop-out broad church. There's people from Labor left, anarchists who spend half their lives at some camp outside Adani things, Greens and Socialist Alternative, as well as everyone else left-of-labour, generally, with numbers ranging from 5 in the middle of exams with nothing happening politically to dozens when, say, there's a same-sex marriage equality campaign on. Most would prefer revolution to reform, which should be reflected in what we do, but capacity is of course limited. Ta.
I hope this isn't too chatfiltery. I know some previous officebearers from the last couple of years and at other universities and I'm asking them for advice as well where possible, but I'd nonetheless appreciate any insight anyone offer into such a role.
If anyone's not familiar with a queer officer, here is one at another uni not unlike mine, although not identical. There's a lot going on, I don't really need ideas for potential campaigns unless you think it's something that would have been missed, there's about a dozen ongoing campaigns on campus already across a range of issues though. This is maybe more for warnings, accessibility concerns often missed, safety issues and ideas (a way of running meetings you think works really well?), anything like that.
I'm already aware to an extent to be concerned about petty politicking, that's as will be and I avoid it as best I can, there's two officers so if there's factional or personal concerns there's other places for people to go.
We do opt-in pronoun rounds, acknowledgements to country, but anything along these lines that you think is worthwhile, any reading groups you think we should do. The Red in the Rainbow I've heard is good, people have also suggested Towards a Gay Communism which I don't know much about, I was thinking maybe sections from this MeFi project, of course the actual choice would be democratic.
I'm concerned online harassment will be an issue again, historically there's been a lot of anger from Zionist trolls and TERFS, white supremacists and hardcore Christians, depending sometimes on what you've done recently, sometimes on things done 8 months ago they dig up somewhere.
Right now they're mostly just blocked and sometimes reported, I don't think threats aren't reported or anything unless they're unusual. I don't know if maybe there's some tool we should be using, my new co-officer is interested in "dialogue and reaching out" which I'm hoping can be dissuaded, but we'll see.
As far as the politics of the people involved, it'll be a drop-in drop-out broad church. There's people from Labor left, anarchists who spend half their lives at some camp outside Adani things, Greens and Socialist Alternative, as well as everyone else left-of-labour, generally, with numbers ranging from 5 in the middle of exams with nothing happening politically to dozens when, say, there's a same-sex marriage equality campaign on. Most would prefer revolution to reform, which should be reflected in what we do, but capacity is of course limited. Ta.
A huge positive initiative at my university is a website where people can have their gender identity and name changed in one fell swoop across all the various university systems.
posted by k8t at 5:41 AM on October 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by k8t at 5:41 AM on October 27, 2018 [3 favorites]
To chime in on k8t's comment, my university similarly allows students to define their name and pronoun across all university systems, with one distinction: it does so for all "internal" systems and communications, but it is careful to retain "legal" name for communication with family members, in case the student is not out to their family.
posted by baseballpajamas at 8:12 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by baseballpajamas at 8:12 AM on October 27, 2018 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by k8t at 5:39 AM on October 27, 2018