{"id":2138,"date":"2021-11-14T05:41:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-14T05:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2022-04-13T13:59:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T13:59:09","slug":"celebrating-transgender-week-awareness-some-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/celebrating-transgender-week-awareness-some-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Transgender Week Awareness: Some Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s in a pronoun: a collection of personal perspectives<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

For this Transgender Week of Awareness, a few of us reflected on why we use our pronouns how we do.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Christy\u00a0Barlow\u00a0(she\/her)\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

I was taught from a very young age that you always address someone as the gender they are presenting as, for example is someone is wearing a dress you would address them as\u00a0\u2018she\u2019\u00a0whether\u00a0or not\u00a0that lined up with your\u00a0perceived\u00a0gender stereotypes.\u00a0As time has gone on and the language and discussion around gender has\u00a0developed\u00a0I feel lucky that I\u00a0was raised in an environment where language around gender\u00a0was discussed and trans people were\u00a0part of my life as family friends\u00a0and\u00a0neighbours.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As a cis person, my gender is not usually questioned (the occasional confusion\u00a0about having a traditionally male name aside),\u00a0however\u00a0this is why\u00a0I share my pronouns regularly, on social media, in my email signature and\u00a0face to face.\u00a0The\u00a0more we discuss gender and pronoun use the more normal it will\u00a0become,\u00a0I try to make\u00a0this a regular part of everyday life\u00a0in the hope that this will make a tiny contribution to making the\u00a0environment\u00a0around me more comfortable for everyone.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not to say that I don\u2019t make mistakes, discussions around gender\u00a0are\u00a0daunting when you\u00a0first start learning,\u00a0as discovering that something that many people take for granted is layered and complicated\u00a0is\u00a0intimidating. I am always learning more about gender identity\u00a0and\u00a0whilst I am always conscious of \u2018doing the right thing\u2019 I have\u00a0regularly had to pause, step back and listen to people around me and learn from their\u00a0experience.\u00a0Something I have learnt is that showing the world who you really are is a very brave and scary thing, so I\u00a0want to be as helpful as I can to everyone taking steps to do that.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Josie Henley (they\/them)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

I first started trying out they\/them pronouns around six years ago. As with a lot of things, there are ways of experimenting without having a sudden switchover. Getting to the point of putting the statement \u201cMy pronouns are they\/them |\u00a0Fy\u00a0rhagenwau\u00a0ydyn\u00a0nhw\u00a0\/\u00a0nhw\u201d in my Cardiff University email signature went through\u00a0a number of\u00a0steps. I first told my partner, then kids, then a\u00a0facebook\u00a0announcement. Then I left it for a while to see how it felt. I added it to twitter a few years ago, and about a year ago it went onto my Cardiff University profile page. Then I started to notice people putting their pronouns at the bottom of their email signatures and I thought, ok, this looks like it\u2019s normalised now so let\u2019s go for it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As someone who does feel the need to tell people, rather than expect they rely on their\u00a0spidey\u00a0senses to guess my gender, it can get a bit wearing. Reactions might be confused or even hostile, which makes it scary to do it and sometimes it\u2019s just not worth it. Having a norm that everyone, cis or trans, announces their gender\/pronouns either at the beginning of a meeting or at the end of their email signature, makes it a lot less awkward and\u00a0finger-pointy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Not everyone reads through an email signature, of course, and not everyone remembers to use my pronouns. It\u2019s up to you what you do with the information. But I feel that it is a step forward that it has become normal for everyone, not just trans people, to note their pronouns rather than assuming that other people will be able to figure it out.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prof Kerry Hood (she\/her)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

One of the things I have realised as I have got older is how the scale of the impact of our actions on others is not always obvious to us.\u00a0\u00a0I have learnt (sometimes the hard way) that\u00a0off the cuff remarks\u00a0can be very hurtful and that small kindnesses can make a huge positive difference. As a result of this I have tried to become more mindful and reflective of the impact that my behavioural choices have on others. Two particular\u00a0small changes\u00a0that I have\u00a0made\u00a0over the last few years have been in relation to how gendered\u00a0my use of\u00a0language is\u00a0and both have been informed by discussion in real life and on social media and trying to see\u00a0other\u00a0perspectives.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first of these is that I used to commonly in speech and in emails use the phrase \u2018guys\u2019 as a gender-neutral term as in \u2018Hey guys how are we going to do this\u2019. I noticed a thread on social media from a large group of women talking about how they felt this was the same as calling everyone men and particularly in the workplace, normalised that the default gender was male. When I started to talk to people around me about\u00a0it\u00a0they were all very kind, but I was a bit shocked by how small it made some of them feel and out of place in their\u00a0hurt\u00a0given that as a senior woman I was using that language.\u00a0 Since\u00a0then,\u00a0I have tried very hard to stop using the term guys, having replaced\u00a0it with everyone or people or team.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second area I have changed is that on my email signature and social media profile I now have my pronouns (she\/her).\u00a0\u00a0This again came about as I was talking to various people and watching discussions on social media and was\u00a0really quite\u00a0moved by the sense that for people who\u00a0<\/span>had<\/span><\/b>\u00a0to tell people their pronouns (such as those who are transitioning), the fact that they stood out as unusual was\u00a0really difficult\u00a0for them.\u00a0 If I could do something so simple and small (taking all of 30 seconds to add to my email signature) that could make a difference to other people, then what reason could I have for not doing so?\u00a0 Since having\u00a0added\u00a0it\u00a0I have found myself\u00a0reflecting\u00a0on\u00a0all the times when we had email, but less internet (\u2018the good old days\u2019)\u00a0when I was mistaken for being a man because my title was Dr and the way in which people treated me differently under that assumption. Put alongside this the current tendency to give Dr and Prof titles to men but not to women and I think it is even more important to say that I am Prof Kerry Hood (she\/her) and wear it with pride, for myself as well as others.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s in a pronoun: a collection of personal perspectives\u00a0 For this Transgender Week of Awareness, a few of us reflected on why we use our pronouns how we do.\u00a0 Christy\u00a0Barlow\u00a0(she\/her)\u00a0\u00a0 […]","protected":false},"author":1544,"featured_media":2139,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7dIou-yu","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2915,"url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/centre-for-trials-research\/the-peer-mist-project-and-physical-movement-for-wellbeing\/","url_meta":{"origin":2138,"position":0},"title":"The Peer MIST Project and Physical Movement for Wellbeing","author":"Paula Foscarini-Craggs","date":"May 13, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The theme for this year\u2019s Mental Health Awareness week is Movement. 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