On Gender: One step forward and then...10 steps back?
Most of my blog posts come alive after a conversation with my kids, friends, and/or colleagues.
A few recent conversations and experiences have me contemplating gender and how we can and must do better in our own lives and in our organizations and communities.
I’ve been reading the news of the recent tragic death of a nonbinary student
My kid shared that in gym class you must change your clothes and you must choose between the “girls” and “boys” locker rooms
I got a couple of lengthy doses of mansplaining about the Legislature and local politics, no matter my work experience
When creating this blog post and looking for a graphic, the first thing that popped up in my search for gender was “gender reveal invitations” UGH
These conversations and experiences are exhausting and frustrating. And yet, they remind me of my own shortcomings and my responsibility to try to do better.
Here is some of what I’m thinking on gender, and how we can take a few steps forward, or at least prevent so many steps back.
Start with ourselves.
Learn more about gender. Educate yourself on terms and concepts like gender identity, gender expression, gender expansive, and more. Here is a resource for some basic learning that I found to be somewhat accessible and easy to read and process. Ask questions, listen carefully, be gentle with yourself and others, learn more, and then do it over again and again.
Go beyond sharing pronouns.
There has been this movement to share our pronouns when we introduce ourselves. That’s good. The purpose behind this is so that we don’t assume someone’s gender based on their name, voice, or appearance. That’s super important. But we need to go beyond this. I’ve participated in a few things recently where we shared our name and pronouns, but then all of the examples in the training used a gender binary and “his/her” language.
Conduct a gender audit.
When’s the last time you took a careful look at the ways you talk about gender, your written materials, your policies, etc.? We can do this in any entity in our lives: our families, clubs, online groups, community groups, workplaces, and more. Here are a few tips on conducting a gender audit:
Start by stating your purpose. Why are you doing an audit? What do you want to learn and what are you going to do with what you learn?
Gather whatever it is you want to audit: people, communications, materials, policies, and more.
Review everything you’ve got for language, practices, or systems that might extend an exclusionary gender binary.
Ask people what they want and need.
Analyze the results of your audit and see what themes have emerged.
Decide what you’re going to do and do it.
Once you’ve done some learning and you know more about what might need to change, decide what you’re going to do and do it. Consider a tiered approach of what you can do immediately, what you can accomplish in the short-term, what will need more time and therefore will be for the long haul, and what will be ongoing. Some things we can change and some of this work will require us to keep at it for a long time/forever.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
My dear friend Katherine reminds me that we’re all just a bunch of weirdos bumping into each other. Let’s try to do our best, and be gracious with each other while we’re at it. Rewiring our brains can be hard work. Asking for what we need and then continuing to experience the same extension of a gender binary can be painful and exhausting. Getting called out when we mess up can be embarrassing. Change can be uncomfortable, but I think it’s worth it.
Get outside help (if needed).
Do you need help? I’m no expert. But if you think you could use some help with resources, or if conducting a gender audit is something you’re interested in doing, let’s talk about it. If you want more substantive help with your organization, check out this Guide to Hiring a Consultant.
Document your work, revisit it, and try again.
My experience is that this work on ourselves, within our organizations, and in our communities is never done. My hope is that we can do our best to take more steps forward than back. Thanks for reading and caring about how we can do better on gender.