Melbourne

Cool and frustrating trans stories for this pride month. So today I volunteered to help make care packages for older trans and gender diverse people, which was a good way to spend a morning. There's a job fair Transgender Victoria are facilitating tomorrow where I think 13 employers are directly seeking trans and gender diverse staff. It's not a huge number but it's a greatly heartwarming thing regardless.

I was going to wax lyrical about my bank and insurer being super trans positive until I got their email stating they could only reflect my gender as male or female. The super friendly person had mistakenly identified me as non-binary and therefore they couldn't change my gender in their system. I can't reply to that email either as it's unmonitored. Duh, I'm female, not non-binary, dumb dumb. I tried phoning them again now but after five minutes the line dropped. Seems like a simple clerical error but it leaves all non binary completely non-represented and that's not good enough, They've been trained but maybe not that well, still and all at least they use my preferred name and don't treat me any differently but when someone says they're transgender it usually means they're transgender, not non-binary necessarily. A lot of non binary people don't identify as being transgender and don't identify as either male or female. I should add they really went the extra mile to help up until now and are trying to be better. Just when the insurance lady and I had had a great conversation about inclusion I feel kind of deflated now. Two steps forward, one step back.

I also just read the elon musk has now stated cis and cisgender are slurs on twitter. I'll take all the good and feel good rather than dwelling on the bad of course, but its a reminder of how far we have to go. Cis is used as a slur by trans people sometimes for sure but not by everyone and not by cis people who are happy to be identified as such.