This campaign focuses on access and acceptance for non-binary-gendered people, but the results will be far-reaching, helping everyone who does not want to be defined by a binary gender from non-binary-gendered to trans*.
The Campaign focuses on making forms and individual toilet facilities inclusive but covers a few other areas as outlined in our recommendations and seeks to enable people to think outside the normalised binary gender boxes of Male and Female.
[This is the web page for the Cambridge University-based branch of the campaign: please visit the national website for more information.]
What we are recommending.
We have a range of recommendations focusing on forms, with a number of recommendations especially on the question on gender, asking people to think outside the normalised boxes of Male and Female. For the question of gender we recommend:
Gender:
- Male
- Female
- Other, optionally please specify …………….
- Prefer not to say
We also recommend that:
- individual toilet facilities and changing facilities are made gender neutral (unless there are several such facilities where some can be binary gendered).
- Dress codes are made more inclusive and less gendered.
- Use of language which is not binary-gendered and does not reinforce the binary, we are maintaining a list of non-gendered language, if you have anything to add to this then please email the trans rep(s).
We also have available our recommendations in full.
Resources
Glossary
We maintain a glossary of many of the terms we use here, it is far from complete or comprehensive definitions but is useful to give a general guide.
Gender-neutral language
We are developing a list of gender-neutral alternatives to gendered language which we hope to expand on extensively – if you have suggestions please email them to the trans rep(s).
Documents
Below are the documents as have/will be sent out to the University and JCRs/MCRs. Feel free to have a read:
- Main letter (pdf,odt,doc) sent throughout the University. It gives a brief outline of the campaign.
- Glossary (pdf,odt,doc)).
- Recommendations for forms (pdf,odt,doc)).
- General recommendations (pdf,odt,doc)).
- Letter sent to JCRs and MCRs (pdf,odt,doc)).
General information about transgenderism
If you have general questions about any issues relating to transgenderism the we suggest that you visit the main trans section of this website. Do feel free to contact us if you still have any questions.
Getting Involved
We’re keen to get people involved, and get ideas for the campaign so here’s some stuff you can do.
Join the mailing list
If you would like to support the campaign and want to be kept in touch with our plans then do sign up to the Think Outside The Box mailing list.
Send us your ideas/feedback etc
You can send ideas, feedback, questions, technical issues or anything else about the campaign to our trans rep(s) or send an email to the TOTB mailing list.
Publicise the Campaign
Anything from just telling people about the campaign, especially when you find something that could be improved by our recommendations to volunteering to write articles or run publicity events.
Put our posters up
We currently have two posters, one aimed more at challenging the assumption of the binary in forms and the other more for toilet facilities. Additionally, if you we are keen on having more interesting posters – if you would be interested in creating posters for the campaign then please email the trans rep(s).
Tell us about good and bad practice you see
We’ve very keen to know about both good and bad practice both within the University and elsewhere in accessibility and acceptance of non-binary-gendered people. We are particularly keen to hear about:
- Individual toilet facilities which are gender neutral
- both so we can demonstrate this as existing practice and so we can add any public facilities to gender-neutral toilet maps, local and international.
- Individual toilet facilities which are not gender neutral
- Particularly facilities which are allocated to one binary gender. We encourage you, if you feel able, to contact the organisation running such facilities to tell them about the Campaign and suggest that they make the facilities gender neutral. We are very happy to support you in doing this or contact them if you would prefer that.
- Forms and other facilities that are really good
- It’s great to hear about people getting it right so we’d love to hear about positive experiences for this reason and sometimes we hear about a really good practice that we hadn’t thought of that can be then used as an example or incorporated into the campaign.Also if we can give examples of places where our recommendations are being carried out this will make it much easier to negotiate with other organisations to get them to follow these examples of ‘best practice’.
- Forms and other facilities that are particularly problematic
- If you have noticed any places where there are issues the Campaign should address do let us know, feel free to contact the person(s) in charge yourself or ask us to do so. We’re particularly concerned with anything which restricts access to important areas of University life like required forms or dress codes for graduation or matriculation to pick two examples.
Run your own TOTB Campaign
Currently we’re just a local Campaign, if you’re not from Cambridge and you’d like to run a Think Outside The Box Campaign then you are welcome to use the resources that we have here for this purpose and do contact the trans rep(s) to let us know what you are doing and if you’d like support in doing so.
Think Outside The Box material is copyright Rowan Thomas or other contributors, 2010. Can be freely reproduced in support of the campaign or if you would like to run a similar campaign.
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