On baby steps in trans* representation

I've now seen several people I trust say positive things about 'My Transsexual Summer', a new series due to air on Channel 4 this evening and premiered in London yesterday.

I'm tentatively expecting it to be positive overall and a genuine change in the way trans* experiences are depicted on television, but the original press releases from Channel 4 had me feeling pretty nervous that it was going to conflate 'transsexual', 'transgender' and 'trans' as one thing and present that as the process of transitioning between binary genders.

Apparently it's an 'in their own words' part reality show format with group discussions, so whether nonbinary or genderqueer people get a look in may be down to what the people Channel 4 selected to represent the trans* community say.

I think I'd feel a little more confident about Channel 4's commitment to representation if their pre-publicity gave the impression that they included any minority trans* experiences.

Looking at the list of seven participants, only one of whom is over 30, all of whom appear to be white (although I'm told one has taken exception to that description) and able bodied, binary identified, transitioned or planning to transition, I can't say I'm seeing a full reflection of the trans* communities I'm a member of...

Maybe I'm expecting too much from a TV show, given that just having trans men and trans women featured together, on equal terms and in their own words is frankly a major breakthrough.

Maybe the producers decided that including all that 'complicated' stuff like intersectual experiences and nonbinary identities would just confuse the viewing public? (Seems to be the number one excuse for erasing me ...that and 'correct grammar').

And maybe I should watch the actual programme and view these people in their own words before I comment, it's not like I don't know enough people whose stories were 'simplified' by the press...

Update: I'm informed that one of the newspaper reviews says a participant on My Transsexual Summer is transitioning to 'a happy place inbetween'. If that's true then the pre-publicity really is guilty of conflating different trans* experiences into one! But I'll be watching with great interest to see!

Update 2: My reading comprehension skills clearly weren't up to much when I read all those profiles this morning: It says 'a happy place inbetween' at the bottom of Donna's profile. Remember, tune in to Channel 4 at 10pm to see how each of the participants self-describes!

Update 3: Judging from the first episode, Donna's 'inbetween' comment seems to be euphemistically talking about how firmly happy she is with her body with no wish for surgery (and how brilliant to see that view represented on TV!). It wasn't clear whether she also identifies outside of the binary in some way, and I consider it a failure of the programme makers for not making that clearer. Here's hoping there'll be more discussion of this in later episodes.

I've since spotted that one of the contestants describes himself on Twitter as 'two-spirited' and feels a lot of what he said about himself on film hasn't been shown. If the programme makers really have simplified a participant's self-described gender identity to make it 'easier to understand', I'll be very disappointed, but I'll reserve judgement until we've seen more episodes.

I've also seen another participant blogging about people complaining about stereotypical depictions in the show and left a comment there saying that the critique is very much placed on the producers for not having more diversity represented in the people they selected for the show (and in their editing). The stories of the participants featured are all positive and valuable and should be celebrated by 'the community'.

I'm sure a blog post will be written for Nonbinary.org in time for the site's launch :)

Building a nonbinary community portal - help me make the right technology choices

I'm in the process of setting up an international nonbinary (and genderqueer/gender nonconforming) visibility, education and advocacy network, designed to highlight, signal boost, encourage and pool the resources and visibility efforts of activists across the web.

The website (with wiki, case studies, FAQ, forums etc) isn't ready yet, but the social media outlets are up and running on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. Would you all mind looking at them, liking/following them and giving them a signal boost if you like what you see?

http://nonbinary.tumblr.com/
http://www.facebook.com/nonbinaryorg
http://twitter.com/nonbinaryorg

This is going to be a long term project and the major focus of my activism work from now on. I've been talking with other activists and we're planning several resources, projects and campaigns. Including an initial focus on general visibility and a campaign about equal access to transgender medical care and services.

I want this to become a properly self sustaining community-based network, so it's going to launch with a wiki and forums and ask for case studies and contributions from the start. It's also not trying to re-invent the wheel at all, there's loads of writing and activism out there that can be highlighted. I was involved in setting up the modern positive asexuality movement (wrote the asexuality.org FAQ and ran the forums for a while back in 2002/03) and that gained momentum pretty quickly, ultimately having moderator elections and the like within a couple of years, so I'm hopeful that the success there is repeatable.

Right now I'm stressing about setting up the website and making sure the technology and structural decisions I make are right, so I'm wondering if you guys could give me some feedback on how to host the group blog. Should I set it up to use Wordpress (hosted on my own server, as with Practical Androgyny) or Tumblr?

Tumblr has a big nonbinary, trans* and genderqueer scene, lots of engagement but relatively poor accessibility. Of all outlets I use, I always seem to get the most responses and thought-provoking debate on Tumblr, but I find the reblogging model of commenting difficult to follow and end up clicking through 'Notes' to dozens of different pages, each with their own differently laid out theme/layout/colour scheme.

Wordpress has features like Most Read, Most Commented, tag clouds, searchable archives, threaded comments, better homepage integration for the planned 'community portal' feel, but it wouldn't come with an existing active nonbinary/genderqueer/trans* 'scene' like Tumblr has.

So what's your opinion? Whichever we opt for, the Nonbinary Tumblr will be active and highlighting non-blog content like wiki pages, case studies, resources and forum discussions.

Update: I wrote this explanation of how Tumblr works after I was asked for more information in one of the many places I posed this question:

Tumblr is kind of a 'miniblogging' service, designed to fit between 140 character microblogging like Twitter and full on blogging like on LJ or Wordpress. Every member has a personal blog on there, but the system is designed to make it very easy for people to share and add to other people's posts.

If you like (or dislike!) someone's post, you can click 'reblog' and then quote it on your own blog (with links/attributes back) and add your own thoughts.

This means that it has a lot of active members who quickly share and debate content, but the discussion tends to escape from your original post and into a long threaded discussion across dozens of different blog pages very quickly. Kind of like following a mailing list discussion but with the added complexity that the layout, text style and colours are different on every message...

Try following the full discussion across the 146 'notes' (likes and reblogs) on this, for example: http://nonbinary.tumblr.com/post/12457351441/the-nonbinary-vs-genderqueer-quandary

I also clarified how things would work if I opted to primarily use Wordpress:

The group blog wouldn't be 'on' Wordpress or require a Wordpress account, it'd be on hosted on Nonbinary.org and likely using Disqus for comment entry and management (which allows multiple types of login including Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, OpenID, anonymous etc).

Whatever happened, I was planning to post summaries of every post (along with notable forum discussions and wiki pages) over on http://nonbinary.tumblr.com/

This is all really a question of whether the group blog contributors will have to get logins for Nonbinary.org's Wordpress install or whether they can just use Tumblr to make their contributions (of course some may not be on Tumblr and would be forced to sign up there in order to take part).