Thursday 30 July 2015

30th July 2015

Love: I love todays like today! A day that makes me feel I'm part of something that will make not just my life but the lives of a huge number of people better (even if it is just talking about it). Long may it continue that I am part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
Life: Today was the Navajo Hate Crime conference. I, with Renate and Phil, facilitated the Older LGBTQI workshops and a great learning experience it was for me too! :) I feel a great deal of good has come of today and I have spent this evening writing up my report to be fed back for further use. However, this being MY blog, I feel I can put my critical head on and state that I was left with a tinge of sadness about the panel of agencies/services that we are being encouraged to report hate crimes to. It was clear which were only paying lip service to improvement or didn't fully grasp the enormity of the task facing them and which did. However, the real nugget of disappointment - that I responded to with uttering a profanity to my colleague! - came when a representative of a service made a joke about being 'female at weekends'! I'm not going to mention this person's name or what service they were representing (and they're retiring anyway!) as they are but one person and I don't want one person to colour impressions about a whole organisation. However, even though they knew instantly that they shouldn't have said it and immediately apologised and backtracked, I feel it gives a flavour of the task ahead of us - that someone, if only for a moment, feels it is OK to make a TRANSPHOBIC joke at a HATE CRIME CONFERENCE!! It was stated in the workshops that we need to be intolerant of intolerance for real change to happen but that one incident shows that we (and I do include myself, obviously) are a long way from taking that zero tolerance approach.
Career: Being as affected as I was today by the workshops on Older LGBTQI People: the call for closer community working; bridging the generations; this evening I have volunteered my services to assist to do just that and work with the older LGBTQI generations. I will await with anticipation where this leads me. :)