Hunter LGBTQIA+ communities are urging Novocastrians to reflect on how their language, actions and spaces could be better adapted to include queer and gender diverse people.
On Friday, members of Hunter Gender Alliance and the University of Newcastle Queer Collective marked an important event in the queer calendar: Wear It Purple Day.
Launched 11 years ago in response to alarming rates of LGBTQIA+ youth suicide, Wear It Purple Day encourages queer people, businesses and the wider community to don purple clothes in a symbol of alliance.
“Wear It Purple Day is particularly significant in the way that it’s about visibility and is open to anyone to participate and say ‘hey, I see you and I am an ally,’” Arden Cassie from Hunter Gender Alliance said.
For Cassie, a transgender woman, it is a deeply important message.
She feels that out of the Hunter New England region, Newcastle is the most inclusive space for queer people, but that Novocastrians still have more work to do, given trans people’s high risk of experiencing violence and abuse.
“There are certainly parts of Newcastle which I would consider more safe and less safe for trans folks.
“I’ve been pretty lucky in my journey around Newcastle in that I have felt pretty safe, but I know other people who have faced abuse in their areas, so there is certainly a lot of work to do,” Cassie said.
Call for greater awareness in healthcare settings
While recovering from an injury at a Hunter hospital, Cassie said she was misgendered by staff.
“To be in a place where I would expect them to know how to deal with health care and to be misgendered, that was an extremely difficult space to be in, having to correct nurses, having to chase getting my gender amended and having to deal with the fact I was stuck in a room with three older cisgender men,” she said.
A transgender-masculine friend of Cassie had a similar experience when being treated in the gynaecology ward at John Hunter Hospital.
“Above them there was a sign that said Women’s Healthcare Plan. I get it that there are a lot of women in the gynaecology wards but seriously, we should think about how that affects people who feel really uncomfortable with that sort of language,” she said.
Among other work, Hunter Gender Alliance provides education and training for medical professionals and specialists such as endocrinologists.
“Our ultimate goal is to improve quality of life and health outcomes for trans people, sometimes through education for cisgender people and organisations, sometimes upskilling of health professionals,” Cassie said.
Progress slowly but surely
For one member of UON Queer Collective, Max, Newcastle represents a safe place.
“I think we are definitely doing better than most regional towns,” he said. “Compared to the major cities, Sydney and Melbourne, Newcastle is pretty far along in its progressive nature.”
The transgender and queer man said what Newcastle lacks is an array of dedicated queer spaces.
“I do think there’s a big demand in the community at the moment for more overt queer spaces,” he said.
“Obviously this is difficult because of COVID, but to be able to have a queer bar or a dry space in Newcastle, just any space is so important and unfortunately outside of university it’s lacking.”
He said while the collective cherished its headquarters in the UNSA building at Callaghan, it wasn’t enough to accommodate students from the NUspace and Ourimbah campuses, or to accommodate the general community.
Max said the issue was compounded by the Hunter’s COVID lockdown.
“I think a lot of students right now are incredibly isolated,” he said.
“We are all feeling the difficulty of not being able to see our friends and family, but I think for queer students there are whole other layers like being stuck at home with potentially non-accepting family members and not being able to see the friends who affirm their identity and who provide the social support that gets them through the day.”
The Queer Collective has been combatting that sense of isolation by running a series of online events as part of UON’s Pride Week celebrations from August 23 – 27.
Activities included a virtual flag raising on Monday, group digital art session on Tuesday, virtual trivia on Wednesday night and a Queer Showcase on Thursday evening.
“Students and academics from the Newcastle area presented and performed,” Max said.
“We had some poetry and a fabulous piece by John Witte on an LGBT history of Newcastle, which was incredibly interesting.”
Despite the progress Max feels has been made in Newcastle in recent history, it is clear many people in NSW remain ignorant or incredulous to the reality trans people face.
On a Wear It Purple Day post on the NSW Police Force Facebook page today, a top comment reads: “I IDENTIFY as a HEALTHY person…give me my rights and freedoms back thanks.” The comment attracted 533 reactions, with only 8 ‘angry’ reactions.
Another comment with 81 reactions said, “Stop being so woke and get back to policing.”
Arden Cassie was disappointed, but not surprised by the comments.
“This is why I have a bit of a thing around the language we use with, ‘I identify as’,” she said.
“I don’t feel like I identify as a woman, I am a woman. It’s not a choice as to who I am, it’s just my reality.
“Sure, it’s my choice as to how I’m going to respond to that. I could choose to live in the closet I suppose, but the mental health consequences of staying in the closet are really not good.”
Lessons to be learnt
In terms of what cisgender and non-queer people could do better, Hunter Gender Alliance and UON Queer Collective agree that simple measures make a huge difference.
“I wish I wasn’t still harping on about how important it is to respect people’s pronouns, but I think it is something we are still coming to terms with,” Cassie said.
“It’s really easy to ask someone’s pronouns. It doesn’t have to be something scary. We are not trying to hide from you, and you are not going to offend us if you ask us our pronouns.”
She said it was great to see more and more people including their pronouns as part of their email signatures, and encouraged everyone to start doing this.
“The more that people participate in that sharing of pronouns, the more it becomes normalised and the safer it is for me to be open about my pronouns too.”
Meanwhile, Max hopes Novocastrians will read up about the little actions they can take to be more inclusive, and to carry on those actions every day of the year, not just on August 27.
Lauren Freemantle