(in a meeting about outreach for a program that my work is running on leadership for girls and young women. several outreach opportunities/networks have been discussed - i'll be reaching out to university and off-campus activist, blogs, cegeps, women's studies listservs, my friends/acquantainces. a question occurs to me)

me: wait, can i just ask a quick question?

exec direc: yep, sure

me: ok so i know that we're mandated to be trans inclusive, but i'm just wondering how trans people fit into our outreach plan: like i'm thinking of some pretty awesome activists, but they don't necessarily identify as girls - how does this fit in?
(people start jumping in)

1: well, i don't know..

2: it's never happened..

3: well it is supposed to be a safe space - if a person is, how do you say, man-bodied, then girls might not feel like they're in a safe space...

ED: well we are a gender specific organization, so if people don't identify with that then... anyway, i don't think that this is something we really need to struggle with right now

me (pacifying): no, certainly -

2: since we only have 10 minutes left in the meeting

me: yeah, i don't think we need to talk about this right now - i just think that we do need to figure that out in the larger scheme of our organization..

ED: well, and yes, i think that this is the deal: we are gender specific, there is a need for gender specific spaces for girls to feel safe in, and if people identify with that then they should definitely apply

2: yeah, i mean, a case-by-case basis..

ED: yes, i don't think we need a hard and fast policy, like "these people can be here, these people can't" - we just need to let people apply as needed....let it all be fluid, like queer theory (looking at me placatingly)

me: mm hmm.

*******

i mean ultimately, i'd guessed that some of the new people we had hired probably had no grasp of trans issues at all. as the janice raymond-esque comment by person 3 showed, i was right. the last trans 101 that happened here was 2 years ago, before i joined the organization...and we've hired like 6 new people since then. i think most of them are pretty trans-friendly, but some of them are just ignorant.

i had offered a couple of weeks ago to provide a trans 101 for the office, and my boss (ED) said she thought that would be fine - and i talked to her about it again today after the meeting and she agreed that we could definitely make time to do it.

the really interesting thing is that i know at least one of the other people in the room is friends with trans folk; like, good friends. and she didn't speak up at all. i felt like i was the only one in the room freaking out about that comment, and that even as an ally i didn't have any allies.