Harper Taylor-Hanson (Natural Sciences BSc) has achieved great things as our Trans Officer this year, including the organisation of a fascinating and insightful lecture series in Term 2.
As the Trans* Officer I am responsible for representing the needs of the trans* community at UCL through zones in the Students' Union. I have advocated for policy such as introducing an opt-out pronoun system on Portico where so display of pronouns can be normalised. I have voted in favour of policies that I believe would benefit our community and raised issues that would be overlooked without trans insight.
Myself and Micah (the network secretary) have managed our social media, and made posts to broadcast support at key times like Trans days of remembrance and visibility. We receive a huge number of emails from studies, support networks and events wishing to promote or engage the community so disseminating that information is a large part of the job I do.
We organised a few socials over first term, which unfortunately saw little engagement resulting in the plan to host the lecture series in term 2. The aim here was to engage such a diverse community about our one shared quality - our transness! The majority of the lectures who came in were trans and the content of the lectures, although diverse, was always related to this.
Dr. Forslund's lecture on was on her research on the effects of HRT, and how in future we could adapt HRT to affect change that will give those undergoing the therapy their desired outcomes and the most gender euphoria.
Nick Cherryman's lecture on their PhD investigating the role of drag in breaking gender boundaries made me feel like the average cishet I have to explain the basics of non-binaryness to. It was so refreshing to hear such high-level dialogue that looks to a future where our interpretation of gender is entirely different, if present at all.
We collaborated with Trans Healthcare Now, another new network at UCL, who organised a talk by the Queer Parenting Partnership. It was incredibly heart warming to see the presence of a community of support centred around an aspect of life that so many queer people feel so isolated from.
In terms of projects that our members have been working on, there has been a real boom in qualitative surveys to gauge student experiences. In the wake of UCL's exit from Stonewall (a subject of bitter resentment towards our university for the queer community here), collecting data to show the negative impact that this has had is of key importance if we are to one day rejoin.
Next year, we hope to really ramp up our socials and collaborate with societies to create safe and fun spaces for the community to come together. I could not encourage trans* students at UCL more to join the network and meet likeminded people to share experiences, coordinate our activism and also simply enjoy being in a space where you don't have to feel isolated!