helloooo! Bloody third year! I never have any time to blog anymore :(

Anyway! I passed the motion on gender neutral toilets. Not 100% good news as I was told on the day I had more chance of it passing if I diluted it so it was just to do a "survey" but I'm confident enough in my motion that the survey will prove it's a good idea. Most people were for it, a few were curious about how it worked and no one dropped any massive clangers so that was good :] I think about 5 people voted against.

Gair Rhydd has written about it too: http://gairrhydd.com/news/911/gender-neutral-toilets-proposed-for-union.

I am working on my survey now but I don't know what survey company, if you can call them that??, to go with. I need one that allows a second section (you know like if you say No to question 1 it skips you to questions 8-11, say, and then people that say yes do 2-7 and then 12-5 or something?) because I want to ask people that aren't from Cardiff too.

On Saturday I held the first SSHH event. It wasn't a massive success because only a few of us turned up after a lot more saying that they would on facebook. Ho hum, way of the world! But the ones that were there made it count! We had a chat outside the union while holding hands, ran up the steps to have our photo taken with the banner then hand-holded all the way over to the Woodville for a lovely hot drink!

Nothing planned for this week, and no student council. I'm definitely going to the Hell's Bent event on Friday though as I know Mark and the rest of the LGBT soc. committee has worked really hard on it. Raising money for AIDS relief charities, can't be wrong! And only £2 entry :D

Had two really useful meetings today!

Saw someone from the marketting department in the Union. He helped me understand all the ways the Union can launch a campaign, from using the plasma screens in the Kitchen to massive banners. He went through the time frame for organising something like that, and how much it can cost. I think I'm going to get through Sshh and AIDS day without their support and then before I go home for Christmas try and organise some campaigns around bullying and mental health for January and then organise something around Love Without Borders for the Go Global week! And slip in more serious things less publically and smaller matters as they arise.

Spoke to the Student Counselling Service today, she went through the training that they've had for LGBT issues and also what provisions they have. Their little rooms are lovely, with blue soft chairs and candles and stuff. They also have loads of information about practical stuff like housing and finances. We talked for about an hour and she introduced me to a lot of staff and I have to say that they really do understand LGBT issues and they want to help. I went in intending to ask if they could expand their 'male' and 'female' boxes on the forms for self-referral but they already have! Just SIMs to email now.

Working on my motion atm, posting that later.

Hello! Sorry I haven't written in an age, the honest answer is because I'm already addicted to blogs and facebook and things like that I keep forgetting! Third year work and other comittments are pretty intense too but in a good way most of the time lol.

Went to the LGBT Activist Training Day on Monday which was really useful! We covered all the main NUS campaigns such as Love without Borders, Donation not Discrimination and Bullying Sucks and then had organisational skills training. That was probably the most useful, we went through the best ways of running a campaign to make it most effective and practiced planning an event! It obviously inspired me as I set up an event this afternoon.

It's not an original event as it coincides with the Same Sex Hand Holding (Sshh) day across the world but we're trying to get a hand chain going around Cathays and I'm hoping that I'll get time to make a banner or get some paint and come up with something cool and visual.

I've also been working on my research for more serious stuff. I've almost finished a motion for next week's council about gender neutral toilets. The idea is really close to my heart so I want to make sure that I can make the best case for it possible. The trouble is, most of my friends already see the need for it so I have to try and think what people would object to. The NUS briefing makes the process of getting it in quite scary but if we do we'll be following a great precedent including Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh!

Tomorrow I'm meeting with the Student Counselling Service to talk about LGBT issues and also with the communications manager in the union to give me an overview of what they do.

I want to attach the poster for my event but I forgot to send it to my home PC! bummer. Will post it tomorrow.

http://takesupspace.wordpress.com/cis-privilege-checklist/

this is a list of things we take for granted every day when we're non-trans or cisgendered people. I know I do!

Soon there will be a longer post about what I've been up to!