Perth Inner City Youth Service (PICYS) in conjunction with the Opening Closets Project launched two new websites, a booklet for transgender and transsexual individuals, and an evaluation of the Opening Closets Project on March 23rd. The Opening Closets Website (www.openingclosets.com) will provide DSG (diverse sexuality and gender) individuals with facts, policies, procedures, resources and referral options. The other website launched (www.free2be.org.au) is a site with extensive information on coming out, the law, family issues, support services, and more. The transbooklet ‘simply trans’ is the first publication in WA for transgender and transsexual people and has answers to frequently asked questions as well as listings for further resources.
The Honourable David Malcolm, President of PICYS, presided over the ceremonies, while the Honourable Louise Pratt MLC officially launched the new resources, announcing, ‘For too long, there hasn’t been recognition of diverse sexualities and genders in community programs’.
She went on to discuss the significance of the launch, saying ‘The Opening Closets Project has been incredibly successful in helping community services become more responsive to diverse sexuality clients and recognize that they do have such clients…Work on DSG issues is important and needs to be integrated in the work people do throughout the community services sector. This is not an add-on issue because the things that bring people to the door needing support are alienation from the community, alienation from family, alienation from employment and social life isolation. These feelings affect people of diverse sexual backgrounds. So, it [DSG] is a core issue not an add on’.
In another speech at the launch, Sarah Ward, a youth worker and housing supervisor, told the story of a young person she had worked with to further illustrate the need for new and improved resources for DSG:
‘After attending Opening Closets training, instead of assuming the gender by the looks of the clients, I ask them what they recognise their gender to be. It is their own description of their gender that I record, not what I perceive them to be.
‘One young person attended our service and when asked about their gender they asked me why. When I explained to this person about the acceptance by our service of all people, and that we respect how they see themselves, they thanked me. The young person said they had never been asked that before, and actually didn’t see themselves as either male or female. This young person was born female but was not comfortable to be recognised as one, but also did not want to be recognised as male either. I recorded her as neither male nor female’.
Ward believes the lesson here is clear, ‘The more people open up to the diversity in our community, the better. And a little question, like the one I asked, can make a difference in someone’s life’.
