Survey for nonbinary people

This survey is open until July 2013: Nonbinary stats

There’s only four “proper” questions, and lots of them are multiple-checkbox, and it is anonymous. Super-quick. Doesn’t ask about gender assigned at birth or biological sex, which is nice.

Submit your answers and share the link about!

Mx petition

You’ve got until September 2012 to sign this petition supporting the availability of Mx. Do eeeet!

A Wiki

I guess I just wanted to let you know that I’ve set up this Practical Non-Binary Wiki to be helpful until someone else makes a better one. But this one has a lot of potential, so you should totally add yo’ gubbins.

Thank you!

NH-YESSSS!

My tonsils are being mean to me, with the inflimation of the glands, all that. So I trundle up to my lovely local doctor. I sign in and sit in the waiting room, where an electronic display board flashes the names of patients. My turn.

“Misc. Rose, Mattie to room 5.”

My local NHS GP surgery has accepted Misc as a gender neutral title!

How it happened –

I have been going fairly regularly to the Docs due to other medical problems, and so finally got round to mentioning that I feel misgendered, if not entierly non gendered. I said that I’d like to see a head doctor who could dicuss the matter with me and possibly give me a nice certificate telling people who tell me that I must be one or another to be gone. His reaction was much better than I expected. He asked that I send him as much information as I could to explain what my gender identity was and that he would help me as much as he could. He was pretty damned enthusiastic.

On the way out I filled in a change of personal information form for a new address that asked for a title. I put Misc, with a short explanation of why and promptly forgot about it, untill my tonsils started being mean to me.

All of the excitement!

– Mattie

The UK Deed Poll Service: Mx

I just posted this to Tumblr, but here it is:

They’re the number one result for “deed poll uk” on Google. The UK Deed Poll Service.

Way back, when I was getting my name changed, I asked whether or not they would include any gender-neutral titles in their service, and they told me no. They said that they would only accept titles accepted by official record holders such as the Identity and Passport Service (IPS).

Since getting my new passport, and having the title Misc used on all of the paperwork without any confused looks or questioning, I emailed the UK Deed Poll Service and linked to my blog post with proof that the IPS sent me my passport in an envelope with Misc on it.

I just got a response, part of which is the following:

Since you first emailed us about this subject several months ago, we have been giving it quite a bit of thought and agree that a gender neutral title should be available to anyone who wishes to have one. We have a preference for Mx since Misc is already a well known and frequently used abbreviation for miscellaneous (the non-gender related meaning). Mx would be a unique abbreviation.

Since you have demonstrated some record holders can and will accommodate a new title, we now believe issuing deed polls with Mx as a new title will help force the issue with record holders who are reluctant to recognise the new title.

OH YES.

If you don’t feel like you want to do your own free deed poll, getting a document-with-title made by someone else is now an option for genderqueer people. This is amazing because:

1. As the person said in the email, other organisations who’re reluctant to recognise the new title can now have a recognised identity organisation thrown at them.
2. People who are or may be genderqueer but don’t know about the title may see it when applying for deed poll documents, and feel accepted and recognised.

The latter is a BIG DEAL. Non-binary people are basically invisible.

My next step is to use evidence of this awesome step forward (along with the IPS evidence) to fully persuade people such as councils and banks that Mx and Misc are acceptable, and that non-binary people do exist.

Editing to add: Positive reinforcement is arguably more powerful! If you want to write a letter to them to say thank you, and to tell them what it means to you, their address is: UK Deed Poll Service, Freebournes Court, Witham, CM8 2BL.

Full list of organisations who accept Misc or Mx.

Misc: The IPS rock it.

Canon.

ETA: Here’s my Tumblr blog post for (slightly) more detail.

Identity and Passport Service: Misc

Today was a cool day. I got three bits of post, and all of them had my new name and/or title on them.

The IPS just returned my old passport and my deed poll, in an envelope with Misc on it. YEAHHH!

Tired of explaining?

I don’t know if this is going to work for me, but I’m going to give it a try. I’ll be keeping a few of these in my wallet at all times to hand to people who’re unfamiliar with the vocabulary.

They’re 8.5 x 5.5 cm with text on both sides; feel free to steal the idea and the words and stuff if you feel like it.

Have you done anything like this? How did it go? What worked best for you?

A survey on non-binary pronouns

Here is the original post on Tumblr, and here is the survey itself. It’s only four questions, and only three are required. It asks about which pronouns we use as non-binary folk, and it’s open until 31st December 2011. The survey person, anlamasanda, will be posting the results in January sometime.

Department for Work and Pensions: Misc

Click to enlarge this marvellous item. It’s an envelope from the Department for Work and Pensions. I sent them a letter to tell them about my identity, which contained my deed poll for my new name, and an information sheet about genderqueer titles and pronouns, among other things. They sent my deed poll and information sheet back to me and I received it today. Yes, that’s the title Misc in front of my name on the envelope, there.

The DWP, at least a small part of it, has recognised a gender-neutral title.

Have you had Misc or Mx recognised by any organisations, small or large? Leave a comment, and link to pages where you’ve written about it, and we’ll include it in our as yet unpublished genderqueer-friendly organisations database.

(Inspired by this and the passport success yesterday, I’ve written to all the remaining organisations that need to know about the new name. I will let you know about all the responses.)