Personal Gender Expression vs. the Good of the Greater Community? Help?

[MusicallyCraftyWriter]

So, I'm born a female. I marked female on my HR forms for the University I work at because they really only had gender-binary options. It makes sense that would be the case. I'm applying to work in Residence Life. Although the department is currently working on proposals for getting gender-neutral housing options for on-campus residents (and actually, I'm told we are a lot further along on that front than other surrounding Universities), we aren't there yet.

The last University I worked at, I couldn't be open about my gender identity. Even my asexual identity had to remain a poorly kept "secret". It was a faith based University. While the students and a lot of the faculty were open to me expressing myself and told me so in private, the culture with the other staff was not conducive to coming out. So, when I started working at the state University I'm at now, I became more open about my gender fluidity (I'm still working all of that on a personal level, but I know I'm not cis-female like my birth certificate and genitals say I am). My direct supervisor doesn't have a problem with me presenting as female or male to the best of my ability as long as I'm dressed appropriately for the office.

I guess my dilemma comes in here. I'm in a weird position at the University where I'm still a graduate student and I sometimes act as staff, but I'm not quite on the staff-level with expectations and privileges. I'm treated (and I guess considered by HR) some weird in-between of student and staff. I'm being asked to serve as this weird student/University staff hybrid on committees of my choosing, and I really want to work with the Diversity Office. That office has already been trying to recruit me hard actually because I'm openly genderfluid and asexual. But I don't want to damage the proposal for gender-neutral housing that is being processed by providing ammunition to detractors. I don't want them to be able to say that my department is jumping the gun in hiring a non-gender-binary staff member. I guess I'm struggling with where the line between personal expression and protecting the good of the community comes into play. The last thing I want to do is set this proposal back with my own atypical gender expression and wind up hurting the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community here at the University who would benefit the most from gender neutral housing. Do any other Aven-ites have any suggestions or thoughts about how to navigate this?

[Heart]

If you were to ask me, I think you'd be helping your fellow queer folks rather than hurting by joining that committee. Representation is always lacking; just by being out, you're helping. I don't know what kind of "ammunition" you'd be giving administration by being yourself, but it can't be worse than not having any queer representation.

For what it's worth, I'm working on my PhD right now, so I know what you mean when you say that we're in that weird limbo of not really feeling like staff, but not really being students either any more. At my university, being openly queer is not a big deal or problem; I can be in any committees I want, and I am pretty openly ace and poly. Less so on the gender front, but only because I get tired of explaining things at a certain point, so I just stick to explaining why I sometimes refer to a girlfriend and sometimes a boyfriend; it's not one trans person that I'm screwing up the pronouns for, it's actually two people :P

But yeah. I don't know what your particular university atmosphere is, so I can't really give you all the advice I wish I could. My undergrad university is the opposite of yours; I had gender-neutral housing in my first year there. And my new university is even better at genderqueer acceptance. I'm very lucky. So take what I say with a grain of salt, I guess.

Kudos for being openly out though. No matter what else you decide to do, you've already done good

[MusicallyCraftyWriter]

Thanks Heart! I appreciate the feedback and the knowledge that all universities (or geographical areas really) are not created equal in this area. It's been a culture shock coming back to public University after being in the private sector for so long, but I am loving how open our campus community is to LGBTQIA+ and other diversity issues. It was a breath of fresh air after studying/working in an environment where I could not be "out" without facing some... we'll call them "interesting" consequences.

I did put in a request to sit on the Diversity committee and actually mentioned that I would like to help with the gender-neutral housing proposal if there was a need for that as well. We'll see how all of that goes!

[Heart]

Congrats! I hope it goes well :D

PS - Being in Canada myself, it took me a second to remember that in the states there are private universities :P I'm not used to there being a distinction!