Why I’m Excited to be QUTLS’ First Ever Gender and Sexuality Officer, and Why I’m Not
Recently, I was appointed as the first ever (!!!) Gender and Sexuality Officer on the QUT Law Society. I’m really excited to be filling this position and I feel lucky to be able to help shape the role for years to come, but I’m also… dreading it a bit? Question mark? Let me explain.
It’s so awesome to have a seat at the table and have a say in what we do as an organisation that exists to serve students. It’s super important that diverse opinions and perspectives contribute to our decision-making, and the opportunity to help support students across the gender and sexuality spectrums is honestly an honour. When I accepted the position, I rocked up to meet with the Society members bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to be a champion of women and gender-based issues and ready to provide the queer perspective!
And then the gravity of that hit me like a ton of bricks. Or maybe more appropriately, it hit me like the weight of millions of unique individuals with vastly differing life experiences and views on the world.
Yeah. A bit intense.
All of a sudden, all these huge questions and fears started flooding my brain. How could I possibly represent everyone? How could I ever know what the best way to serve all our members is, when all of our members are so different? How do I know if I’m making the right calls?
I think it didn’t seem quite so intense at first because I thought, ‘gender and sexuality officer? Yeah, I fit the bill’. I’m a woman going into law, I’m super interested in gender-based issues (for people of all genders, duh), and I’m queer. Sounds like I might be qualified. But then I remembered that’s just not really how it works. No matter who I am or what experiences I’ve had, and no matter how good my intentions may be, I can’t be the only voice contributing to discussions surrounding how we approach gender and sexuality as a student society. All of my lived experiences put together, still only make up one person’s experience. I know what events or initiatives would be beneficial to me, and I can decide what I think is appropriate in any given situation, but it’s not enough that our actions benefit me and people like me, and it’s not enough that I’m happy with what we do.
After I sat with these feelings for a while, I realised that the only way I can do this job successfully and meaningfully is to seek guidance from others. I have to seek out the views of others who are different to me, who think differently, and who experience gender and sexuality differently. I’ve realised that it’s crucial that we hear from as many people as possible, so we can best serve as many people as possible. So, instead of seeing my role as an impossible task, I’ve decided to see it as an awesome opportunity to 1) shut up and listen, 2) include and uplift more voices, and 3) share wider, more representative guidance to QUTLS, so that we can improve the way we serve all of our members.
Knowing that I’m not doing this alone and that I can lean on you guys, the role’s a bit less intense, and a lot more exciting. If you have any ideas or have any feedback for us on any of our events or initiatives, or if you’d just like to have a chat, I would LOVE to hear from you! Please email me all of your wonderfully insightful thoughts, opinions and feelings at gendersexuality.officer@qutlawsociety.com! (Note: this email can only be accessed by me, so feel free to share whatever you’re comfortable with!)
Article written by Rebecca Cohen
This article appeared in the Torts Illustrated New Decades, New Horizons (2020) Publication