Beginning the Diversity Initiative

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Hello. My name is James Dinh and I am a Social Work Intern at the University of Utah Counseling Center (UCC). I identify as genderqueer and one of the things I experience as someone who doesn't feel at home in the binary of male and female is not feeling safe and welcome in a gendered restroom. It's been a strange sense of discomfort and anxiety that I can trace back since kindergarten when we lined up separately as boys and girls. Back when I interviewed for the internship here I thought about the possibility of advocating for a gender-neutral bathroom. There are more and more of them popping up on campus already. I quickly shut myself down, however, and told myself that I was a lowly intern, it's an expensive project, and no one else would really care. 

Today I was part of a team that decided to take a look at a proposed "Gender-Confirming Letter Provision Policy" and it was brought up that there were other ways we can work to make this a safer and more welcoming place for transgender and gender non-conforming clients such as having a gender-neutral bathroom. It was cisgender staff that brought this up and before I realized what was happening my eyes were watering and my voice was shaky. I thanked the group, which already knew that I am genderqueer; I thanked them for validating me -- my existence. It still sounds so silly to me to say it now but something as simple as a gender-neutral bathroom helps to acknowledge that I and many others like me exist. 

Each clinical intern here is tasked with working on a "Diversity Initiative" in which we find a way to meet the needs of an under-served population here at the UCC. I have taken on this project to not only fulfill my internship requirement, but to also reaffirm myself.

I exist. I am important. I am not alone. I am a human being and please... just let me pee.