The Irish Times, Sat 28 July 2012 'They talk about gay or lesbian but never transgender' Darrin Matthews. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2012/0728/1224320928699.html
I'm sure there's a lot of truth to that but the 'T' in the Cork LGBT community is very visible, active and supported.
Very true If it's not the works of the recent CorkTrans Website, it's the efforts of UCC LGBT holding annual events on Transgender Topics and Issues / UCC LGBT's Trans GID/GD Awareness week, The Other Place supporting The Cork Trans Group / Labelle Cork and other Trans activities with along the new TransgenderCork.com website, Clive Davis (Manager of The Other Place) whilst at seminars or meeting s fighting the T corner, L.inc (Lesbians in Cork inc.) supporting the Transgender Equality Network Ireland in their activities, LGBT Diversity working for and holding meetings in Cork recently in and around LGBT issues, The Cork Rebel Awards recognizing efforts made by the Trans community, the massive amounts of efforts from this website gaycork.com, cork action for equality and to top it off Cork City Council recently taking on board Transgender Topics and Issues with their inclusion of the Trans community in Their Objective 86: Imagine Our Future a plan on inclusion for the full integration LGBT community into all aspects of Cork. We are very lucky here in Cork in many respects
In many ways I would agree, but not in terms of the school curriculum like the mother mentioned. As is, depending on how comfortable a particular teacher is with the subject matter, LGBT anything in CSPE can be the subject of just as much sniggering from the teachers as from the students. :/ Although, I hope, not to the same degree as when I was younger. And then there are the parents who need to be tiptoed around when it comes to anything to do with sex, sexuality, gender etc in school...opting to withdraw their children from school on the day that something is being taught that they don't approve of, or having their child be supervised in another location for that time etc... ...By Toutatis and Belenos, these parents are crazy! (toc, toc, toc!!) The thoughts of the teacher on just about anything can flavour what's being taught: there are primary schools with opt-out options for teachers who don't want to teach particular subjects or topics, eg Religion, so they swap for those times with another teacher and teach something else to the other class... ...It can be hard to teach something of which you have little to no experience of yourself: Do you teach it according to what you've been given (and probably make terrible mistakes and misrepresent things, just because of a few gaps in your own knowledge) or skip lightly over it in the hope of not tainting anyone's thinking unintentionally with your novice perspective. It's a knotty problem.
