Lee wrote a book! It’s a beefed-up TIMP that you can hold in your hands.

Hello TIMP readers! I am delighted to share some news: I have a book coming out with Adams Media and Simon & Schuster in October!

Gender: Your Guide is basically TIMP x 1000 in terms of depth and breadth. There is some expanded content from the blog within it, but also personal stories, research data and tools for hands-on pronoun practice. I’m delighted with how it has turned out.

I wrote Gender: Your Guide to do exactly what I hope TIMP has been doing: to be a thing that transgender and/or non-binary and/or gender non-conforming people can give to our people to help them understand and also meet our gender-related needs. It also helps our people to think about how they, too, are affected by the rigid ways that gender can play out in the places they spend time, and how they can do something about it not only for us but for themselves too. Coalition!

I hope that you can get your hands on it when it comes out in October, and you can pre-order it now. And if you have questions or inquiries about the book, the best way to ask is my sending me an email at lee.airton@queensu.ca.

Warmly,

Lee

 

On dating ‘a they’ and chronic coming out

Anonymous asked:

Thanks for your work. My partner started using they pronouns a few months ago. I feel okay about using it around family and friends, but telling new people is hard. Does it get easier? We’re getting pretty serious (sometimes talking about marriage and kids) and I’m worried that I will forever be stressed about using their pronouns around new people (especially since my job involves a lot of travel and conversations with clients usually come to asking about partners/personal things.)

Hello Anonymous! This is a brave and important question to ask.

It is true that dating ‘a they’ has challenges that don’t pop up when dating ‘a he’ or ‘a she.’ Today people are always listening for gender markers in how we describe our partners (in some ways, the outmoded presumption of heterosexuality allowed a kind of invisibility – but I digress). What I can tell you is that decisions about this are as individual as people themselves. Your own employment context, your partner’s needs and feelings, and your energy level are all factors that need to be considered as you move forward together.

Because you are thinking future, I think we can take solace in the fact that using singular they/them is becoming more understood in many (North American) contexts and encountering ‘a they’ is less and less of an out-of-body experience. Yesterday I was at a car dealership in the Toronto outskirts with my partner, and when I gently asked the salesman not to call us ‘ladies,’ he responded by telling me about the TV show Billions (which I haven’t even watched yet) and its ‘gender-neutral’ character who uses they/them. Basically, he was letting me know that he’s aware of my deal in an awkward but kindly way, and he moved on quickly and well. (He had studiously avoided using any pronoun for me the entire time.) I see and believe that dating (or being) ‘a they’ will only become less and less of a thing in the coming years. And yes, we were potential customers aka people who were not to be alienated due to our privilege. I don’t know what would have happened if we met on equal footing in his private life. However, I choose to believe that people usually don’t suck, even if only because refusal takes more energy than just going with it.

That said, I have long accepted that being me requires my close people in my life to do some extra work. And many of my close people have particular needs that require extra work from me as well. However, the kind of extra work that I need takes on a bit more visibility and attention sometimes. At moments when you are already tired, or already nervous, they-ing your partner to a stranger or mere acquaintance can be a coming out that you might just have no energy for. Or, it might actually put you at a disadvantage in some workplaces.

I strongly believe that owning up to this humanness and walking beside your partner as a co-conspirator and comrade is your best strategy. Long term, you are far more likely to break up because you keep a lofty standard that burns you out and makes you resent your partner, than if you are real about the ways in which the world does and does not facilitate well-being for people who use gender-neutral pronouns (and our loved ones). Don’t let real societal barriers manifest in your relationship as a refusal of those barriers. Be real with each other, talk about when/where you need to do the work and when/where your partner really just doesn’t have to know or care (like far away from anyone they would ever know), and ensure that you always have external, non-judgmental supports who are not each other.

And lastly, I asked my partner if it does get easier: yes!

My very best to you both, and write back some time,

Lee

On being a non-binary teacher

Anonymous asked:

Hello, I’m sorry if this is only vaguely related to the use of non-gendered pronouns but I’m in a spot of bother with regards to my general gender-based bewilderment. I am trying to train as a primary school teacher and have recently been increasing my preparatory teaching experience. I am somewhat androgynous and use the title Dr so children are intrigued to know if I am m/f. When they ask what I am, I can’t tell them, but know non-binary should be explained. How do I address this?

Hello Dr. Anonymous! (hehe)

First, congratulations on the Dr. situation! I often joke that getting my doctorate was primarily motivated by the gender-neutral title, which I sprinkle with gay abandon on all airline tickets, phone bills and the like.

I work in the field of teacher education, so your question is of great interest to me. In my life, it’s true to say that being a non-binary transgender person has diverted me away from K-12 classroom teaching and into higher education for equity and mental health reasons. There may have been pockets of acceptance around the time when I was thinking of entering a B.Ed. program but by and large K-12 schools have been and continue to be some of the most gender-normalizing places. This was my impetus for getting involved in teacher education practice and research on gender and sexual diversity: to open the doors for people like me to make choices other than the one I made out of concern for my own safety and well-being.

Of course, there are many queer and/or transgender teachers out there (including non-binary ones), and many are rocking it out as best as they can and having all kinds of wonderful impact in the lives of children and youth. However, to my knowledge, the greatest success and longevity in the career still come to those who benefit the most from homonormativity or gender normativity (e.g., a cis-gender woman monogamously married to another cis-gender woman, or a heterosexual transgender man, or people with children they can talk about). This doesn’t mean being a teacher isn’t hard for these folks (it is), just that it’s differently hard given that their life stories are often more intelligible to the wider world. (Intelligibility can, however, be its own curse and mental health risk if what you ‘pass’ as doesn’t match your identity.)

All this is to say that I hear you loud and clear. And I completely agree: non-binary should be explained to children. Full stop. Moreover, what should be explained to – and modelled for – children is that gender is an all-you-can-eat buffet. You shouldn’t have to be a boy or become a boy to do the things that you’d like to do, unless being a boy is something that you really, really want. Kids in a school with a lot of support for transitioning students (but that only recognize kids who desire a binary transition) and schools where the wonderful, life-giving possibility of binary transition is completely unthinkable – both may be at risk of shutting down many kids’ gender-diverse desires. Let us as teachers throw open the gender gates for every child by, for example, not setting up free-time as a choice between soccer and art, but between clay and painting. Let’s put out different kinds of toys on the carpet depending on the day so that sometimes everyone plays with trucks, and everyone with dolls. Let’s point out how gender is at work in a story about a two-parent, heterosexually-headed family and not just read the Sissy Duckling. And let’s do these things before and regardless of whether any transgender kid ever appears in our particular school or classroom.

Dr. Anonymous, when you say “I can’t tell them” I’d like to know more. I’m lucky to live in Ontario, Canada where we have protection from discrimination on the basis of gender expression and gender identity aka the professional and age-appropriate disclosure of one’s gender identity to a child who asks about it would likely be protected under the law. Someone telling you not to do this would be running afoul of that law. However, it sounds like you might not have any such protection to fall back on.

Even before these laws were passed, however, kids would consistently ask me the question “are you a boy or a girl?” and I would reply ‘neither,’ or ‘I haven’t decided yet today. Will you ask me again later?’ or something else that wasn’t necessarily true (I generally wake up feeling like a non-binary transgender person). The point wasn’t that it was true or false, but that it opened the gates and caused a lot of productive thinking/face-scrunching. It also meant that I didn’t always have to launch into a giant explanation of what ‘non-binary transgender person’ means. This is one route. Or, you could deflect with a question: “why do you need to know about this? What else would you like to know about me? What would it mean if I said I was a girl or a boy? How would that change how you think about me as a teacher? Why do people have to be one or the other?” In other words, this can become a teachable moment, to whatever extent you are comfortable.

Pronouns are another matter, and teaching remains a fairly conservative profession. If you feel comfortable and supported by your program, you could work with your practicum coordinator to find a school with a queer- and trans-positive culture where you could be out and have your preferred gender pronoun respected. Regardless of the law, there could be internal diversity and equity policies in your university that you could cite when arranging a meeting about this, and even a diversity officer whose support you could draw on. If you don’t feel supported in your program, your practice teaching placement could be difficult and require some tough choices. If you bond with your supervising teacher and want to enlist their support, you could access some of my other resources on coming out, particularly this one on explaining preferred pronouns to someone with little knowledge of gender diversity issues.

To close, I’ll say that the problem you are facing is real and that there is a whole constellation of lovely folks working on this, who I’m proud to call my colleagues and friends. The hope driving my academic teaching and research is that questions like yours will become unnecessary, and that the teaching profession can be a gender buffet some day.

Warmly, and write back anytime,

Lee

Mis-gendering with a smile: On the ‘friendly refusal’

slithe asked:

“Hello! I’d just like to ask how you feel about when someone refers to someone as he/him or she/they when they prefer they/them using the excuse of, ‘Oh it’s okay, I’m just used to it. Plus, you don’t mind right?'”

Hi slithe! Thank you for your question.

This sounds like what I call the ‘friendly refusal’. Here, someone is actively refusing to use a person’s preferred gender pronoun, but is spending ‘friend capital’ in order to make it seem like it isn’t a refusal at all. Rather, a friendly refuser is hoping that they can mis-gender someone precisely because of their relationship: because of the trust and intimacy it provides. Poof – refusal to use someone’s pronoun magically becomes an expression of intimacy and even love!

The problem with a friendly refusal – as opposed to a hostile or outright refusal, which I have written about before – is that The Person (let’s call them TP) being mis-gendered is positioned as the one causing the trouble. After all, their friend has good intentions and cares about them, right? If TP said “actually, I do mind if you mis-gender me” then they would be the one causing conflict in an otherwise friendly-seeming/sounding interaction.

A particularly tricky thing about the friendly refusal is that a friendly refuser is likely to feel hurt if TP says no, and TP may be made to feel responsible for this hurt and seek to make it better. In the end, even though TP was mis-gendered, they can end up meeting someone else’s needs, while their own go unmet.

And so, slithe, how I feel is that this is not okay. It’s not more okay than an outright or hostile refusal just because it seems/sounds friendly. It might even be worse because it is manipulative, despite perhaps being unintentional.

I challenge the well-intentioned friendly refusers out there to try and recognize ourselves, and I implicate myself here (‘ourselves’) because there is no one who hasn’t tried to fall back on a friendship to get out of responsibility for hurting someone else, however implicitly. This includes those of us ‘in the know’ about this stuff. There aren’t good people who seamlessly use someone’s new PGP from the start, and bad people who don’t (for the most part). There are just people with widely varying degrees of willingness and ability to spend energy on making a change for people we care about.

That having been said, as insidious as the friendly refusal can be, there is something to be said for the friendly refuser’s hurt feelings. Every single relationship is its own animal with its own context and history. Frequent readers of TIMP (particularly my posts on fearing partner rejection, coming out to a friend with little knowledge of gender diversity issues, and negative parent reactions) know that I often advise askers to be mindful of their particular relationship with a refuser, suggesting that they consider what else might be going on that needs to be addressed. A key belief of the whole TIMP project is that the difficulty surrounding pronoun change is about much more than the pronoun itself and its grammar. Sometimes that ‘more’ is transphobia of some kind, and sometimes it’s just a benign irritation that has festered over time.

The friendly refuser’s hurt feelings are real feelings. As with so much writing on white privilege, a big part of being an ally to GNP users is managing this hurt in a way that doesn’t require our hurt friend to take care of us. This doesn’t mean hiding our feelings, but offering reassurance to our GNP-using friend that our hurt feelings are not their fault. And of course, practicing.

I hope that answers your question, and have a lovely day!

Warmly,

Lee

At long last (?) – singular they featured in Seventeen!

But really, though – Amandla Stenberg  (singular they user featured in this Seventeen online piece, and actor who is noted for playing Rue in The Hunger Games) is both wise and brave. A quote from their blog:

there’s a tendency in current gender politics & discussions to focus so hard on legitimising people’s feelings of ‘always having been a boy’ or ‘always having been agender’ or etc that stating the fact that society/their surroundings/literally everything in this extremely flawed gender-normative world still would have had an effect on them as they grew up can be regarded as something close to heresy. & I feel like this is a problem in a lot of ways, because it leads to erasure of really crucial formative experiences from which we could all learn a great deal about ourselves and each other; why should it be wrong to admit that even though it turned out we had never been girls, the experience of eg adults expecting us to be quieter/neater/kinder than they would have expected of boys because they thought we were girls has had a lasting effect on our psyche? or that first crushes, first periods, the first time we were told about men being dangerous, first party dresses, first dolls or princess costumes, etc etc were by default female experiences for us because of the way society constructs itself around them, even if what we actually were wasn’t female?

The Seventeen piece features flawless ‘they’ usage – is also a sign that youth conversations about gender on social media like Tumblr are having a real-world impact on how gender is thought about OFF social media. I’m really proud that TIMP began and continues to be rooted on Tumblr where so many people are creating community for people of all genders.

 

The Washington Post jumps on singular they

Fabulous news for all gender-neutral pronoun users! The NYTimes just used Mx. at the request of an informant, and now the WaPo has added singular they to its style guidelines!

Music to our ears:

It is usually possible, and preferable, to recast sentences as plural to avoid both the sexist and antiquated universal default to male pronouns and the awkward use of he or she, him or her and the like: All students must complete their homework, not Each student must complete his or her homework.

When such a rewrite is impossible or hopelessly awkward, however, what is known as “the singular they” is permissible: Everyone has their own opinion about the traditional grammar rule. The singular they is also useful in references to people who identify as neither male nor female.

Also, over three years ago in August 2012 when TIMP was just one month old, I was interviewed by prescient journalist Katie Toth for J-Source (the online magazine of The Canadian Journalism Project) about how the media should interface with and refer to non-binary, genderqueer or other folks who request gender-neutrality:

Lee Airton is the founder of gender-neutral pronoun blog, They Is My Pronoun, and a doctoral student at York University. Airton prefers to use the singular pronoun ‘they’. “My gender identity is very much queer, like it’s a very much in-between kind of thing,” they explained. “It would be very easy for people if people like me…said, ‘Yes, you can go ahead and call me ‘he.’ It’s a very different choice to say, ‘No, that also doesn’t feel good, I’m going to ask for you to work at it in the way that I work at being in this society.”

Airton is skeptical of writers’ insistence that ‘they’ poses a challenge for their readership: “I think it’s really interesting when writers presume a deficit in their audience.” At the same time, they said, using last names or descriptions of a person is a vastly better process than using a gendered pronoun that does not correspond with the source’s identity. “It’s a bit of a cop out…because [they] has to come into common usage.”

And now, more and more, this is happening. Onwards and upwards!

Part 2: ‘But they don’t know I know…’ – Outing a gender-neutral pronoun user?

*FOLLOW UP – ORIGINAL POST BELOW*

Anonymous asked:

hello. similarly to a previous asker on this blog, I too have found out that my sister wants to use they/them pronouns from their blog, but also a different name, and I just wanted to say I found your advice to the previous asker useful, but I don’t know what to do about the different name because she is so intensly private about everything and wouldn’t like it if I knew but I no longer know how to refer to them, could you possibly help because I feel awful about mis-naming/prounoun-ing her

Hello there Anonymous.

Firstly, to echo the affirmation I gave to the-little-white-mermaid below, you are a lovely and supportive sibling. No matter how this goes down, they are lucky to have you in their corner.

I think this hinges on whether you at all want to share with your sibling that you know about their pronoun and name preferences. The bottom line is that you don’t want to hurt them by misnaming/misgendering them anymore, but it is also true that your sibling may have their reasons for not wanting to share this information with family members, even ones who are as supportive as you (presuming your sibling knows that you are).

If you are sure that your sibling knows you are in their corner and okay with their identity and needs around that, I’d encourage you to respect their decision for a little longer because they must have a reason. I understand how hard it must be to know you are misgendering them, but they might have a reason for keeping this part of themselves away from family. Do you know what that might be? About your/their relationship in particular, do you both have a history of respecting each other and keeping each other’s secrets?

If you aren’t sure that you sibling knows you are in their corner, can you subtly use Facebook or other social media to post things that are affirming of trans people and/or gender-neutral pronoun use (like my blog)? At least you are indicating that you are interested. Little things like this might create a space for your sibling to open up to you, which can take time.

At bottom, the name issue doesn’t have to be so different from the pronoun issue in this regard; it can be a very similar kind of transition for people and our friends/families.

Hope this helps, and thanks for being awesome!

Lee

—

the-little-white-mermaid asked:

My sister doesn’t know that I can see her tumblr blog description that describes her as bisexual, agender, “them” pronouns. I want to refer to her as she wants but I also don’t want her to know I know since I don’t actually know who she’s told. How?

Hello the-little-white-mermaid!

Rock on – you are a sensitive and supportive sibling and I truly appreciate your question; I’m sure your sibling would too, if they knew that you are being so careful and conscientious.

Your dilemma seems to be: how do I support my sibling without violating their boundaries? The bare fact fact that you want to act from an affirming place by using their pronouns is, to my mind, an excellent reason for sitting down with your sibling and just coming clean about what you found and how. The very best energy – i.e., how you approach the conversation, with kindness and openness – and best intentions – which you have – can work wonders.

It seems, though, like you’re worried about your sibling’s reaction to you knowing. Without more information about your situation, I can’t be sure why. One reason I can guess at is that your sibling might be an intensely private person who keeps their gender and sexual identities away from family. If this is true, then part of the conversation would hopefully involve you acknowledging that there are reasons why your sibling did not tell you and validating these reasons, or, “I totally get why you wouldn’t want to share this with me and that’s cool.” Make it really clear that you understand why this choice was made, and that you are only bringing it up because you want to make them as comfortable as possible around you. The conversation will also have to address how to behave around other family members, including whether or not you should use your sibling’s chosen pronoun with others.

Another reason for your worry could be the quality and the history relationship you have together. In deciding how to move forward, your best guide will be this relationship. Do you generally support each other in other family issues? Do you ‘share the spotlight’ well in your family gatherings and conversations i.e., do you fight for control or attention of other family members? Do you have a history of trusting each other or breaking each other’s trust? Do you share friends or interests or other common ground? I ask these questions because gender stuff never happens outside of already-existing relationships. The reason why a sibling or a parent might refuse to use one’s pronouns, for example, can be about an old hurt or bad dynamic and not about pronouns at all, in my view (see this). Same thing: the reason why you might be worried or why your conversation might be challenging might be because of your history with your sibling that makes any big conversation challenging, and not because of its topic.

In either case / for either reason (apologies if I’m completely off-base and please feel free to write back), I think it might be helpful to plan the conversation in a way that makes it very different from how you usually interact and spend time with your sibling in order to make it clear that this is different and important. OR, take advance of a fun and familiar ritual that you do together or place you go. These are different tacks, but they both send the message that you are being intentional, thoughtful and caring (more tips here).

Good luck, and take courage from knowing that you are already being a really lovely ally in seeking out resources and asking questions.

Hope that helps,

Lee

Sometimes it’s hard to be forgiving

Anonymous asked:

Coming back to university and unfamiliar with the they/ them genderqueer movement, I want to wear some kind of button that says “I am trying, but my brain sometimes short circuits my best efforts”. I got snapped at today for saying “she” instead of “they” even though I get that right most of the time. Everyone needs to be understanding and forgiving. Prying open the binary gender box will take more time. Keep being awesome

Hello Anonymous! Thank you for your message and support! I agree – everyone needs to be understanding and forgiving, and I’m sorry you got snapped at.

When people do that to me about something identity-related when I make a mistake (oh yes), I try to take care of myself in the situation by remembering and repeating to myself that what I am getting from them is the result of repeated, systematic refusals to use their pronouns (for example). That kind of blow-back builds up inside a person until it bursts, and usually at the wrong other (i.e., a nice person who made a mistake, as opposed to a repeat bully).

So, I hear you. And, as an ally, I want to suggest that your first response be compassion and understanding. That person just might not have it in them today to recognize that you are trying your best.

Warmly,

Lee

Why it’s hard sometimes: Resistance to pronoun change can have nothing to do with pronouns

Today I’m not responding to a gender-neutral pronoun (GNP) user or ally question but sharing something from my own recent experiences.

Usually I write this blog from the perspective of a GNP user, albeit one who is genuinely compassionate toward allies and others in GNP users’ lives who must make a tough cognitive and verbal transition. This transition, of course, is changing how we use language when talking about a friend, family member, co-worker, loved one, etc. who has requested that we use a new pronoun for them.

As I have been writing for over three years on TIMP, this takes work. Work. Work. Hard work.

The thing is, because it takes work, if someone feels like they don’t want to make the necessary effort on behalf of someone else, the change is very hard and slow, and slip-ups can be many. This is because, in my view, making the effort to change pronouns is kind of like making the effort to no longer tell that ‘funny story’ about someone or use their childhood nickname when they have asked you not to, or to stop talking about/using alcohol, tobacco, drugs, etc. around someone who has just begun their recovery from addiction. Of course these things are different in their content (what they are about). But I don’t believe they are too different in form. They all require that we devote more energy to someone.

All this is to say that I believe that often a persistent resistance to using someone’s new GNP (or new name) can have much less to do with gender/pronouns and much more to do with the relationship in which the request to use new pronouns is made. In several posts (most notably this one) I’ve talked about how there may be other reasons for refusal and resistance to changing pronouns when asked to do so.

Basically, one’s unconscious might be saying “why would I work hard at doing this for you when you never did XYZ for me / weren’t there for me / have been irritating or mean / etc. etc. etc.” at the same time as one’s mouth is she-ing or he-ing someone for whom those pronouns are unwelcome and/or painful.

So, with that preamble, today I’m writing from the perspective of someone trying to change the pronouns I use for someone else. A very dear friend of mine recently came out about a shift in their gender identity, made a pronoun switch, and put this request out to their friends.

The thing is, for many and varied reasons, we had fallen out of touch. I had a lot of sour and sad feelings about our friendship and how our friend dynamic had devolved into one where I offered listening/care and got little to nothing in return. I felt like my own pretty large struggles at the time were unimportant to my friend because they were consumed in what they were going through and unable to give me any air time in our conversations. I had been taking my distance for a year and feeling progressively more down about this strategy because, well, I love my friend I know they were going through a rough time. I wanted to be compassionate but I had run out of energy and was getting, well, just mad.

So when the pronoun request came down…for a good two weeks I did a very, very bad job and mis-pronouned them consistently (never in their presence – we live in different cities). I had mad and sad feelings about the time I had already devoted to this person’s care and well-being and this was – given how I was feeling – the cherry on the sundae. My unconscious was certainly saying “why would I work hard at doing this for you when you never did XYZ for me / weren’t there for me / have been irritating or mean / etc. etc. etc.” while my face was saying the wrong pronoun.

Then I had a birthday, which has always been a special time in our friendship. And I began to miss my friend a lot. I decided I was going to communicate my feelings as kindly and compassionately – but openly and honestly – as I could, and explain why I had drifted away.

So I did. And they were magnificent: so open to how I was feeling and so grateful for the feedback, and articulating all kinds of wonderful things like authentic regret, responsibility, love for me and our history together. It was tough but the best conversation we had had in years.

The minute I put down the phone, I went to share the good news with my partner.

And the change was seamless. I haven’t used the wrong pronoun since.

This is just my own experience, for sure. And I’m sure there are many reasons, including that it’s just plain hard or weird to talk about one person as if they’re two people (re. singular they). But so many people who struggle with a pronoun change are people who GET IT: who have a kind of worldview that is friendly to trans-ness and queerness, and who really, really want to do this right. Who have the tools. And still it doesn’t work. I mean, I write an entire blog on this and, well, I was totally screwing it up.

So this is a call to people who have the know-how or desire but still find themselves unable or unwilling to make the change. Reflect on your relationship with the asker and tend to it as best you can.

Pronouns might be the icing on the poop-cake (sorry), and something pushing you even farther away from a person who you have loved and want to have in your life for a long time to come.

ARTICLE: Slate on the gender-neutral pronoun fight at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Slate Magazine has a really good critical and journalistic response to the ridiculous controversy at Knoxville – one of the 20 most LGBT-unfriendly in the United States (see article for link) – in response to the LGBT centre hosting an information site on gender-neutral pronouns. I like this quote:

“Both Cross and Kae White, […] nonbinary-identified student[s] who spoke with me for this article, decided to stop requesting that their teachers use gender-neutral pronouns, because they tended to lead to uncomfortable, often lengthy conversations.”

Yes. Awkwardness and discomfort keep people away from having their needs met. These small things have extremely large, cumulative effects.

“Both Cross and White agreed that feeling respected and having others do their best to remember to use their preferred pronouns was the goal, not perfect compliance, and White acknowledged that in a very large class, it would be impractical for a professor to ask every students about their pronoun preference.”

Yes, of course it is. This is why using they for everyone or learning and using peoples’ names is a tempting solution, even if everything or something about a person’s body/gender expression/voice, etc. seems to point in one direction. While this isn’t necessarily something for everyone to do, it is in my opinion certainly something to practice for those in the health, education and social services. Being able to stay comfortably in these places means life, health and well-being. This is where front-line contact is most critical.