The Problem
Asking questions about issues of gender and sexuality is hard.
If you're someone who would otherwise be an ally, but genuinely doesn't have access to the information to do that, it's hard to know how you can find out.
Do you ask your friends, who might be equally uninformed? Do you ask a trans person - if you know one - and risk saying the wrong thing, upsetting them? Do you give up and disengage, leaving you further vulnerable to people spreading bullshit about trans folks?
It's not easy.
The Project
Genderbase is a plan to address that by offering a place that any and all good-faith questions can be asked. We make it very clear that you're not going to offend anyone by tripping over your language or saying the wrong thing. As long as you're asking a question in good faith - and good faith is a key term which we centre things around - we'll try to give you an answer.
Over time, the questions that get asked will turn into a searchable knowledge base that people can use without even having to ask a specific question, but since it's based around questions people have commonly asked, is quite likely to contain the answer.
I also want to provide some resources for the obvious things. The first is How Do I Say…? which seeks to address basic terminology. More will come as the need for them becomes apparent.
The Responders
We will need to build a team of people who are domain experts about various spheres of trans and Queer identity. These people are our Responders.
We'll then need to direct questions to those people, and support a two way chat - with limitations - to get their question answered.
We'll then need to process the conversation, and turn it into a piece of writing. AI can help with this, but it'll need to be human-driven. We might be able to get AI to summarise the conversation, but we will need a human to make sure it's appropriate and correct.
The best person for this is the person who had the conversation; the second best is another one of our Responders. We intend to support both, with the person who had the conversation able to pass it on to another Responder if they don't have the headspace to summarise it, or if it was a difficult conversation, or one of a million reasons why they might not be the right person to handle the summary.
Once the summary has been produced, we have it voted on by other Responders. If a threshold of Responders agree that it's both a good summary of the conversation and useful, it can be published and made searchable. If they don't, they can comment and suggest edits.
The Asker will be asked for their email address, but will have the option not to give it. If they give it, they'll receive notifications of replies to their question and a summary at the end. If they don't, they'll have to keep checking back at the link we give them after they ask their question.
Random pseudonyms will be allocated to the Responder and the Asker to support ongoing conversation. My current intent with two way chats is to control them. An Asker will always be able to send one message in response to a Responder message. The Responder can send as many messages as they like. The Responder also has the power to close the conversation, shutting it down for both participants and moving it to the queue for summarisation.
The Responder will also have the option to shut the conversation down as abusive at any time, including before responding. If this goes as planned, it'll work as described. If we find that we're shutting down conversations too readily, we might move to a secondary queue of Responders who self-identify as more mentally resilient, who can either make a decision to keep the thread shut down or open the thread for themselves and the Asker. That's something which remains to be seen.
Get involved
If you want to join in, we need Responders!
If that's something you think you want to do, I've included a form below to register your interest and let me know the kinds of thing you think you'd be good at answering.
This is a very early stage, and considering I am powerfully AuDHD it may be some time before the site goes live. All I'm saying is that if you want to put your name forward, I'd love to hear it - but don't have any expectations about how long it'll be before you're actually called on to join the site.
If you want to join up, or share the link, the link you want is Genderbase Responders.