Hi Genderforkers,

our site is looking for more diverse submissions, especially in the profiles section!

Since the founding of Genderfork, we have been actively prioritizing and screening our posts so that we show a robust mix of people, even when most of the material submitted to us has not necessarily skewed in the direction of underrepresented groups. You — our readers have always been quick to let us know when we dip below a certain threshold, because our GF community craves a diverse mix of representation and they want to see themselves reflected in a myriad of ways. We want to continue to deliver that now that our submission stream has dwindled a bit, and we want to fill in any gaps where we may have been lacking, especially as regards with age and ability.

If you are a new visitor, or have a friend who you think would be interested in this site, please pass this link along — we would be super grateful if you did! In the meantime, we will continue to work on inclusion and diversity in our posts, profiles and other sections of the website.

Looking forward to your entries,

the Genderfork Team

Guess what, you all?! This September, Genderfork will be 9 years old!

First of all, thank you all for being such amazing readers and contributors for so long. You all rock. You deserve a pat on the back. And a hug. And maybe a puppy.
We’ve also been lucky to have had such talented, dedicated volutneers for close to a decade. A lot can happen in nine years and many have had to move on with life’s changes. We’re struggling right now to populate the site with full and varied content. If we’re to keep moving the site alive in its current form, we need new blood, and fast! If you love the site, and you have time to give us, please, get in touch! Have you always loved Genderfork and wanted to help? Now’s a really good time to tell us about it.

Yes, you! Genderfork volunteers contribute a few hours a month (or a week, if you’ve got it to spare), and work to help us maintain a diverse and affirming feed of community content.

Here’s what you need to have:

• A love of gender all across the spectrum, and a love of our site!
• Access to a computer and the Internet, and basic knowledge of how to use these things.
• Time to give! Really, honestly – it doesn’t have to be a LOT of time, an hour or so a week will do it, but you need to be able to give it regularly, every week. We LOVE that you want to help, but if your life is in transition, or just really busy, take care of yourself. Don’t offer what you can’t give.

Here’s what you DO NOT need to have:

• Any particular identity. You don’t need to be genderqueer or trans or anything other than what you are to help out here. You just need to want to help.
• A lot of technical knowledge. We welcome it, but we can absolutely train you to do any job that needs doing around here – they’re not hard, and we’re excellent at writing instructions and answering questions.
• A LOT of time to give. It doesn’t take hours and hours to be of use around here – it’s the consistency we’re after when it comes to time, not the volume. And we DO understand that things come up and some weeks you just can’t fit everything in – if you can drop us a line warning us and come back next soon, we can always work it out.

If you’ve got the time and the desire, please do contact us using this volunteer interest form, which will help us get to know you.

• What sort of stuff you wanna help out with!
• Why you wanna help!
• Any extra experience you think might be handy (tech abilities, forum moderation, blogging skills, etc)
• Where you live on the Internet (blogs, tumblrs, your band’s old myspace, whatever …)
• How much time you can to give to us (on an ongoing weekly or monthly basis)
• ANYTHING ELSE you want to share about yourself (we don’t know what that is yet, but we can’t wait to find out!)

We can’t wait to hear from you and we’re looking forward to meeting you!
<3,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Genderfork Volunteer Team

Hey lovely Genderforkers!

We’re looking for new people to volunteer to help us out with content for the site!
We’re looking in particular for people to help us out with sourcing photos, and then posting them to the site, along with sorting through any photo submissions we receive, again to post to Genderfork.

At the moment I cover this, and it normally takes up an hour or so of my week, give or take, but sourcing new things can sometimes take a little longer. We’ll show you the ropes obviously, and do a write up about you in the volunteer bit of the site, and link to your stuff, if you’d like that, so if you’re interested then get in touch using the link below!

Click here to apply!

Thank you :)

Freiya, and everyone at Genderfork.

Hey lovely people,

Believe it or not, Genderfork has being going for nearly 8 years now! I know!

In that time you’ve submitted some beautiful, and frankly awesome stuff that we’ve all had the pleasure of sharing with you on this site.

Thing is though, we’ve finally started to run dry of new submissions.

“what!” I hear you cry, “this won’t do, how can I help!”

Well dear readers, what we need from you are those new submissions. We’re particularly looking for photos, quotes, and recommendations, but honestly everything is more than welcome, be that burning questions, or your insightful musings on gender.

Here’s how you can submit to us….

To submit photos showing your beauty and general genderfabulousness (not sure if that’s a word but hey) click here

To submit recommendations that will amaze and delight us click here

For thoughts and musings on gender click here

and for questions that you need our knowledgeable and wise community to help with click here

The links to submit things are also in the sidebar, so get submitting and see your content featured on Genderfork!

Yay!

Thank you so much, we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you!

love,
everyone at Genderfork

Dearest most fabulous Genderforkers,

Can you believe that Genderfork has been running for six whole years? During this time we’ve published over 4,500 blog posts here — each one representing a unique and lovable human experience that breaks down the restrictive walls of gender norms. When I started this project, I was hoping to find a few dozen people that I could identify with and be myself around. I had no idea we were everywhere!

Well, as time keeps rolling forward, so do we, and I want to let you know about two things:

1) We’re Ready For Some More Volunteers!

Have you always loved Genderfork and wanted to help? Now’s a really good time to tell us about it. Genderfork volunteers contribute a few hours a week, and work to help us maintain a diverse and affirming feed of community content.

If you’d like to be a volunteer, just fill out the form and let us know what you’re interested in. We can’t wait to hear from you!

And that brings us to the second topic (which is also ready for more volunteers)….

2) We’d Like You to Meet the New Genderplayful!

For the last few years, a bunch of us have been collaborating on a second web project, Genderplayful. The goal of Genderplayful is to help solve the kinds of wardrobe problems we hear about so often here at Genderfork: “the clothes we want to wear don’t fit our bodies!”

Initially, this project was a marketplace for people to sell clothing to one another, but for a bunch of reasons, that plan didn’t really work out. Now we’re reopening Genderplayful as a community blog (much like this one) for people to share tips, advice, vendors, inspiration, and solutions.

We invite you to take a look around at genderplayful.com. Please help us get it rolling by contributing some content, and again, there’s lots of room for new volunteers.

Thank you all SO MUCH for working together to build such a strong community resource here at Genderfork. You’ve helped more people than you can imagine, and there is so much more to come.

The biggest hugs,

Sarah Dopp
founder of Genderfork

Hey fellow Genderforkers,

As some of you may already know, we now have forums! They’re a safe, friendly and welcoming space for you all to come discuss things, gender related or not, with similar souls.

The link is on the sidebar, under Stay Connected (Our Forums), or you can click on this link right here to get to them:

http://discuss.genderfork.com/

It would be the most awesome and amazing thing to see you there, whether you’re brand new to our site and want to find out more, or have been a regular visitor for years.

Drop by and say hello, we’d love to get to know all of you in our wonderful community, and hear what you’ve got to say!

As some of you maybe aware, for a while now we’ve been putting together a forum space for Genderfork. It’s been a slightly longer process than expected but we’re very, very pleased to announce that they are finally open and ready to go!

A huge amount of work, and love, has gone into setting this up, and lot of people have been involved in the whole process, be that behind the scenes, beta testing, moderating or advising, so to all of you, many, many thanks, without the parts you played we wouldn’t be here now.

The forums are at http://discuss.genderfork.com/ so please feel free to go and check them out, register, and get involved!

Post, read, share, and most importantly, enjoy this space, these forums are for every single one of you amazing, wonderful people!

Hello! A while ago you may remember we asked for people to help set up some forums for Genderfork.

Well, you’ll be pleased to hear that since then things have moved on and we are nearly ready for them to be opened out to you, the lovely and amazing people of the Genderfork community. However, there are still a few things to finish off around the place, which is where you can help! We need some more people to come in and start posting on the boards, to try things out and generally get the place warmed up, so to speak.

We are looking for people who are happy to post, and interact with other people, to start conversations and get involved with ones that are going on. If this sounds like you, we’d love to have you along. To get involved all you have to do at the moment is sign up for this discussion group ……

https://groups.google.com/group/genderfork-discuss

Don’t worry if you sign up, and then it goes quiet for a few days, once we reach a  reasonable size ( in around a weeks time ) we will send out a discussion kick-off email, explaining more about everything, and how to get access to the forums.

( Also, don’t worry that you can’t post on the group when you join, once we have enough people you’ll be able to talk to your hearts content! )

Sounds good? Just sign up above….

Thankyou!

The Genderfork Discuss Team

Hi Genderforkers!

So the middle of winter (the Solstice JUST passed) is a time when we’re pretty highly encouraged to be giving – and it’s also often a time for taking a step back and giving yourself a good once-over, and maybe figuring out what sort of changes you need to make to keep moving forward. It’s a time of transition.
Genderfork is going through a pretty big transition right now.

We’ve put out a few calls for volunteers over the past few months, and we’ve gotten some awesome new folks in, to be sure. But many of our volunteers have been here since day one, and over the past three years or so, their own lives have changed, and many of them need to move on. We know they will do amazing things out in the world.

However, it’s a struggle every week right now to populate the site with full and varied content. If we’re to keep moving forward with the site in its current form, we need new blood, and fast! If you love the site, and you have time to give us, please, get in touch!

Here’s what you need to have:

• A love of gender all across the spectrum, and a love of our site!
• Access to a computer and the Internet, and basic knowledge of how to use these things.
• Time to give! Really, honestly – it doesn’t have to be a LOT of time, an hour or so a week will do it, but you need to be able to give it regularly, every week. We LOVE that you want to help, but if your life is in transition, or just really busy, take care of yourself. Don’t offer what you can’t give.

Here’s what you DO NOT need to have:

• Any particular identity. You don’t need to be genderqueer or trans or anything other than what you are to help out here. You just need to want to help.
• A lot of technical knowledge. We welcome it, but we can absolutely train you to do any job that needs doing around here – they’re not hard, and we’re excellent at writing instructions and answering questions.
• A LOT of time to give. It doesn’t take hours and hours to be of use around here – it’s the consistency we’re after when it comes to time, not the volume. And we DO understand that things come up and some weeks you just can’t fit everything in – if you can drop us a line warning us and come back next soon, we can always work it out.

If you’ve got the time and the desire, please do contact us at: volunteering – at – genderfork – dot – com and tell us a little bit about yourself. Specifically:

• What sort of stuff you wanna help out with!
• Why you wanna help!
• Any extra experience you think might be handy (tech abilities, forum moderation, blogging skills, etc)
• Where you live on the Internet (blogs, tumblrs, your band’s old myspace, whatever …)
• How much time you can to give to us (on an ongoing weekly or monthly basis)
• ANYTHING ELSE you want to share about yourself (we don’t know what that is yet, but we can’t wait to find out!)

Just a heads-up: please don’t expect an immediate response from us. There may be a bunch of you, or I might be swamped with my day job, or there could be other stuff going on that slows this process down. We’ll get through ‘em all, but responses may take some time.

I am really looking forward to meeting you, though.

Thanks in advance!
Your Friendly Neighborhood Volunteer-Scout, Emma

Hello, fantabulous genderlovelies!

Emma-the-volunteer-coordinator here again, putting out the call to any of you who want to share your time and skills with us.

This time, however, we’re looking for a specific skill set: We need people to help keep our site populated with fantastic, diverse, glorious, happy, gender-wild pictures of humans. That’s what we need.

So: If you’ve got an eye for faces, a feel for the site, a drive to contribute; if you spend hours on flickr or the Internet at large looking for more of that goodstuff you find around here; if you’re a whiz at resizing and titling, alt-texting and crediting; OR, of course, if you just know that you could be, that you want to be, if we only gave you the chance… Get in touch!

Here’s what you do:

Write an email to volunteering [at] genderfork.com. Include:

• Who you are! Just a bit. A name to call you by, a sort of idea of where you’re coming from, a pronoun that you like to hear applied to yourself. That sorta stuff.
• Why you want to help us keep our site full of lovely photographs!
• What sort of experience you have with pictures and the Internet (do you tumbl? do you flick? do you lose hours in idle perusal of face after face?)

And that’s that! Send it along and I’ll be gratefully, joyously in touch!

Thanks already!

xo-emms

Hey guys, we just ran into a database glitch, which affected some of the layout elements of the site (like the appearance of Recent Comments in the sidebar). Not to worry, though — our content is fine, and we’ll get the rest back to normal soon! ~sarah

Hey Everyone,

Someone we’ve been referring to as “omggeek” has been curating the submitted photos lately. We think it’s high time you met this new volunteer more properly! Introducing…

Riley\Lee
Submitted Photos Curator

And the rest of the cute-as-heck volunteers, as usual, can be enjoyed on our Staff Page.

Let’s talk about how awesome you are.

Yesterday I offered up the Facebook “like” button — a way of showing that you like a post without needing to leave a comment. Then, responding to some associated suggestions, I offered a thumbs-up feature for comments, to let you show when you like them, too. That feature came bundled with a thumbs-down feature, and I asked if that might be useful for letting you guys give “hey, that wasn’t cool” feedback on comments when you feel the need. After some conversations, I added in a way to create threaded replies to comments, so you can respond to them directly. Then I asked you all to vote on which ones to keep. It all happened quickly, and if you missed it, I apologize — you can still weigh in. But here’s what happened:

You UNANIMOUSLY rejected the “thumbs down” button. That was a firm, undeniable, “HELL NO.” You don’t want a tool that has the potential to create drama and bad feelings.

And you had mixed feelings about the comment and post “like” buttons. On one hand, it’s nice to be able to show support. On the other hand, vote counts can be used as part of a popularity game, and that smells a bit icky. And you don’t want people to feel encouraged to comment less — you love reading the comments here. Also? Looking more like facebook? Not so great.

BUT! You do pretty much love the ability to reply to comments directly, and that gives you a way to support great comments that you didn’t have before. So loud and clear: that feature stays.  The rest… well, it’s probably better if the rest go.

So the verdict is in. Genderfork says NO to drama. And for that, I am wildly in love with you. Thank you.

I’ll leave you with some of my favorite quotes from the discussion:

When the comments rating was first mentioned I thought it might be a good idea (and I still see its merits), but in practice I’m not happy with it — it makes the site feel a bit like all those “who’s the best, who’s at the top, let’s have lots of rankings and rate and number everything” and takes away from the feel of personality[? not sure if that’s the word] and hospitality; maybe that’s just me tho?
– tigr

I much agree! I feel as though the like/dislike feature has the potential to unwittingly become a popularity contest of sorts.

If threading stays, however, it’d be easy to reply with a quick “So do I!” or “I feel the same way!” instead of the little thumbs up/thumbs down that can be interpreted any number of ways and may alienate some of genderforkers. That would eliminate like/dislike and tidy up the comments, making the conversations within them more coherent.
-Dorian

I don’t like the idea of any sort of “thumbs down” or “dislike” button becuase one of the things I value so much about Genderfork is how positive we are able to stay.
-Avery

no dislike button. it will create hate, drama, and overall negative feelings in an overall supportive community
-mEEsh

I just have to say, I’m really not loving this. I really enjoyed the simplicity of Genderfork, and it was my get away from my Facebook/non accepting people.
– anonymous

Hhmmmm, i really like the threaded comments, it adds something to the comments that is beneficial to the flow of conversation. But the thumbs up/thumbs down, in my mind doesn’t. I also love the fact that genderfork isn’t negative, and having the option for thumbs down-ing something just doesn’t seem right for here…..
– freiya

“I feel like I should say that Genderfork is the ONLY place on the wider internet (i.e. besides blogs of friends) where I seek out & enjoy reading the comments. everywhere else, I inevitably regret reading comments… it just makes me feel gross & debased, and lose more faith in my fellow humans. Here, the comments are half to two-thirds of what make the site awesome.

In other words, you all rule!”
– jean c.

It’s true. You totally do.

Thanks and love,
Sarah Dopp

founder of genderfork

Hey Everyone,

You can probably see that a facebook “like” button just showed up on all our posts (at least, if you’re viewing at http://www.genderfork.com directly, it did). People have asked for ways to show they like something without having to leave a full comment. Facebook’s solution is kinda interesting because it lets you see which of your friends have liked it, but doesn’t show the identities of people who aren’t your friends on Facebook.

So… keep it or kill it? Do you like the Facebook solution? Or is just adding clutter?

Tell me below.

Thanks!

Sarah

p.s. if you’re looking to expand your facebook-based genderforkian community, try chiming in on the conversations over here: http://www.facebook.com/genderfork

EDIT: We’re ALSO now talking about a like/dislike rating system on comments now. See comment discussion on this post for more details.

POLL TIME!: Weigh in with your votes below, here:

[Image source: Whitezine]

Hey Everyone! I want to introduce you to two new folks who’ve been rockin’ out behind the scenes over here.

Alice is proofreading our posts now, helping us stay a little bit more error-free. She’s also taken over the “Questions” submissions, and is doing a great job with them.

And Mars is managing a WHOLE NEW THING!  Yes, that’s right: WE ARE NOW ON TUMBLR!!! If you live in the tumblr universe, we hope you appreciate our new feed (complete with sexy reblogging from the rest of your sexy tumblrs) over here: Genderforkd.

But first, let’s meet the volunteers:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Alice

Questions Curator and Proofreader

Alice is a 21 year old XY person from England who spends most of her time using devising investigations into the neurochemical nature of gender. When not buried under books she can be found haunting the more trendy parts of London. Some of her work can be found here.

Alice has been blogging these submissions from our “Ask” form, as well as keeping the rest of our posts (mostly) error-free.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mars
Tumblr Curator

Mars is a Canadian high-school student who tends to go through many rapid name-changes. Ze loves food (but not bananas), photography, books, film, indie music, and though ze is currently much too uncoordinated to figure it out, would one day love to learn how to ride a bicycle. You can easily contact Mars at life-onmars at live dot com, and if you can quote Spring Awakening or anything written by Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll be an instant friend.

Mars has been reblogging like crazy over at our Tumblr feed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

(As usual, you can see our whole beautiful staff over here.)

Say hi!!

Hey Everyone,

This is a special PSA to let everyone know that the Gender Spectrum Family Conference is a very important, special conference developed for families of gender variant children and teens (including the kids themselves). It will be held September 3-6th in the SF Bay Area this year.

I attended last year, and was very moved — especially by the strength and commitment of the parents to learn about and support their children. This year I’ll be assisting with the kids camp. (We have some really fun stuff planned.)

The conference is held by the same org that put out The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals. They’re also the conference that was featured on NPR (This American Life) last year — you know, the bring-you-to-tears story of two trans young girls that we ran on our site.

So if you or someone you know belongs at this conference (trans and genderqueer teens — this is for you and your parents!), please do the registration thing now. Like, now now. Right now.

Please. This conference is life-changing.

Love,
Sarah Dopp
founder of Genderfork

Maybe you’ve noticed that our little underground blog has been starting to burst at the seams — we sure as hell have. There are a lot of you! About 1200 of you a day! (Hi! We’re so glad you’re here!)

And you can imagine what our submission piles look like right now. Again, we’re sorry if you’ve sent us stuff and haven’t seen it published. But having been listening to you quite a bit, I’m also learning that getting published, most of the time, isn’t really the point. The point is self-expression, identity exploration, and finding support.

We think our daily publication is awesome as-is, and we don’t want to mess with it. But we also want to give you a better way to talk to each other, because all this connecting is really freaking important. So our plan is to build a community forum (aka a message board) — separate from the blog but still at Genderfork.com — for open discussion.

If you’ve ever been an active member of an internet forum, you know that this is a pretty significant undertaking. There’s a lot to consider around what we want to encourage and what we want to discourage. We want your input on those decisions.

So! If you want us to create a Genderfork Forum, and you’d like to help us decide how it would be most awesome, please sign up for this discussion list:

We’d really love your help.

What will happen next…

We’re going to wait until early next week before we start this discussion, so that more people will have time to get on the list first.  This means that after you join, nothing will happen for a few days (and if you try to talk, the system won’t let you).  Just sit tight — we’ll send out a discussion kick-off email when we think it’s time to start.

Then… once we’re talking, we’ll collaboratively pin down things like:

– What should the discussion categories be in the forum?
– What are our moderation guidelines?

And a bunch of other stuff.

And when we’re ready to create the forums, the people on this discussion list will be invited as the first members.  Your job will be to just start talking, and to set the tone for everyone else.

Want in? Just sign up above.

Thanks and love,
Sarah Dopp
Founder of Genderfork

Yeah… I know… The FAQs were more than a year out of date.

But that’s all better now. Here you go!

Enjoy!

Love,
Sarah Dopp
(your friendly site founder)

There is an AMAZING art show happening in San Francisco right now. It’s on the third floor of the LGBT Center, and will be running until March 6th. After that, it will be traveling elsewhere (keep an eye on their site to find out where).  Genderfork sponsored a creative, interactive piece that’s part of it.

By “creative and interactive,” I mean we built a slot machine. For gender and sexuality. Sort of. I can’t explain it, but it’s awesome, so I’m gonna try to show it to you…

So here is me, your friendly site founder Sarah Dopp, attempting to Show! You! It! on video…

The show is produced by the Undermining Acceptable Violence Collective, and opening night was a benefit for the Transgender Economic Empowerment Initiative. Both of these organizations are my on Complete and Utter Adoration List, so please go learn more about them!

tons of love,
Sarah

Dear Genderforkers,

You make me so stupendously happy.

Just wanted to tell you that.

Love,
Sarah Dopp