Reclaiming opportunities
This post was going to be called 'Missed opportunities'. Then I had second thoughts, because even if we miss opportunities, there are further opportunities to reclaim that missed one. Let me give you an example.
I recently sent an email which included in the recipients a former neighbour. Almost immediately after sending the email, I received a text message which read 'Love the he/him bit on your email', followed by three laughing/crying face emojis.
Knowing this person, I knew what they were really getting at, and this was a perfect opportunity to explain to them why I think it's important to include my pronouns in my email signature. But I didn't. All I did was reply saying thanks for their reply to my email, which I had just received.
However, this is an opportunity that I'm going to reclaim. The next time I visit them in their new house, I'll bring up pronouns and try to help educate and explain why they are important. It's likely that I'll use the My Pronouns website.
This got me thinking about the work I'm currently involved in. Of course, as someone who speaks a lot about representation and inclusion, I should do my best to act rather than speak. However, no one is infallible and I realise that I've missed opportunities in my current project, especially when it comes to images. This is where I can reclaim these opportunities. I'm going to go over the photo brief and see where there are opportunities for more representative images and add them as alternatives in the brief. The higher powers may not go with my suggestions, but having the confidence to suggest them in the first place is a big step. To be honest, there are many things I will have to be careful with because of the market, but by making suggestions, even if they're not heeded, will hopefully show everyone involved in the project that there are more inclusive ways of representing a wider range of people.
I'd also like to reclaim this opportunity to point you in the direction of my resources page. There are four standalone, free to download resources there and I hope you take the opportunity to use them where you can.