Foreword: I wrote this on October 2nd, 2020. It was originally intended to be published on my old website but I had doubts. Was I entirely happy with how I presented things? Will this get me in trouble with my former employer? I had just been fired four months earlier and my feelings were still quite fresh and raw. This was the first job I had out of college, I was there for eight years and it had meant a lot to me.
When I talked about transitioning on the job, I was met most often with surprise and worry. Many of the supportive sentiments I received were couched in distrust of my employer. Everyone seemed to understand that I would not keep my job post-transition. I couldn’t figure out why. I liked my company, the work I did, the people I worked with, and our clients. I did great work and led successful projects. Our clients loved me. The people I worked with liked me. I truly could not imagine a scenario in which my job would suffer just because I had finally found myself.
My company provided services to several law firms, one of which was just upstairs. When one of their lawyers transitioned, everyone at my company was quiet but utterly respectful about it, and one of my coworkers acted swiftly and respectfully to get her accounts switched over to her new names. I would remember this. He would be the first person at work I came out to. A few months later, she was removed from the firm. It was all hush-hush and we were instructed to swiftly shut down all her accounts. We rarely get told why an employee leaves a firm – we don’t need to know – but this one stuck with me (I wouldn’t understand specifically why for another year or two). The rushed nature of it, how even our own management rushed us and in the process had us break our normal procedures. It was bizarre and I never received an explanation for it. I regret to this day that I never went up to meet her after her transition.
UPDATE November 12th, 2024: She’s doing pretty well for herself it seems, actually. She’s successfully fought against transphobia in the law profession, and she’s a name-your-own-price lawyer for folks facing eviction and incarceration. I’m really glad she landed on her feet.
I wonder if that’s how my firing went. Did my company scramble, rush it, break all normal procedures to freeze me out? I got removed on a Friday morning. I wasn’t even allowed to finish the week. My days started later than the rest, so I was surprised to be locked out hours after everyone else had been at work. Procedure dictates closing accounts at the end of the previous business day. I was blindsided. I had never been talked to about needing to improve. No one told me they had issues with me. There was no hint I was on the chopping block. I just got shut out one morning with a curt phone call saying “it seems like you’re done with the job anyway, your stuff will be arriving by messenger by end of day.”
It was cold and it hurt. Being at that place for eight years, I expected to be respected and cared about. That if there were issues with me they would be discussed with me. Instead I got.. this. I’ve had time to think about it, and there were some notable stages in my transition which seem to correlate with those of other trans women I’ve talked to:
Initial worry
Coming out is Big and Scary. You don’t know how each person is going to react. Ideally everyone would be fantastic and respectful, but you just know that’s not going to be the case. There’s an extra fear if you work in a large company or have a large client base you regularly deal with.
I worked at a small company, less than ten full time employees, but we had a very large client base and I was dealing with dozens of different people every day. I had a feeling my company would be okay with me, they’ve always been pretty lefty. Most of our clients are too, and those that aren’t wouldn’t make a stink about it in order to preserve the business relationship and the services they received. But given the near universal ire for transgender people, you never really know who is safe and who wants to harm you. I fretted for months on who I would come out to and how. I started wearing sports bras in an effort to compress my growing breasts. I was terrified that they would out me before I was ready. I hid.
Performative allyship
You come out to someone, they offer to be help you through the process, help you figure things out with management, stand up for you against anyone who would give you crap! You have hope that things won’t be as bad as you’ve been worrying. You feel a weight lifted. This is doable, this will work. You make a plan to move forward now with support from the ever-important ally.
I greatly admired my coworker’s respectful handling of the one client who transitioned. It made me feel safe even before I understood that I was trans. Once I felt ready to start coming out at work, I went right to him as step one. At this point, work was the last place in my daily life where I was still pretending to be a man. He was supportive, he expressed desire to do things right by me, to do things how I wanted. I felt good. I felt better about my transition than I ever had. All of the anxiety about HRT-related changes outing me before I was ready washed away. I had taken a step, taken control, and I had someone to stand behind me as I navigated this at work!
It’s MY transition, damnit!
Everyone in the office wants their say in exactly how you’re coming out. From management to accounting, right down to your ally.
I came out to each person individually. When I came out to our part time accountant, she suggested I should just use my assigned name from birth and change the spelling to the feminine version. “It’d be easy!” Notably, my father also suggested this when he found out about me.
And then it was time to do the bosses. I let that one sit for a bit. I was scared again. Eventually I found a way to force the issue. It may not have been graceful, but it was how I did it and there’s nothing wrong with that. I had just taken two weeks off of work for my mental health. During those two weeks I did not pretend to be someone else. I was me the entire time. I was free and it felt amazing. As my vacation came to a close, I was presented with an unexpected dilemma: I had to start hiding myself again. So I made a decision to just be me at work. I didn’t pretend to be a boy anymore. I did my makeup, wore my girl clothes – no, my normal clothes – and out I went. Being in public as me was old hat by this point. Being at work as me was a new adventure. The two bosses still didn’t know, and this would force the issue. I got looks. After a few days of this my ally pulled me aside and told me that the bosses had “figured it out” and when was I going to come out to them? They didn’t figure anything out, I just stopped hiding. I sent them a message a day later and we set up a meeting to figure out the next steps.
The meeting was awful. Both bosses, my ally (who had so far clearly shown no effort towards allyship), the accountant who doubled as our de facto HR, and me. I don’t think I once looked anyone in the eye. I felt completely on the spot, interrogated, an outsider in a place I once belonged. HR wanted to do an email blast to all of our clients. Boss 1 agreed. Ally thought it was a good idea. Boss 2 made my coming out all about how he was such a great ally and how he always taught others about LGBTQIA+ issues and how he was so excited to learn from me, a real tran. I had to interrupt him to say anything. All of their words were hollow and controlling. This was supposed to be about me, and they were only thinking of themselves and what they wanted.
I laid out my plan: No email blast. I had already silently changed my name in some systems – some client facing! – and I will be continuing to do so. I will be answering the phones with my real name as of Wednesday, and my email signature will switch at that point as well. It will be a quiet switchover and I will deal with any confusion from people as it arises.
This was not well received, but at least they did not give an enthusiastic fight.
Ally suggested they all put pronouns in their email signatures. They agreed. I was the only one who put pronouns in their email signature.
I only had one issue with a client over the following year: I accidentally answered the phone with my old name and she laughed at me.
Wait, am I being treated differently?
As work adjusts to the “new” you, they start to treat you differently. How they talk to you, how they talk about you. How they approach you for assistance and how they assign things to you. Suddenly the attitude and effort you’ve always given the job is not enough. Suddenly you’re a problem when you’re doing nothing different. The work you do, which is still just as good is now not enough. The answers you’ve always given are now second guessed. Expectations placed upon you change without your knowledge. You start to feel edged out of normal discussions, normal projects, normal responsibilities. But it’s subtle, so you try to explain it away.
At first I thought I was being too sensitive. My HRT must be making me more emotional, right? That’s has to be it, just ride it out. I should have paid attention sooner. Eventually I realized that this wasn’t a me problem, the environment around me was changing, attitudes towards me were changing. I began taking notes. Incidents were recorded on specific dates from November 2019 to May 2020. There are broader notes of pre-November issues as well. I would say that they probably started treating me differently earlier in the year around August or September, a few months after I had gone full time in June. A few times I even brought this up with my ally. By that time he had become our de facto supervisor, meaning he would be the perfect person to tell about these issues so that he can work with me and bring them to management. I can only guess he was offended that I pointed out awful behaviors some of which he was included in because his reaction was contempt. He never helped me or tried to change his own behavior.
Messages to the team or individual coworkers or bosses would be ignored. The accountant straight up stopped talking to me. My expertise was no longer of value. My judgements and my work were constantly questioned. When once I had been valued, I was now treated like a bother. I had to justify my work in ways that no one in the company had to before.
I feel like I was subjected to a form of gaslighting. The ground kept shifting underneath me and I was being blamed for it. Projects that I had documented as being held up on a process outside of my hands were sent back to me with terse notes saying “Why isn’t this done yet?” or “Move this forward now.” Upon bringing up why work could not move forward, I was met with a tone and a message that said I should have been aware of changes that had happened without my knowledge. Work that I had done with approval from the president himself resulted in the president talking to everyone (except me of course) asking “Why did she do the work on this? She shouldn’t have, she should have known better. The client is delinquent, why did she do the work?” I did the work because I asked him and he said I should do the work. I knew of their delinquency and that is why I asked. And I even did it via Microsoft Teams so I have records of this. But when that man decided upon his truth, reality meant nothing. Both the CEO and my ally, when shown the truth, just told me I should have stood up for myself. What more should I have done? I verbally countered him when I heard him going around, and I presented my evidence. I could never do enough. I kept failing unknown expectations.
Friday March 13th, 2020, my last day in the office before Chicago went on COVID-19 stay at home orders. I had a bit of a fever that night and when I woke up Saturday, I felt sick, had a sore throat, pretty much all the early symptoms we were being warned about at the time (COVID-19 was very poorly understood at that point). When I told work that I was planning to work from home even if no such order was made by the city, I was met with near-hostility. I was told how hard it would be for the company to disinfect everything in the office. I was told I needed to be one hundred percent sure about this, because I may have put everyone at risk. At no point did they express worry or care for their longtime employee. I was blamed. A month and a half later a coworker’s wife would get it, and subsequently he would too. They were met only with worry and care and support. They got “Let us know whatever you need from us.” I got “This has potential major impact for your coworkers and your company.”
Fall from grace
Management doesn’t want to correct the issue. It’s easier for them to ignore the situation and let the relationship deteriorate. Eventually a point of no return is reached. Neither side will be able to fix it, and yet you still can’t pin anything down. You know things have changed but you still can’t figure out why.
I am honestly not clear on when this part happened. Was it before or after COVID-19 work from home? Did they just give up on me before we were all forced into an awkward situation by a global crisis? Or was it after I made it known that I was not dealing well with such an upheaval of normal life? If it was before quarantine, were they planning on letting me go sooner? Either way, near the end there was a definite air of them being done with me, honestly. They never even tried to talk to me about anything that was going on, perceived or real. Which makes it extra insulting when they said it seemed I was done with them. We lost a lot of work as our clients cut back staff or totally shut down because of the pandemic. The other techs were favored over me, being assigned more work than me. Of course my hours are going to be low when what little work there is gets assigned almost entirely away from me, or when the work I did have was actively poached by the other techs. I used to be looked up to, consulted on projects, and respected. I was a key employee who played a key role. It is still unclear to me when they stopped caring about me and started looking for reasons to get rid of me. At the end, there was no respect for me, my work, or my knowledge, from anyone at the company. The way I went from being important to being actively unwanted was shocking.
Forced Out
Management removes the employee because the employee “no longer cares” or is “no longer a good fit” or “no longer respects the job” or is now “too disruptive.” All excuses because management has decided to dump the employee despite the value they still carry.
And, well, that’s it. That’s what it comes down to. The company was no longer comfortable having me around, even though I had done nothing wrong or different. They let me go. I was confused, I was angry, I was hurt. I still am. At this time it has been nearly five months since they let me go. I had been with them for eight years. One of my highschool friends who got me the job was still employed there when I was let go. He has not made a single attempt to reach out to me since then. I feel betrayed on multiple levels.
Variations
Now, I have heard some variations on the above! Some management doesn’t sit idly by as the relationship deteriorates, they actively work to make it worse! You get pulled into meetings to discuss declining work quality or work ethic when you’re outputting the same work you always have. So you try harder and put more into it and you get called into yet more meetings about how you’re just not meeting expectations.
Or you get demoted, receive a pay cut, and told that it just doesn’t feel like you want the position anymore.
Or your coworkers and management start talking about you behind your back, spreading lies and rumors and seeding disdain for you. No action is taken, but the whole company begins to turn against you.
Often the trans person leaves because they no longer feel welcomed. They’re pushed out by the toxic attitudes and behaviors towards them. This typically means they do not get unemployment pay, and the company and remaining employees feel satisfied that the issue wasn’t them, it was the trans person, and they can all just move on as if a person’s life didn’t just get ruined.
Afterthoughts
This is definitely a trans feminine take on the process. From what I’ve seen, it is not uncommon for trans men to suddenly be elevated socially and professionally at work, as their companies began seeing them for the men that they are. Transitioning is Sexism 101. I have not spoken with any nonbinary people about their experiences with this yet.
It’s not lost on me that I was fired the week before my one-year anniversary of coming out at work. It’s also not lost on me that the only two employees who got fired were also the only two minority employees: the black man who never got a break from management and me, the trans woman. The remaining staff are all cis het white men and the cis het white woman part time accountant. Things are back to how they used to be there.
I sometimes wonder if this was the standard misogyny or was it specifically transmisogyny? But then I catch myself: does it matter which specific flavor of bigotry it is if it can’t be proven anyway? That’s the insidious thing about this. Whether their behavior was purposeful or not, it was wrong and there’s no recompense for that. They’re never going to be confronted with what they did. If they truly are decent people, they’re not going to get the chance to learn from this. And I think that’s what really kills me about this. Some of them have the capacity to be decent people! And as people who pride themselves on learning and working on the latest tech, they don’t put that kind of effort into learning and working with people. The work we did was very much a customer-facing job. Dealing with people was between fifty and eighty percent of any given assignment. But I guess that’s the privilege of being a cis het white male: you don’t have to care about other people in order to move up and forward.
It needs to be noted that the guy who got fired was never mean or awful to me in any way. He was always a sweetheart to everyone, and I am happy to say that we are still in touch and have helped each other move forward in our careers and lives.
Twitter is such a small place sometimes. I ran into the lawyer that transitioned, and after working up the nerve I sent her a brief message telling her she was an inspiration and helped me gather the courage to come out myself. She was super sweet and even said she remembered me đź’•