Most of my jury duty experiences have been pre-transition. The last time, I was far enough into transition--six months--to be regularly read as male; my voice was in tenor range, and I'd had top surgery. My name wasn't called until the afternoon. We all dutifully trooped upstairs and sat around while the attorneys apparently came to an eleventh-hour plea deal. After that, I was free to go.
I've been called about half a dozen times and have sat on only one jury.
The time before last--pre-transition--was actually the only time I experienced any weirdness. I got to the voir dire stage on a sexual assault case. I was back in the closet about as far as I could go, but I still had a very masculine presentation and, of course, the male name, since I had changed my name well before transition. I guess I came across as a typical male hardass professorial type because I said that my students had to work hard for their grades, or some such thing.
Since I was so deep in denial, I'd never considered the possibility that I would run into any "gender trouble." Naturally, I disclosed, in front of God and everyone, that I had previously been sexually assaulted. Since women are routinely sexually assaulted, I also had not considered the option of disclosing in camera. My goodness, what a scene; the entire room just stopped, and time stood still. The other people in the jury box were staring at me and shifting around uncomfortably, the people sitting right next to me were sort of shrinking away from me, and I stopped the attorney cold right in the middle of his questions. I didn't even realize exactly why everyone was so freaked out until later, when I allowed myself to "realize" that I was trans and had been read as male. How many men just blurt out in public, very matter-of-factly, that they have been raped? Yeah, not too many.
Naturally, I was not chosen to serve on that jury.
