Susan's Place Transgender Resources

One of the guys at work asked me about me transitioning. He wanted to know about hormones and how they work and so on. Someone overheard the conversasion and told my supervisor that it bothered him. Later that night my supervisor asked me to keep my transion to myself. I told him the person I was talking to asked me about it. He said it was not that person it was someone else that over heard me talking to him than he says it was like someone hearing an offensive joke. I felt really bad(hormonal) that day. I have never cried so much in my life about anything. It hurt me all that I could think about was my life being conpaired to an offensive joke that was being told at work. My thoughts were blown way out of proportion and every time I tried to talk about it I would burst into tears. The next day I woke up and it was like nothing was wrong. It did not even matter to me anymore.

Did they do any type of sensitivity training at work?
My sister works in a large office environment (helpdesk) and she says a coworker just recently came out and the entire office had to do a class on it, but that way the expectations of what not to do/ask/say are laid out for everyone, maybe your supervisor/HR department could do something similar?

Quote from: meatgrinder on December 22, 2011, 01:00:35 PM
Did they do any type of sensitivity training at work?
My sister works in a large office environment (helpdesk) and she says a coworker just recently came out and the entire office had to do a class on it, but that way the expectations of what not to do/ask/say are laid out for everyone, maybe your supervisor/HR department could do something similar?

no it was like OK you are transitioning just do your job and everything will work out. I am a little afraid stir the crap.

Yes hormones do cause you to get emotional thats for sure...

yepper if they want you to not mention it thats probably best.. its great they accpet you.

Talk about raising your children and let the person who has an issue know your a good person and that will help with a positive image of trans people.

I respet the idea of not talking about it but I could tell a dry joke and not one of them would say a thing to anyone. I am starting to feel like an outcast again just in a new way. I am thinking about asking to be transferred to another department were I am not surrounded by only men.

Quote from: jainie marlena on December 22, 2011, 01:31:42 PM
I respet the idea of not talking about it but I could tell a dry joke and not one of them would say a thing to anyone. I am starting to feel like an outcast again just in a new way. I am thinking about asking to be transferred to another department were I am not surrounded by only men.

hey being around women always sounds better to me so i won't argue with you :)

I just remembered they are suppost to bring a woman out there for me to train to do the samething as me. I forgot all about it. I think I will wait and see what happens before I ask to be transferred.

yyeeaay finally family 500 post. lol been almost 3 years.  ;D

You really shouldn't. It is your personal business and I don't think coworkers want to hear about what you're going through. If they have questions, email them after work or something.

Sorry, sexuality and transition is enormously private and doesn't belong at work.

Believe me, I've been asked to not talk about mine at work and I prefer not to. But I pass really well and my bosses told me, "no one would think otherwise if you didn't talk about it". I think it's the same for everywhere.... I'll tell girls I know, but never the men. It bothers men. But it isn't just transition, it's all personal business. You're there to work, not socialize.

Same with being gay. I was gay since I was 18 and I wasn't gonna talk about it at work. It's not appropriote, unless they want to HEAR about it and even then, you meet in the parking lot or something. Contrary to what you may think Jainie...your transition doesn't matter to these people.

Quote from: jainie marlena on December 22, 2011, 12:57:12 PM
My thoughts were blown way out of proportion and every time I tried to talk about it I would burst into tears. The next day I woke up and it was like nothing was wrong. It did not even matter to me anymore.

crying's goooooood. I can't wait till I can do it again.

Quote from: jainie marlena on December 22, 2011, 01:31:42 PM
I respet the idea of not talking about it but I could tell a dry joke and not one of them would say a thing to anyone. I am starting to feel like an outcast again just in a new way. I am thinking about asking to be transferred to another department were I am not surrounded by only men.

Men are awful to work with. That's your problem right there I'll bet. :)

Quote from: fionabell on December 22, 2011, 02:19:51 PM
Men are awful to work with. That's your problem right there I'll bet. :)

I wish there were more testosterone in this office. Lol.

Quote from: JenJen2011 on December 22, 2011, 02:21:54 PM
I wish there were more testosterone in this office. Lol.

Men are awesome to work with. Girls are extremely catty and end up causing a lot more trouble.

I worked at a sports stadium and men were really sweet to me...Once I transitioned.

Before I was just treated like the local fairy and this is SF, so I was told I was a pretty big fairy.

Quote from: Beverley on December 22, 2011, 02:28:12 PM
Try saying that AFTER you have worked in a large office with fifty other women.....

Beverley

I have like 2 female friends I trust. The rest just suck.

I just prefer fashionable flaming gay men. They are kind of like a women, but still can maintain a conversation like a man. LOL

Quote from: jainie marlena on December 22, 2011, 12:57:12 PM
One of the guys at work asked me about me transitioning. He wanted to know about hormones and how they work and so on. Someone overheard the conversasion and told my supervisor that it bothered him. Later that night my supervisor asked me to keep my transion to myself. I told him the person I was talking to asked me about it. He said it was not that person it was someone else that over heard me talking to him than he says it was like someone hearing an offensive joke. I felt really bad(hormonal) that day. I have never cried so much in my life about anything. It hurt me all that I could think about was my life being conpaired to an offensive joke that was being told at work. My thoughts were blown way out of proportion and every time I tried to talk about it I would burst into tears. The next day I woke up and it was like nothing was wrong. It did not even matter to me anymore.

I had simular experiense,

I where going to sign up for a new school but before that I where to pay a visit to check out the place and which subject I might like,
as I got there it came out I where transgender (because I asked people to refern me to my male name insteed)
everyone seamed very curious about it and asked questions, but when I leaved the princible heard them talk and rejected me in the first place.

I also got told by famely to keep it a secret in general at school and work,

somethimes I do want to just not telling people im trans,
but somethimes its also hard or almost imposible if you dont because you has to make up lies,
and other times I just wanna be out and proud because, hey im not in the closet and not ashamed of being trans.

I think its ->-bleeped-<-ty but only good thing you can do is to be a good exemple and the people who have bad prejugdes might change there minds.

Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on December 22, 2011, 02:15:54 PM
You really shouldn't. It is your personal business and I don't think coworkers want to hear about what you're going through. If they have questions, email them after work or something.

Sorry, sexuality and transition is enormously private and doesn't belong at work.

Believe me, I've been asked to not talk about mine at work and I prefer not to. But I pass really well and my bosses told me, "no one would think otherwise if you didn't talk about it". I think it's the same for everywhere.... I'll tell girls I know, but never the men. It bothers men. But it isn't just transition, it's all personal business. You're there to work, not socialize.

Same with being gay. I was gay since I was 18 and I wasn't gonna talk about it at work. It's not appropriote, unless they want to HEAR about it and even then, you meet in the parking lot or something. Contrary to what you may think Jainie...your transition doesn't matter to these people.

I think you right. I am going to keep to myself. thanks disco shark. like I said I have learned a lot from you.

thanks for the input everyone.

I wish it were as simple as telling you to report this to your HR department, but if it were me I know just how unreliable reporting to HR is when the "offender" in question is in a position of authority himself. And it could backfire too, if HR decided to simply give a warning--the offender will immediately know who filed the report. Even if I face homophobia everyday I still feel it more practical to ignore them than resist on a per case basis out of conviction.

Funny how, in my times of need, it wasn't any of the Marxist nor feminist thinkers (Marx, Gramsci's historical materialism, Ernst Bloch's principle of hope, Helene Cixous' deconstructive feminism) who've given me the emancipatory strength to face oppression, but the selfish capitalist Ayn Rand. When I was a new immigrant in America, I had no place to stay. I found work as an assembler in an assembly line working 12-hour shifts. I was in the company of people you'd forgive for being ignorant (for why should a Marxist criticize an individual for his lack of education, which was brought about by the system?). Although I lived in a third world country, I was educated in the best university in there and landing an odd job never crossed my relatively privileged lifestyle (but still impoverished in American standards); my world since then was a nihilist ruin. During a ten-minute break, I was reading Atlas Shrugged and the following quote changed my life:

Quote"But... but what are you doing here?" Her arm swept at the room. "This doesn't make sense! What is it? A stunt? An experiment? A secret mission? Are you studying something for some special purpose?"
"No, Miss Taggart. I'm earning my living." The words and the voice had the genuine simplicity of truth, "Dr. Akston, I... it's inconceivable, it's... You're... you're a philosopher... the greatest philosopher living... an immortal name... why would you do this?"
"Because I am a philosopher, Miss Taggart. ... If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner--check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong."

"I'm earning my living." That simple truth framed my world in a positive light. I was trading a product of my own effort.

I used to hate Ayn Rand before I even read any of her works, for she was the favorite author of the most selfish ->-bleeped-<- I know. I realized after reading her novels that the selfishness she was referring to has an entirely different definition than "pursuing one's self-interest at the expense of others": Ayn Rand was referring to the existence of a self, a self from which you produce goods of your own mind and muscle, in exchange for an equivalent worth of goods--not just free trade, but fair trade. She clearly associated the usual definition of selfishness with looters in her novels and contrasted it with a man with his own sense of self-worth.

The assembly line I worked on may not have had the same inhumane working conditions prevalent in third world countries, but my supervisor was a notorious slave driver. He demanded output twice that of other lines doing the same work obviously to please his superiors. He prided himself of cutting costs for the company, giving little to no raise despite our performance. All he did was sit in his cubicle doing nothing, and only came out to micromanage bottlenecks (stations who couldn't meet the hourly quota) using an abusive tone that had often made my coworkers cry. Most of us were on minimum wage, and he was said to rake in more than $10,000 a month.

Ayn Rand advocates for you to have your own code of values. "Of what account are praise and [criticism] from men whom you don't respect?" My supervisor was most weary of me for he's the kind of man who is discomforted by a subordinate more intelligent than he isn't (I overheard him laughing about my stellar resume to his superior, a close buddy of his). Once, he found an opportunity to subjugate me in his own terms, accusing me of being a bottleneck for not using two machines at once (a work supposedly done by two people), when his simple mistake is that I wasn't getting parts from the previous station. He couldn't fault me because I was obsessive-compulsive with my work, and I found a way to use one machine efficiently. I followed my own standards in my work, and if I ever did poorly, it is because I didn't meet my own set standards, my own code of values, and not because I was trying to please someone else's. His way of life is dependent on the exploitation of others, and I'd rather die than live a life like that.

Whenever my socially normative coworkers ridicule my effeminate mannerisms and my androgynous appearance, I just couldn't help but shrug them off with a sad smile. Is there not a more tragic thing than to have such limited consciousness of an infinitely complex world? Even if they attain all the power in the world, their world is only as vast as their minds can see. And there's not much they can see. Especially that they couldn't even see you at all.

I have worked with 60 women in male mode and I can tell you it's much better than working with men when in male mode.

Men are too bitchy and conniving.

I prefer female company, especially at work.

Quote from: Mahsa the disco shark on December 22, 2011, 02:24:53 PM
Men are awesome to work with. Girls are extremely catty and end up causing a lot more trouble.

I worked at a sports stadium and men were really sweet to me...Once I transitioned.

Before I was just treated like the local fairy and this is SF, so I was told I was a pretty big fairy.

Men are arsholes

Quote from: JenJen2011 on December 22, 2011, 02:21:54 PM
I wish there were more testosterone in this office. Lol.

Men are great to me now. Before I was a woman? Endless hatred and contempt from every angle.

Women are easy to get along with.

  I'm a board member of a club with mainly over 55 year old men in the active core.  When I came out, I was told:  TMI!  TMI!  No problems since then.  They just don't want to know the details, especially when it comes to any kind of emasculinization.  That is threatening to them.  Leave it be. 
  Joelene

Personally, I think transitioning on the job has to be one of the worst things you can ever experience. Especially if you are the first the company has ever had. I cant get co-workers to address me by my 1st name, or even the right gender. And everything you say or do is scrutinized and/or twisted to make you a horrible person.  I think my new year's resolution is not to take their bull crap anymore. I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row so I can find another job and start out as myself. I'm just tired of all the ignorance and religious ass hats and their lack of respect for another person's feelings! GRRR

If that had happened to me... woaa, I would have raised so much hell >< Called meetings with HR and management and all sorts of people to "discuss the issue"... (of course, before the meeting, they would have all recieved a very long letter lecturing them on the obvious hypocrisy of the sittuation).

That is just how I handle things :P If they want to "play business professional" to hide their discrimination... ohhh, I am more than willing to play too :)

Of course, that is if where you live has legal protection for trans people (like in california)... without legal protection, you pretty much can A) make noise and get fired B) Leave C) keep quiet and just take the abuse.

it's in the parent company's Non-discrimination policy that gender identity and expression are protected but it isnt in the state of Indiana.

My little personal opinion in this diverse population of a country is screw your company! You have a basic 1st ammendment right to talk about what you want to who you want how you want. And people have the right not to listen to what you say, so talk about your transition all you want!

I was asked to have my daughter not talk about my transition at her school. It made me feel bad. I don't like that some people act like transition should be a shameful secret.

As a parent too, I can tell you that that won't happen. If your child is proud of your accomplishments, they will talk about it. I don't think your daughter is ashamed at all and is quite proud of your transition. She's probably noticed you to be happier and less stressed. And so much more loveable because you have this huge weight off your shoulders.

Quote from: Keaira on December 25, 2011, 03:46:14 AM
As a parent too, I can tell you that that won't happen. If your child is proud of your accomplishments, they will talk about it. I don't think your daughter is ashamed at all and is quite proud of your transition. She's probably noticed you to be happier and less stressed. And so much more loveable because you have this huge weight off your shoulders.

Yep yep, so much. She's perceptive and I am so much happier, and our household is so much more playful and laid back. She is proud. Thank you Keaira.

Quote from: Felix on December 25, 2011, 03:55:13 AM
Yep yep, so much. She's perceptive and I am so much happier, and our household is so much more playful and laid back. She is proud. Thank you Keaira.

You're very welcome Felix ^_^
I would also tell the school that if they find it uncomfortable that a student is exercising her right to freedom of speech then they may as well ban discussing interests, parents jobs and any sporting event a student might have or attend because that is your daughter expressing her pride in her family and what kind of people are in it.  And I would tell them that I am as equally proud of my child for doing it.

I just work at work. Unless they ask, then I'll stop to talk about it. I can't imagine someone not being able to talk about their other medical problems if asked.

The funny thing is everyone talks about their problems that they are going through at work just a few days after this the same person had the nerve to talk to me about is uncle's "sergery" and the "help he was getting." I will sit back and take it for now but I usually explode when the time comes. I have made my point known just not in a way that is verbal. If you read my other post I am making tee shirts that reflect me in this middle gender state of being. I just finished modifying my blue jean jacket and it is ready to go. someone told me at the bar new years that I need to sale it online. Hum maybe future income for transition.

It's a sign of the times sweetie.  I agree with those who have said it is unprofessional for you to discuss your personal business at work.  Friend the person and exchange emails and share that way AFTER WORK HOURS.

Also it's not just about transgender issues.  People are often unaware of how their voices carry.  It's a major complaint about people discussing personal issues at work.  It also opens the company up to liability issues.  Your situation is interesting and the type of thing that people would probably gossip about.  And so it could quickly turn into a hostile work environment that sets the company up for a law suit.


Consider this scenario  The "Offended Party"   goes to the boss and says "that Freak is out there talking about all this crap and I think it's disgusting, it's against the bible and I feel like it's being jammed down my throat."


If you were the boss what would you dol?   First of all the person is crossing major boundaries, you realize that if he or she is feeling this way he might say something to someone else who may then complain that it's hate speech.  I would for example. 

So the easiest thing is to ask you not to talk about it.   Then he's also documented an action.  Technically he can say that you are not working when you are talking about your "issue"

Pick your battles. 

Quote from: jainie marlena on January 03, 2012, 01:08:28 AM
The funny thing is everyone talks about their problems that they are going through at work just a few days after this the same person had the nerve to talk to me about is uncle's "sergery" and the "help he was getting." I will sit back and take it for now but I usually explode when the time comes. I have made my point known just not in a way that is verbal. If you read my other post I am making tee shirts that reflect me in this middle gender state of being. I just finished modifying my blue jean jacket and it is ready to go. someone told me at the bar new years that I need to sale it online. Hum maybe future income for transition.

The uncle's surgery isn't a hot button topic though. Trans and gay issues don't have a place in the workplace. It's unfortunate people get offended...But it's how it is.

Quote from: jainie marlena on January 03, 2012, 01:08:28 AM
The funny thing is everyone talks about their problems that they are going through at work just a few days after this the same person had the nerve to talk to me about is uncle's "sergery" and the "help he was getting." I will sit back and take it for now but I usually explode when the time comes. I have made my point known just not in a way that is verbal. If you read my other post I am making tee shirts that reflect me in this middle gender state of being. I just finished modifying my blue jean jacket and it is ready to go. someone told me at the bar new years that I need to sale it online. Hum maybe future income for transition.

Be calm quite and lady like and DON'T GET FIRED  you have a whole house full of children

@mixie it is well documented that I am the best worker every month I sign my name on a paper that my supervisor shows me. I don't talk at all when I work. I am also on the seal team to find ways to make our company a better place to work. as far as bible goes I classify my self as a eunuch which is biblical the only person there that claims to be a Christian knows this.

@disco I stopped talking about it. I just think it is crap.

@amazon D I'm not going to do anything to get fired. I like the work that I do just I am feeling really lonely at this point. I'm just having mixed feelings and am feeling sorry for myself. lol. I'm getting over it.

I guess I didn't explain myself clearly.   I'm not saying that you'll get fired.  I'm saying you could sue the company for a hostile work environment because of the things people are saying about you.  Legally the company could be faced with thousands of dollars in a lawsuit which you would likely win.  So I think this might be why the boss is asking you not to discuss it.  This is a legal way of him shutting down the gossip that could happen about you.  Most companies of statements about gossip in their employee policies.   Matthew 19:21 is the passage. Cheers.

@ mixie The one thing I find about gossip whether good or bad is people become aware of things through it. I see your point about a lawsuit.

Hey love the new pic jainie

but  ;D  next time  ;)

Girl alone is my look. smiling is something I do when others are looking. I guess I was not thinking about that part when I was taking the picture. lol. My grandma said one time. "I am not a happy go lucky person. I don't have to smile all the time so stop asking me to." ;D ;D ;D

happiness show in many ways. My hair is washed. lol.

Quote from: jainie marlena on January 07, 2012, 03:11:14 AM
Girl alone is my look. smiling is something I do when others are looking. I guess I was not thinking about that part when I was taking the picture. lol. My grandma said one time. "I am not a happy go lucky person. I don't have to smile all the time so stop asking me to." ;D ;D ;D

happiness show in many ways. My hair is washed. lol.

I smile more often when no one is looking. That's when I don't have to come up with explanations for why I'm happy. Reasons, pfft. ;D

Keeping you free from harassment does not take away their responsibility to protect others who also may feel harassed - hence the ruling.

As for whether or not working with men or women or both is better... Working with people who show up, shut up and do the job is the best.

I thought I would add something to this old thread of mine. The person that I was talking about was looking for a way to sue the place where I work. He has gotten injured several time there. They formed a new palicy that after someone gets hurt so many times they are to be terminated. He was moved to the first shift and I don't even see him anymore.