Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hey everyone,

So I recently started working at a nursing home close to my moms house. I got done orientation 2 weeks ago so this week is my 3rd on the job so far. My great grandma is a resident there on the 1st floor, she's 94. My unit is on the 2nd floor. Being that this is a health care setting I mostly work with women. Only two of the nurses are men and they only work with the team on specific days of the week. I'm new so I've just started to get to know most of the people on my unit, and a few from the 1st floor. I'm cool with just about everyone, I'm closest to a girl on my team who's 19. We talk most of the shift and do our assignments together to lighten the load, She's even encouraged me to work a few doubles with her & to do escorts to get extra hrs. I'm also close with a girl about 20 who works depending on the floor she needed on that day. So pretty much us 3 are really close, maybe it's because we're younger and have a lot to relate to. I'm 31 but our ages really help things.

Any way, at this point I work presenting as male. I'm currently saving for full body laser & for my other surgeries so I can go full time. I estimate that I'll be done with everything in 2yrs. At this point it's pretty much assumed that I'm gay because of my male presentation & feminine persona. This irks me, but I just try to keep in mind that it's due to my current look. This past weekend I worked and while we're all sitting at the nurses station a young transwoman employee's name was brought up. I'd never heard of the person other than from my mother who had met her in passing visiting my grandmom before I worked there. The nurses & other aids kept referring to her as "him" & using her birth name. One of the nurses asked another aid to pull up her pix on FB. The were all raving about her hair styling skills and what she'd done to a few of them and how much they missed "him". Then my coworker showed me the pix. I said she was pretty. She interjected you know that's a man right?? I said well that's a woman now. She replied yea but she's a guy. I became upset at the ignorance coming from these women so I went to check on my residents.

The next night I stayed over and worked my grandmom's unit and I meet the ladies who work there. We passed the time talking and snacking. Then bam out of no where they bring up the transwomen. I'm assuming it was only because I was there. On of the woman said I sure do miss him we haven't had anyone like him here since. Again insinuating that the other floor was "lucky" because the other floor now has me. *Sigh*

So one of my residents has a grandchild who's a butch girl who I'm assuming is lesbian, she presents as male and until it was brought to my attention I wasn't aware she was even female. The family is demanding and I was dealing with a stressful situation with the family the other day. One of the medicine aids stopped me to ask if I was ok. I said I'll be fine. She asked if it was the guy/girl in the room I said yes. She replied is that a guy or girl I can't tell I guess she wants to be a boy..... Again, Instant awkwardness.

Then last night I worked with one of the 2 girl's I'm cool with. So while we're in the room together she says I've been meaning to tell you something. I said what is it, She then tells me last week one of the women who's assignment is next to mine was in the hall at the beginning of the shift talking to one of the guy's from house keeping discussing me. She said she was near them by the time clock. They were discussing whether or not I had breasts. She said the guy wasn't sure. So she said said I could just be over weight like her, but the woman was adamant saying that it wasn't fat that they were breasts and that I must be taking some kind of pills to get that way. I was shocked. My coworker asked me not to say anything. She said she got upset because they were discussing me so she walked away from the convo. Before this happened I revealed to the primary girl I'm closest to that I was trans and showed her a few pix of me. She was floored and complemented me. She told me her God sis was trans and come to find out I knew her. She showed me pix of her God sis & her mom together. Also, her mom is a nurse who use to work with the owner of the company who holds the training class I went to. This made whatever bond we had all the more closer.

Now I'll say this, yes I'm overweight for my height, but I don't look my weight I carry it well, I'm working on it. I wear a pretty tight sports bra under my tops so nothing really shows. I ride the bus to work and it's been hot so I don't put it on till I get to work in the lobby bathroom. One day I forgot and left it on my bed so I had to work without it. The tops I wear are XL so there's plenty room. The way my breasts lay close to my body they don't stick out. And because my thighs are kinda thick and I have a little gut most would assume I was just a slightly overweight guy with a little man boob going on. Anyway these sorts of things bother me. I like the job and I get paid a decent amount of $. It took a lot to get my license back so I could make the money to transition. My mom encourages me and I feel happy that there's some light at the end of my transition tunnel. When I fist started orientation we watched a video on co-workers who say offensive things in the work place. It had different scenarios of things that might be offensive to others. The companies policy on discrimination was covered and it included a part including Gender ID & Sexual Orientation and any local laws that prohibit these things. My city does have anti discrimination laws against Gender & Gender ID & Sexual Orientation discrimination for employers & housing.

I hate to be in this situation because I don't like trouble. I thought I'd be able to transition on the job, but that seems like less of a option. I could still do it, but I refuse to go through all the pain of surgery & spending all that money to be disrespected with old names, male pronouns, whispers and whatever else that comes with that. I think it would be better working in a environment where people don't have my male presentation to compare to my female one. It's one thing to be known as trans after the fact than to have people who've seen you before and after. A lot of times we think this has no effect on how we're treated post op, but it does.

I'd love to hear any advice or tips because this has really upset me.

I work in a factory in the deeeeeeeeeep south. I'm transitioning at work in an environment where there is absolutely NO gender identity/presentation policy in place nor will there ever be any time soon. The company does not want to put themselves in a legal liability case if something does happen to me and I sue which is why they wont put one in place so everything is "off" the books other than the fact that I do have managements support in my transition at work along with quite a few people and my biggest ally, my boss. They stated policy by word of mouth so nothing is official but everyone understands that if you mess with me in any way that goes against our current employee harassment policy then you will be dealt with. Typical things like treating other with respect, not calling each other derogatory names, or verbal threats..etc. People can say whatever they want to behind my back as long as I don't witness it then it's all ok as everyone talks about everyone behind their backs. They have to worry about the wrong person hearing and reporting it. That's going to happen no matter what policy is in place.

I get treated differently, I don't know if giving up male privilege is the case and now I'm treated like any other woman gets treated or if it's transphobia in the works. I do deal with transphobia but not in the hateful people say terrible things or do terrible things to me way but in the way that now I don't exist. Some people turn their heads away as if by not seeing me somehow makes me disappear. I lost friends and gained more new friends & allies than friends that I lost. I've been full time now at work for the past 2 1/2 months and while I'm much happier being me completely authentically, it has not been easy as I'm dealing with lots of people tip toing around me in fear of saying something wrong & not willing to talk even if I ask them if they have questions and that no question they can ask will offend me as long as they ask respectfully. I even created a 4 page letter that my boss can hand out to people who are afraid to ask me questions but lots won't even dare do that for some reason.

Oddly pronoun issues have been very scarce and every time that an issue has happened the person corrected themselves almost instantly on their own and apologized right away. Even though I told them they didn't have to apologize because they caught it themselves so how could I ever be mad that they were mindful enough to correct their accidental mistake. I was VERY respected before I came out and I can only think it was because I was always so incredibly nice that it was just hard to not like me. Some of that has carried over in my transition where some folks have admitted that they only gave me a chance and didn't turn their backs on me because of that one fact.

In the past before I came out a LOT of my friends and co-workers use to hate on transgender people. We even had two transgender people work at our plant in the last decade who both transitioned on the job. One was a company employee and another was a contractor, neither of them got the level of support that. One was tolerated because they weren't a threat to anyone FtM but the other was a MtF and she was treated awfully until her actual employer fired her because they were afraid they'd lose their contract with our company to have their employee's there. I witnessed a lot of what she went through first hand and that pushed me deeply into the closet.

So basically keep your head up, be you because you are you no matter what anyone says or how they treat you. It's hard as heck to keep smiling when you get treated wrongly and put one foot in front of the other but that resilience does pay off in the end as times ARE changing and one day the "old guard" will not be in the work place one way or another. Hopefully it's because society does rapidly change and we are in turn treated like human beings for once or the "haters" retire/die out over the years.