I'm in a job and I think I'm stealth to everybody apart from the manager. If anybody else knows, they haven't said anything about it. They all see me as a man and I'm treated like one all the time. However, I'm also conscious of the fact that it is only a matter of time before somebody comes in the store who knew me before and says "hello birthname". How do I explain that to the people I work with? I don't want to make it a big deal, but I don't want people to start misgendering me or treating me differently. I don't know how to explain it to them. I get misgendered a lot by customers but my colleagues laugh it off.
I've asked myself the same question, if anyone ever brings up my old name or my situation. My philosophy is the less there is to say, the better - so maybe "oh, they must have confused me with someone else." I remember one time I went up to a girl who I swore was my friend Julie, and said "Hi Julie!" and she went "I'm not Julie." I still to this day don't know if it was Julie playing a prank or not, lol, but yeah.
You could also just say "that used to be my name" and hooope they don't put the pieces together and leave the "mystery" be. It's a hard call. Ultimately, you have to do what feels right in the moment.
After I got out of the Army, I let my hair grow out a bit, and immediately started getting miss and ma'am everywhere I went. I would angrily snap back "It's sir, not ma'am"
It wasn't the right approach. A gentle correction goes a lot further. You're also entering uncharted territory in regards to who knows what about you. Are you going to live as a man and lose your history, or will you acknowledge your past?
Thanks for both of your replies. I was actually thinking about your approach caleb and pretending like I knew them but when they leave make a joke and say to a colleage 'haha I have no idea who that was'.
I don't want to lose my history but I don't want to be known as the trans man. I was thinking of saying 'I was born female' and leaving it as that and see if anybody asks questions. But I worry with that approach that people will start treating me like a girl.
It's such a hard choice and I don't want to be ashamed of my past but I don't want to be judged either.
Perhaps there is different responses as time and circumstances change. Perhaps at present the "they are confused" tactic and as
time goes on and relationships strengthen then the reply is not needed.
Heh, I was outed early at my job. One of my doctors called to talk to me, by my new name. The phone was answered by a co-employee. The rumor mill churned for months, I was of course about the last to know this had transpired. Needless to say, when I did make it official that I was having a legal name and gender change, it wasn't a surprise.
what if you just say you used to be a girl in high school? that might give them something to wonder about for a while.
you were probably born a boy, no matter what shape your body was in. so it would be wrong to say you were born a girl. girl is something you tried to be earlier in your life, isn't it? then you finally gave up and decided to be the boy you always really were. there shouldn't be a need to disclose all the technical details, so you could just as well shroud your gender assigned at birth in some mystery by giving the "wrong" but truthful answers.