Hey everyone,
I'm a mtf transsexual who's been starting the real life test for a few months now, I started to officially live and work with my female name about two months ago. Before that, I've been in therapy for about two years in an official program from a local hospital for trans people. I live in the city of Montreal in Canada. Right now, I'm not taking any hormones and haven't had any official change to my legal name or legal sex.
I'd like to report two stories of discrimination that I've had to cope with in the last two months. It is surprising how early I had to face this problem of closed doors.
My first story is about a Vipassana meditation center. In short, it is a center where you can go and practice meditation for ten days with the help of instructors. The center has a very strict approach to meditation and the meditants are required to stay silent the whole time, to eat only the food given by the center (although it is good nutritious food) and are not allowed any form of activities outside of meditation (no reading, no writing, no intense physical activities beside going on a walk). The goal is to be able to achieve deep level of meditation and to be free of the distractions from the everyday world. I know some people who have lived the experience and they have very positive memories from them. Since I am an adept of meditation and I was thrilled with the idea of participating in this kind of retreat.
I subscribed online for the retreat. Since they have a policy of separating the people according to their genders, I cliced on the "female" option and mentioned in the "comment or question" section that I was trans and that they could communicate with me if they had any questions of worries about it.
After a few day, I received a call from a member of the managing team who told me he was a bit embarrassed by my subscription. He first made sure I understood that he supported me in my identity and that in no way did he judge me. However, he considered that since the men and the women were separated, my presence would most likely disturb some of the people who were participating. He mentioned that there was communal bathrooms and rooms and that he tought it wasn't a good idea for me to share these facilities with other women. He asked me some very personal questions about my appearence, the state of my genitals or of my breast, even though I assured him that I had no intention of showing my genitals or my naked body to anyone during the course of the retreat. He then started to argue that since the ten day meditation went very deep, and that sexuality was an important part of the problems that usually came from the meditation and that my presence might disturb them.
He suggested that I either go on the male side of the center, which of course was completely out of questions or that I try going to another center (the only others being in another province or in the US) and hope they they would have the possibility of offering me a private room and a private bathroom. Given that I don't have the means to travel so far from where I live, this made it impossible for me too. I suggested that they might warn in advance the women who were to share my room of the fact I was trans. Therefore, if they felt uncomfortable with it, they could easily switch room with someone who didn't mind. I also suggested the possibility of using the bathrooms to shower at times when the other women wouldn't be using them. I was told that these solutions were too complicated and also that some women who might not mind "rationally" might actually be bothered by it and therefore be disturbed in their meditation.
In the end, I was refused from entering the retreat. I asked him if he would have refused someone who presented a very visible disability that would obviously also be a distraction to the other participant, and he told me that he would have accepted them for "obvious reasons", but failed to clearly indicate how different a disabled person was in comparison to a trans person, except by stating that sexuality was a very particular aspect of meditation.
I called my province's human right service and was told that they couldn't receive my complaint because they tried to accommodate me (by suggesting that I go on the men's side and by suggesting that I go in another center). Therefore, there is nothing I can do to change the situation. One of the most frustrating aspect of this whole story is that he made such a deal about my appearance, yet didn't care to actually see what I looked like before giving his verdict. He did tell me that I could apply once again when my transition was "finished", but considering that most of his arguments seemed to be oriented on the possibility that someone might guess that I was trans and that it could disturb them, I have a hard time understanding how the state of my genitals would change anything to it.
More recently, I've applied for volunteering on a suicide hotline. I went to an information meeting and everything went well. In the applying papers, I mentioned I was trans and that I wanted to work with my female name even if I hadn't legally changed it yet.
I was called by a member of the staff who told me that she thought I couldn't use my female name because it might trouble the people who were calling because of my masculine voice. And since it's a suicide hotline and the people who call are very vulnerable, she couldn't allow me to use my female name as long as I had such a masculine voice. I know there isn't much that I can do against it, so once again, it's another door that close for me.
In both cases, they people involved mentioned that they were supportive of what I was going through and that they only refused me by thinking of the other people. I think it's funny that the only strangers who seemed to take bad the fact that I was transitioning used the excuse they they were thinking about other people. I work as a clerk in a store and I interact all the time with many customers, many of them probably falling in the "vulnerable" categories. Old people, sick people, young people, for two months I've worked with all kind of people, and I've never had any bad experience with any of them. Most of them call me "Madame" or "Mademoiselle". It seems to me like the only time when people are going to discriminate me is when I give them the possibility to do so by being considerate and by mentioning to them I'm trans and "asking for a permission"
I'm sharing these stories wondering if any of you ever lived similar things in your life and maybe have an idea of how to best face these kind of situations.
