Quote from: AnonyMs on July 27, 2015, 05:52:35 PM
It's really interesting reading all this, there's a lot of seriously qualified people here and it looks like everyone's got a job.
Is there anyone qualified for a decent job who doesn't have one?
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I kept a low profile and maintained transsexual status private; my employers violated my privacy.
(a) I had a promising personnel management career with a federal agency until my supervisor, the personnel manager, exposed my privacy to the entire office, led a force of ridicule against me, and initiated action to fire me because I am transsexual (1983). She did not comprehend which way so she accused me of being a female working as a male; I was in my transition to female and was presenting as male at that employment. The agency sought to demote me as retribution during my administrative process, but I quit after two years of ever-increasing harassment. I filed and won my Un-employment Insurance claim on the basis of a 'hostile work environment'. Not much consolation going from a good career to un-employment to mostly minimum wage and temp hire jobs for five subsequent years. What was curious was that another agency employee at a different geographical location began her transition late during my separation process and faced no agency opposition. Subsequent temp company employers were reluctant to hire me except for clerical pool. I found ways to prove myself, achieve advancement, and then my past somehow stuck its head under the tent and I got fired again. That was my experience from 1978 through 1990.
(b) I moved to another state and attained employment at state government as a public assistance case manager - helping people apply for Food Stamps, AFDC, MedicAid, and other welfare programs. Peace was short-lived. Within 18 months, my supervisor came to me at the water fountain one day and told me, 'I'm gonna get you.' I was not sure what she meant, but I feared it was again about my sex change that leaked from somewhere. From that point on she targeted me with heavy cases and caseloads, she nit-picked my work as no other, and she openly berated me at meetings. My co-workers in my immediate work unit and at other units expressed sympathies in private but told me that they feared speaking on my behalf and incurring the wrath of agency management who fully-supported this supervisor. I quit. A few years later, by a chance meeting, the woman who was the director of our office approached me and apologised that she lacked the integrity to take a stand against that out-of-control supervisor's misbehaviour against me; this former director admitted she accepted that supervisor's lies besmirching my work. This transpired from 1990 through 1993.
(c) I re-employed with the state government later during 1993 and eventually promoted twice while appointed to a position at a third state agency. I became a top employee: I had been achieving superior performance, was awarded maximum bonus pay for my superior work each quarter, and was once chosen 'Employee of the Quarter' while employed from 1999 through the time of my untimely separation in 2008. One day about 2006, an agency manager summoned me to her office and questioned me because my name appeared on that infamous SSA discrepancy list; SSA flipt me without explanation from Sharon and female to my male predecessor. My employment security became erratic until my state agency fired me as a transsexual (2008) at the same time as that agency recognised my superior achievement in an agency-wide performance award. I again fought this employer action through the government employee process - and won when my director admitted under oath at least three times during my questioning that he conspired to commit federal felonies in order to fire me. With supposed victory at hand, my state agency instead refused to restore me to my position against the orders of the state directive. I applied for Un-employment Insurance on the basis of their hostile work environment and again I won; the state agency admitted to UI to the same violations as in my appeal case. More insidious was a blatant vow by my now-former employer who openly declared that I would never work again. He kept his threat, I have not been able to secure employment since 2008. I was about to go destitute so I filed for premature Social Security otherwise I would be homeless. I still file job applications to test the waters and I still face denials/ Meanwhile my accusers remain on their jobs.
Last year was a disaster. I was in deep depression through much of 2014. While I was gone from home a short duration, burglars ransacked and stole personal belongings - including irreplaceable photography, my tapes and DVDs from my two TV shows, mementos, my years of medical records, and other items of value or of intimate regard. My sister wrote to me in September 2014 that she wanted nothing more to do with me. Lastly, I saw the demise of the community TV station where I worked a side career crewing studio TV programs and producing two of my own; this had been one primary source of my social life since 1986.
Rather than falling deeper, I began realising what I still had while taking stock of my life on a lonely Thanksgiving Day 2014 sharing dinner by tossing a cranberry to a squirrel at my backyard. I was about as deep as I could be and the only thing left was myself climbing from my hole and doing something.
By this past Winter / Spring 2015 I accepted my fate and decided I would come out. Guarding my privacy is no longer an issue as a barrier to employment since I am no longer part of that world of work that dinged me three crucial times for my mere presence as transsexual.
While I do not come out as a public exhibition forced to wear some kind of emblem on my lapel, I decided to make a web-site to chronicle my obstacles and my achievements; I decided to no longer take fear and deny my personal life.
I resumed drawing my political caricatures that I suspended last year; they are worth doing even if for only my own simple pleasure and amusement. I restored a cartoon character that I created during 2nd Grade; I have an eye on developing it as a marketing concept; we'll see.
I ventured from home only four times all last year. I now get out and about as much as four days or more each week during this year. The Public Library sponsors professional training programs with free classes designed for people to develop their ideas into viable non-profit companies. My goal is to try to establish my own non-profit company based upon one of more than a handfull of ideas suitable for such a venture.
I am trying to re-socialise beginning with other events at my local public library as a start. I also joined a local transsexual group for support - a change from what I call my Rip van Winkle slumber when I lived my anonymity the past 35 years; or maybe I was being oblivious to the reality of the world around me.
It is curious that I completed many college psychology courses and held career jobs involving counselling, yet I did not live by comforting words of my own advice.
No, my current life is not perfect. But nowadays I am finally enjoying it as never before because I shed my burden rather than allow it to suppress me.
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