After 5 months, I guess I’ve fully cracked. Now I’m wondering about updating my professional website, that cesspool LinkedIn, etc.
I’m a Dev (yes, I use Arch) and I used to teach. I guess I’m nervous about having to tell my old students and coworkers.
I’d love to hear strategies, lessons learned, or anything that made the process smoother.
My egg fully cracked the week I started a new job (just hit my 1 year anniversary too!), which was definitely a fun time to come to terms with it. But I realized really quickly that the longer I waited the harder it was going to be, especially after realizing just how painful it was to have to “put the shell back on” in a sense when going into work. I came out right after our holiday shutdown, spoke with my HR Rep about the situation, and it was honestly not an issue whatsoever. Their biggest concern was if I was changing my name, but that was about it. They sent out a really basic email to the team and suppliers I work with basically saying “Your colleague hovercat is transitioning and will be going by she/her pronouns.” and that was basically it. It was quickly discussed in the team meeting, they sent everyone a training on gender identity, and that was it. I’ve not had any real negative reactions with anyone yet, and it’s so, so nice getting to just be myself.
There’s another trans girl I work with who I also asked for advice, who transitioned after being at the company for a while, and it seemed that almost all of the friction she’s had was from old teammates that knew her pre-transition. They were the main ones that caused any issues, and seems to be the story I hear quite often of people taking way more issue with the actual transition rather than the person being trans.
I know it’s really scary, but from a lot of the experiences I’ve seen, it seems far better to just bite the bullet and go for it. Waiting only makes things worse.
Look, I fully support you transitioning. But if I was your co-worker I would be mad at you. You made me do extra training! Yeah I’ll call you she and her and all that but… Fuck you for giving me extra training.
(don’t take seriously, I’m only joking but doing the corporate hr type training is a pain in my ass but I do support you and trans rights in general. In fact it’s fucked up that people need training that basically comes down to “respect me and don’t be an asshole”)
Not going to lie, I was actually super anxious when they sent that out because my immediate thought absolutely was “Shit, they had to do training because of me…”
Huge kudos to the training though, because it literally was just a 5-10 minute online training that explained gender/gender identity in a really clear way, how it was different than sexuality, etc. and wasn’t preachy or anything else.
Yeah, I get it. I will sometimes get confused on stuff (like is a Trans-man a he or a she? Not disrespectful but I honestly don’t know if a Trans-man was born female and transitioned to make or was born male and transitioned to female).
I used to work in a large corporation in a heavily regulated industry so I had SOOO many trainings(before leaving the last time I checked my training transcript was 38 pages long) . One time a long time employee accidentally left a filter with explosive dust on it on a shelf, it got knocked off, sparked and caught fire. Luckily the fire was quickly contained and didn’t even need the fire department. BUT… Everyone now needed 2 days in person training about dealing with filters and flammable stuff. That type of training sucked.
Tldr; Don’t leave things that react with oxygen/air unattended.
Congrats on 1 year! Thank you for your thorough answer! Starting a new job and your transition at the same time must have been really stressful, I commend you.
Well, I guess your response scares me a bit because the majority of my colleagues and former students have known me for several years pre-transition. However, it does give me hope for when I start a new job. It might be best to start fresh.
your experiences might differ, but in my experience it has been mentally harder to be around people I knew pre-transition … I behave in old ways around them and find it harder to be myself, I feel like they know I’m fake or a fraud, etc. and that undercuts my confidence (which is especially important for voice feminization).
That said, I’ve also had no real drama or issues with coworkers I knew pre-transition… the closest was one of them accidentally deadnaming me in a meeting with people who didn’t know me pre-transition, so I was effectively outed in that moment to anyone who hadn’t already noticed or heard through chatter
but that only happened once and they felt awful about it, worse than I felt I’m sure
most people just want to know how to be polite and behave correctly, most weirdness I saw was from people just feeling anxious because they aren’t 100% sure what is or isn’t respectful
Thanks! I wish the new job and transition were the only things I had to deal with, because it’s been one hell of a year, but I’ve managed alright.
I genuinely wouldn’t worry too much about it. I only say that to expect it might make things a bit trickier and have more grace with them making mistakes.