28 December 2009 by kathleen.

How do you find an employer that will let you transition on the job?  Or that will hire a transman or transwoman?  If I were starting out, I would look at companies that value diversity.  Who are they?  Look at the DiversityInc Top 50 for a start.

Don’t expect any of them to hire you because you are transgendered; that would be a fantasy. Instead, the most any of us — any color, any race, any (trans)gender, any religion, any age — can expect is that we will be considered on the strengths of our accomplishments, skills, and abilities, without pre-judgements based on color, race, gender, religion or age.

My own employer, The New York Times, didn’t make the Top 50, but they impressed me — long before I realized I was transsexual — with their commitment to mixing up the workplace with respect to gender, race, and cultural background.  It should have come as no surprise that they accepted my transsexualism as a normal part of doing business.

Don’t expect to find job openings for “Transgendered Plumber” or “Transsexual Accountant” anywhere in this universie.  Do expect to find focus on skills, not labels, at companies that value diversity.

Posted in Transition on the job | 1 Comment »

19 December 2009 by kathleen.

Two years ago today was my first day on the job as Kathleen.

Looking back I have to ask myself, how did I find the guts to do that?  I’d been working nearly 8 years for the Shared Services Center office of the New York Times.

I planned carefully, worked with my therapist, and got my name changed.  Then I made an appointment with the local HR person.  When I told her, I proposed a transition date 6 weeks away, after the Christmas and New Years’ holidays, and I offered to use the rest room on another floor for a few months.  She handled my announcement well, and promised to get back to me.

The New York Times was not a novice when it came to dealing with transgendered.  The local manager saw no need to wait, and we set a date 2 weeks in the future (December 19, 2007).  And, they told me, there would be no need for me to use any non-standard restroom.

I had already scheduled vacation for Monday and Tuesday (the 17th and 18th), so I was to show up on Wednesday ready to go.  My coworkers were told on Monday.  They were ready for me, and I guess I was ready for them.

I was excited, but also confident.  I had a deep conviction that beginning to live — and work — full time as Kathleen was the next step in my journey.   What I saidabove about “finding the guts”, well, I’d already found them when I accepted that God created me transgendered, and that I was as perfect, whole, and complete as all creation.

I make it sound easy.  It was actually easier for me than for my partner.  Let me see if she will make an entry herself.

Posted in Transition on the job | 2 Comments »

6 December 2009 by kathleen.

Last week, LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner died of an apparent suicide. Since I, too, work for a national newspaper, (though as a computer administrator, not as a writer) it occurred to me that some of my coworkers might wonder if the same could happen to me.

“Never say never”, but I don’t think it will happen to me: I am way too happy!  For those of us who have struggled with depression all our lives, however, moods can change without much warning.  And in the case of suicide, friends, relatives, and coworkers tend to ask themselves, “Was it something I did, or didn’t do, that led him or her to suicide?”

Regardless of what happens in the future, I want all my newspaper colleagues to know: you could not have been more supportive of me in my transition. All down the management chain, everyone has lived up to the highest ideals of diversity and inclusion.  A surprising number of coworkers have gone out of their way to make me feel welcome. Those of you all over the country who interact with me daily, thank you for your patience — especially with my gravelly voice!  I know I must strain your credulity some days, and I appreciate your tolerance and understanding.

Posted in General MtF topics, Transition on the job | 1 Comment »

4 December 2009 by admin.

I was delighted, in 2006, to begin to see myself as a whole, healthy transwoman instead of a broken, handicapped male transvestite.

When I came out at work, in December, 2007, and began to live full-time as a woman, I continued to see myself as a transwoman — that is, as a born male living as female, as a “two-spirit”, as someone who is simultaneously male and female, as a both-at-once person.  That perception meant I was different from everyone one-spirited (you, perhaps).

I don’t think that perception was a flawed or unhealthy, but the self-perception is changing.  If you think I am “in disguise”, then my disguise is getting better, less penetrable.  It is less important to me that everyone — that anyone — knows that I used to be male, or that genetically I still am.

I am settling into woman-ness.  The distinction between sex and gender persists, in that genetically I am male; that physically my skeleton has structure that males have, that my skull is as thick, and that my skin has texture and resilience that a 60-year-old genetic female doesn’t have; that behaviorally I have memories of experiencing male privilege; that socially I have the expectations that males have that they will be listened to and not ignored in social settings.  And so on; perhaps I could catalog the differences some day.

To the extent, though, that I perpetrate gender-typed behavior in society, it is woman-behavior that I attempt to commit, not man-behavior.  Because my perception has shifted, woman-behavior feels more right, more comfortable, than man-behavior used to feel.  It feels that I have stopped acting.  I may be afraid that my slip is showing, but I am no longer afraid that I will slip and give away some clues that I am not genetically what I appear to be.  Nobody can see my genes anyway, they can only see my jeans!The “trans” is shrinking within my self-perception.

If you are transgendered, I can wish for you that you experience the  genuineness of your perpetration of behavior even if that means that your sense of transgender diminishes.

Posted in General MtF topics, Transition on the job | 1 Comment »