#workplace transition

[reytmardy]

Pro-tip for trans men discussing their transition with their workplace:

When the subject comes to bathrooms, and HR confirm that you can use the men's restroom, make sure to ask about sanitary bins in the cubicles. I raised this in my latest meeting, and my line manager and hr person both commented that they didn't think of that!

[juliecarmine]

“FetLife Is Prison”

Enbies: Contact me about coming out at work.

Good Tumblr citizens can message me here or via my Twitter, @JulieCarmineLaC.

The OP on FetLife said contact me OFFline because FetLife is hazardous to my mental health. E.g., I was negged and attacked in more than one FetLife forum for posting my offer to help enbies do a workplace gender transition. What you see here is a screenshot of my pretty pissed off profile after being treated badly by the FetLife “community”.

[reytmardy]

Bought my first suit for work?!

[shyember-blog]

Workplace Transition

One of the biggest hurdles trans* people face is transitioning while they hold down a job. 

Therapy and hormones cost money, to say nothing of surgeries that no insurance company seems eager to cover, and to get the money for what we need, we work.

Coming out at work is usually the last step in a trans* person’s social transition -- their movement from their birth-assumed gender role to the role of their identifying gender in public life -- but for me, I came out rather early, just to make sure things would be OK. I had some job alternatives lined up if I came out and was fired right away, but thankfully that never ended up happening.

I ended up coming out as trans* at work very early, even before I’d started hormonal transition. I’d planned to do it in a two-step process: come out as trans* and lay it out there for people, then, later, after I started passing -- being seen as my gender identity instead of my birth sex -- I’d make the switch on name, pronouns, presentation and facilities use.

Everyone I’ve talked to has applauded the method I used to come out, but I have my own regrets over it. I think it’s made it harder for people around me to divorce themselves of their images of the old me. Because I came out so early and so casually, I think a lot of my co-workers didn’t take my identity seriously, a fear that I still have some six months after switching to my female role and presentation at work.

I do wish, now, that I’d been able to go about my transition in a more “traditional” fashion... Start hormones, come out to close friends if necessary, and just let the hormones do their work for a year or so before coming out and flipping the switch in a more-dramatic fashion.

I feel like a more abrupt change would’ve shocked more people into accepting me as a woman instead of just humoring me as ... whatever they see me as.

I’ve seen some trans women even wait to come out until they’ve had facial surgery. That’s on the extreme end, especially given the price of facial surgery and all the life events one might miss in the years leading up to it.

<3

[ryansallans]

How to Begin your Workplace Transition