One of my jobs is from prior to my transition. i have been forced to hang on to it because it pays the most out of those i have, and has insurance (such as it is) that pays for half the cost of my hormone therapy.
Hostile environment doesn't begin to describe it. It's not white collar, and it has zero interaction with any public. We have no customers, so to speak. The employees are isolated with themselves, having only occasional contact with supervisors. In the past, despite humor of a sexual nature directed against me (i was a 'pretty', easy target), i was friends with almost everyone.
Post transition, half of them have shrugged and accepted me ('looking back now, it was obvious in a lot of ways', or 'it's easy to accept because of how good you look, ha ha ha'). The other half have gone cold against me, and refuse to speak or even look at me unless forced to for work related reasons. i have heard the things said through the grapevine. 'How can you talk to her?' 'She's not a man. She never was, and i'll be damned if we're letting her around here anymore'.
Blue-collar misogyny is nothing new, but i was caught a little off-guard by the direction this went. Before, i was funny to have around, i easily absorbed sexually-motivated humor at my expense without getting upset about it, and i was exceptionally intelligent compared to others in the environment (which made me somebody everyone *wanted* to work with).
Now, it's as if i've betrayed some unspoken club membership i had, and never even wanted. It's as if the sudden hate is as much specifically due to being female as it is to being transsexual. It's a dynamic i'm having difficulty explaining, but it's there. It's as if they are ugly, unfeeling versions of their former selves. And they're always coming at me when given a chance.
Management was obviously confused, and nervous. i went out of my way to assure them that i didn't want to cause any problems, and that i understood the reality of the environment. i told them that i just wanted to keep coming in and doing my job, and keep a low profile, and be left alone. They said fine, and that they wouldn't make a big deal out of it, because they didn't want to make me feel uncomfortable.
And then a week later, they scheduled the first sexual harassment training session in ten years. Everybody present knew exactly what they were for, and why.
But as the months went by, and one year bled into the next, customers, delivery drivers and representatives would pass through each day. And more and more of them each day began asking other workers and our supervisors 'who that chick was', and 'when did we start hiring women'. Which put them in the position to stumble through whatever explanation they wanted or had to give. And some of the responses were nervous hostility. Some were compulsively curious.
And more than i would have ever expected were forward-aggressive. 'Is she single?' 'What's her number?' And that made management even more nervous. And so i tried to explain to them that i was fine. i had a boyfriend at home. i wouldn't date anybody and make things even more complicated. i had a sense of humor about the situation and myself, and could take a joke at my expense without wanting to sue.
And then it started. Little things at first. But i'm pretty aware, and would notice. My supervisor, one of three fundamentalist christians who has always been hostile from the start, would repeatedly set me up to fail at certain things. It came to a head recently when he gave me a procedure to follow, and then gave me a written reprimand for following it. i appealed to the manager, and was met with a bizarre denial that it was negative in any way. That it was 'only meant to protect me'. i'm transsexual, not developmentally delayed.
The reality was that after years of being one of two top employees, they are now attempting to build a quick body of evidence to get rid of me. i'm not a girl that will go quietly once righteously angered, and so i contacted our human resources manager. She traveled in to meet with everyone individually, and then after sitting down with me, told me that the write up was completely unfounded, and that she would resolve the matter upon returning in a couple of weeks.
And while waiting, i found out that hidden within the specifics of my 401k and insurance was the fact that i was being paid almost two dollars less an hour than i was before. After an investigation, it was determined that someone had went into the system and lowered my pay scale the week after i transitioned, but altered it so that the hourly rate in the details showed the higher, original rate.
The back-pay was significant. And those responsible are at a loss over how it could have happened.
i tried to be nice. i tried not to make more waves than were necessary. But now i am considering litigation, and have told the company as much. We'll see what happens after i meet with the human resources representative again.
