update: I think one of my employees might be trans — how can I signal support?

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer who thought one of their employees might be trans and was wondering how to signal support (#3 at the link)? Here’s the update.

Thank you for publishing my letter in July. Your advice and the comment section were both very useful. Everyone was very kind and a lot of people had good advice.

I decided to follow the advice of not saying anything to Jane or focusing particularly on her, instead turning my focus to making work a safe environment for anyone. I also didn’t go back to the YouTube channel, figuring that Jane had a right to keep her private and professional life separate. Not to mention, I didn’t feel comfortable going into the comments section to say “Hi this is your manager” and being a silent follower, or commenting without her knowing who I was, felt too close to stalking. At the end of the day, if I started to stream outside of work as a hobby, I don’t think I’d want anyone at work to watch, much less someone I report to. And if I want to watch streams of video games, I’ve got more than enough choice without having to watch this channel in particular.

Jane didn’t end up coming out, but another employee did, about a month after I wrote — and, funnily enough, around a week after my letter was published. To keep with the Disney names theme, let’s say Eric came out as Ariel, a trans woman. I made it known publicly that I wouldn’t tolerate any discrimination towards her, and that anyone under my supervision who gave Ariel a hard time would answer to me. I also started educating myself on gender identity; I had started before this happened, but I can’t lie and say it didn’t motivate me to spend more time on it. What was a vague possibility — managing a trans person — was suddenly an immediate reality.

The good news is, our team really was as open-minded as I hoped they would be. It took some time for everyone to get used to the new name and pronouns, but they were all gracious when Ariel corrected them if they slipped up, and at this point no team member is slipping up anymore. One person did try to ask, within my earshot, if Ariel was considering bottom surgery, then looked horrified when I asked if I’d heard them inquire about a coworker’s genitalia. I hope the question was born out of misplaced curiosity rather than actual malice, but either way I knew I had to shut that down. As I said in a comment on my first letter, as far as I’m concerned my coworkers might as well be Barbie and Ken dolls with no genitalia. I don’t want to know, and I won’t have my team trying to know either. Luckily, shutting it down once and mentioning that this could be grounds for a sexual harrassment complaint was enough, and it didn’t happen again. I made sure to mention to Ariel she shouldn’t feel obligated to answer such questions, and she was free to come to me if something like it happened.

The bad news is, the rest of the company wasn’t so great. (And yes, I know several people said that even if my team was open-minded, everyone might not be; congratulations, or condolences, you were right about that.) Nothing was done that could give Ariel grounds to make an official complaint about discrimination, because the law was followed to the letter … but not so much to the spirit.

We all wear company-issued uniforms, and despite a lot of push back, that uniform is still partly gendered. Women are allowed to wear skirts or trousers, but men have to wear trousers. They refused to give Ariel a skirt until she legally changed her name and gender. Until she did, they were (legally) allowed not to count her as a female employee. Similarly, she still had to introduce herself as “Mr Eric X” on the phone and in her signature, because they wouldn’t switch her info until the legal change was made (which, in our country, can take a month to over a year, depending on where you live).

I pushed back against this as much as I could. I insisted the spirit of the law matters just as much, if not more, as the letter. I also offered a sympathetic ear to Ariel when she felt the need to vent about this whole process. Our team also rallied behind her and offered support. It took multiple complaints to HR, as well as people “casually” commenting in front of higher-ups that they didn’t think our company was so backwards, and they might have to consider looking for a new job that aligned more with their values, to make the process go smoothly. Ariel finally received her new uniform and was allowed to introduce herself as her real identity, as should have been the case from the beginning.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the lesson was learned, since now the company is trying to use Ariel as an example of how inclusive they are, in a “look, we have an openly trans woman working for us” way. In fact, the former head of HR had the gall to say in their retirement speech, “I’m proud to have worked for a company that accepted Ariel, a trans woman, with open arms” or something to that effect. Everyone in the audience was extremely uncomfortable, none of us more than Ariel, of course. On another occasion, a new employee was being introduced to everyone and when it was Ariel’s turn, boss said, “And this is Ariel, our very own trans lady.” This was met by immediate outrage from the team, and I pointed out that one, people aren’t minority tokens (just like you wouldn’t say “this is our very own BIPOC employee”), two, this was objectifying as it implied Ariel belonged to us, and three, he had just outed her without consent or warning. While he made a show of apologizing, I later got informally reprimanded behind closed doors for undermining him. I still think calling him out on the spot was the right thing to do, and all the reprimand told me was that my boss didn’t actually get what he’d done wrong. I reported the incident to HR, but as far as I know nothing came out of it. It is, of course, possible that my boss got a talking to or a warning and I wasn’t told about it, but it doesn’t seem likely.

It’s not a perfect update by any means (I’m not even sure it qualifies as a good update) and I know the entire situation has led Ariel to reconsider working for this company. If she does find a new job somewhere else, I’ll be sad to see her go as she’s a very competent worker and a very nice person to work with, but I can hardly hold it against her. I’ll be happy to provide her with a glowing recommendation if she ever needs one, and I’ve told her that. I’ve been updating my resume myself, though I won’t be looking to leave just yet; I want to be here to support Ariel as long as she stays with us.

Thanks again to you, Alison, and to everyone who commented with advice on how to be more inclusive and handle my initial situation.

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