Fact is that Mike
started working in the center where I work as Melissa. As Melissa she presented as a woman,
occasionally wore dresses or skirts (professional attire) and talked as if she
was comfortable in her body (biologically woman).
I
enjoyed talking with her. She was smart,
cynical, a Star Wars fan, and well versed in nerd culture. That made her easy to work with even though I
was not her direct supervisor. At the
time, she reported to someone who was at the same level as I was but since we
were a large center it meant that at times I was a shift supervisor and had to
interact with all employees, direct reports or otherwise, as a boss. And in that role she didn’t present any
problems. Sure every request was greeted
with a snide response or sarcastic questioning, but it really didn’t bother me.
We
got to know each other when we both ended up in a graduate class at the nearby
university together. We both mocked the
professor a bit privately, mocked the bureaucracy publicly, and worked together
on projects diligently and managed to keep our work roles separate from our
student roles with relative ease.
As
I continued to follow my graduate program, she switched to an EMT program. I didn’t think much of it, but even as
students EMTs wear a uniform: a blue
polo shirt and khaki cargo pants.
A
few months into her program, I got promoted and instead of being her supervisors’
colleague, I was now his boss. And thus,
I was a rung up and in Melissa’s reporting chain. New reporting structure aside, I didn’t think
much of it. I was not in the habit of
micromanaging people who used to work with me and now worked for me. It wasn’t my style.
But
in this new role, I noticed a sort of mental change on my part. Yes, the relationship with all the employees
changed and what was once mostly cordial ribbing or in-on it joking transformed
into my now being part of the problem. I
was “the man” for all intents and purposes.
Frankly, I was still not very far up the ladder and subject to the whims
of a big bureaucracy, but my ability to turn the wheel or alter the trajectory
of the path the wheel was taking was a bit more on me. Policies that I could pass off as the whims
of the Director or the management team were now my policies. So there was a little bit of me getting used
to my new role.
Yet,
almost concurrently, Melissa’s supervisor came to me and announced. “Melissa
wants to be called Mike now. We’re
beginning the process of changing how he is
identified in the system. He’s starting
hormone therapy too.”
I
don’t know if it was my new role or the change in gender identity or something
else, but suddenly Mike’s cynicism
and sarcasm really started to bug me. At
first I chalked it up to my own sort of internal dismissiveness of women. As a man, I don’t feel threatened when women
are angry, which really frustrates my wife a lot. When she gets angry, I can’t help but think
it’s “cute.” (Yes, that’s shitty, I
know). So my first read was that when
Mike was Melissa I found his sarcasm and cynicism “cute” but now that he was
“Mike” I found myself responding as I do when I encounter angry, sarcastic, and
cynical men; I get annoyed. (There’s a
lot here and a lot I don’t feel comfortable admitting, but I might as well “go
there.”).
I’ve worked for a
lot of women, and, generally, prefer to work with women. For some reason, I don’t react in fear when I
work with or under a woman and she gets angry.
The relatively few men I’ve worked for, however, don’t elicit that same
response. In the past, when the men
bosses have gotten angry at me, I generally want to run. Angry male bosses are not something I work
well with. And as a boss in several
different capacities I know how to work with angry male subordinates. Annoyed for sure when I my orders are ignored
or dismissed when it’s done by a male and dismissive and patient when it’s done
by a female. Basically, I’m sure I’m a
bit more patronizing as a boss for women subordinates than I am for men. And suddenly, I was seeing how this dynamic
played out because Mike really annoyed me.
Yet,
I was trying to be a good boss and as a good boss, I invited our local transgender
support organization to do a work shop for our group. Our customers came from a variety of
backgrounds and increasingly more of them were transgender, so I wanted to make
sure we were being welcoming and supportive when they came in and largely tried
to break down what I perceived as fear of difference when meeting a transgender
person. The presenter, who transitioned
years before, was great. He was funny,
engaging, approachable, and definitely passed as male. We had a professional relationship, and I
knew how to interact with him and that way.
Part of his job was to break down the stigma, the prejudice and get us
to not just react out of fear. So I
asked him about my reaction to Mike.
Interestingly,
he was a bit easier on me. He responded
that maybe my reaction wasn’t just some sort of internal socialization creating
an internal conflict. Maybe Mike, who
was going through hormone therapy, really was just more annoying? As he explained it, he said that when people
go through hormone therapy they are in essence no different than teenagers
going through puberty. Maybe Mike was
just being a teenage boy hormonally and really was just, simply, more annoying?
This
made sense as my father had been battling prostate cancer and one of the
treatments was to give him Lupron, which
suppressed his production of testosterone.
As a result, my father was more emotional, more touchy-feely than the
gruff man I grew up with. His lack of
testosterone in essence meant that his more emotional (feminine)
characteristics were highlighted.
I don’t know. The frustration was real regardless of the cause,
our relationship became less cordial. I
didn’t joke around as much with Mike. Of
course, my role had changed so I didn’t joke around as much with anyone, but it
felt pretty obvious to me that Mike and I didn’t have the same
relationship.
Things went on and
Mike continued his transition. I settled
into my new role and was more comfortable interacting with the whole group as a
boss. I was more serious now and didn’t
have a casual relationship with anyone anymore.
But one day, after
introducing a new employee to the staff, Mike caught me off to the side.
“You keep doing
it?”
“Keep doing what?”
“You’ll introduce
me as Mike but when you refer to me later, you’ll refer to me as “she.” You keep outing me.”
I was
horrified. “Oh my. I’m so sorry. I didn’t even realize I was doing
that.”
“It’s okay, but
stop it.”
“I will,” I said,
silently cursing myself because I couldn’t control my own vocabulary. How was I supposed to be a model leader if I
couldn’t manage to use the right pronouns of people who reported me? Here I prided myself on being progressive and
I kept slipping up. I mean, we were the
first organization that brought in the transgender resource center for a
presentation at the college. Instead of
patting myself on the back for being welcoming, I was now part of the problem
because I was oblivious to my own choice of words.
And I’m not sure
why. Mike eventually graduated and moved
away. I don’t know if I made that
mistake again as he never addressed it again, but I can’t help but wonder why I
made it in the first place.
Intellectually, I supported his right to be who he felt he was and for
society to recognize that.
Intellectually, I want to use my words as a way to welcome people not force
them into boxes that they didn’t create.
Yet, when faced with that opportunity, I failed.
I’m still not sure
why. Now I’m not Jordan Peterson
and really don’t understand his insistence that society shouldn’t dictate (with
laws) how we choose to interact with each other. But under the current climate, could I have
gotten into trouble? What if Mike
alleged that I was being discriminatory or creating a hostile work environment? I didn’t deny his claim, yet I didn’t
remember actually doing what he said I did.
How often do we go through the day not really aware of every word we
say? And even if my intent was not
malicious, are there other marginalized identities that I just bulldoze over just
because I don’t want to watch my words?
And how often do we offend and it is, perhaps, motivated by some sort of
unconscious (passive aggressive) bias that we refuse to acknowledge?
And I was glad
that he moved on? I would imagine that
sometimes the best thing for people who are transitioning is to just relocate,
change everything around them, so they don’t have to walk people through the
switch that was society already makes really difficult?
It’s been a couple
of years now and I don’t know if Mike is happier or how he is living his
life. I’m assuming he is happier, but I
also wonder if we make too much of gender identity? Would society be better off if we just didn’t
have clearly defined gender roles? What
if we could dress the way we wanted and it didn’t matter how people addressed
us? Does having a clear marker (gender
expression) of what (male or female) really make a difference? Should it make a difference? And how would we go about creating a society
that didn’t assign certain roles based on gender? Is that even possible?
September 17th, 2019
Comments