Most people have horror stories from work. Customers who were rude, coworkers who became abrasive or offensive, or a boss who didn’t appreciate us. Maybe we even felt like we were pushed out of a job. Finding the right job with the right company is a big part of finding happiness.
With a recent upswing in media exposure, the rights and issues of transgender folks are in the public eye more than they have ever been.
Trans people have mostly made the news lately in relation to the “bathroom laws” being proposed and passed in certain state legislatures. People go to the bathroom every day, and to have such personal activity put under the microscope must be difficult.
But what about the everyday activity of going to work?
Dee Castillo
One of Dee Castillo’s current gigs is working in the Nulu hot chicken joint, Royals Hot Chicken.
“I definitely have those experiences where people look at me like I have bugs crawling out of my ears the entire transaction. It can be really hard to not just be like, ‘What the fuck is your problem? I’m here, you have to deal with me,’” said Castillo, 32, a trans woman, who prides herself on her work ethic. “I wanna be successful regardless of how I look. At the same time, I’m me, and I’m gonna be me, and do me — I’m gonna do those things while being an awesome employee.”
She says Royals, generally speaking, has nice customers, which she suspects is caused by the Nulu location. “Working in a newer business in a hipper part of town that people expect to be cool, [people] accept that the person they see at the counter in a restaurant in Nulu might not look like a normal person.”
When people do stare, Castillo says, she lets them take their time. “There have been a few cases, where people just lock eyes with you, and won’t let it go. It’s like, ‘I spent $18 on this lipstick. Take it all in.’”
Ellie Neary
“I’ve done three weddings this year, presenting as a woman,” said Ellie Neary, 44. She’s a freelance photographer and occasional writer (including for LEO) with whom I’ve worked on a couple of stories. She uses the phrase “presenting as a woman” to distinguish the days when she dresses in what society would typically call “women’s” clothes from the days when she dresses in what the most of the world still calls “men’s clothes.”
But don’t be mistaken, she’ s a woman every day. “I don’t feel any less of a trans-woman when I wear male clothing,” said Neary.
In addition to freelancing — taking pics for journalistic work, or photographing weddings on her own — Neary works part-time for a company that also does wedding photography. Neary was already working for the company, run by people she considers friends, when she came out as trans. “I reassured them I wouldn’t present as female when I worked for them, with their clients, because you don’t want to be a distraction. I hate to describe myself in those terms. But it’s complicated. It’s thorny.”
Beck Whipple
Most of the trans folks in this story are still in transition. Not just in regards to their genders, but also in their lives. They’ve been in their jobs for a couple years tops — some are starting brand new jobs.
But Whipple, a 35-year-old trans man who moved to Louisville from “rural rural, rural” Kansas in 2000 to attend University of Louisville, has been working in the same place for 14 years: Maryhurst, which helps children who have been traumatized by abuse. “I say that I grew up at Maryhurst. I started when I was 21. I’m 35 now. I grew up there. All the folks that are there, I’m so close to. It’s a family.”
When Beck started the process of coming out, he had already been working at Maryhurst for nine years. He’d worked his way up from an entry level position — youth counselor —and, after rising through the ranks as senior staff and supervisor, he is a part of its training staff. He now trains the majority of new hires, and also works to train at a national level. His work includes Safe Crisis Management, but it also stretches to specific trans-inclusive training, that will help social service agencies including Maryhurst handle any staff in transition, and deal with the possibility of children with gender-identity issues.
Beck is aware that his transition was relatively easy, calling himself “privileged,” but he deals with trans identity all the time in training he runs for work, which focuses on teaching staff to remove the focus on gender binaries. The binary pops up everywhere in childcare, in ways that might not even occur to someone at first. “Even things like lining up, boys on one side, girls on the other,” said Beck referencing a simple tool that many childcare workers use. Beck asks trainees the question, “What in your day do you make gendered that doesn’t need to be gendered? Can you line up by height?”
Vanessa Gilliam
“This has been the craziest year of my life,” said Vanessa Gillimiam, 37, when she was initially interviewed for this story in July, just two days before she started her new job.
In the space of a year, she went back to school to get a degree in nursing, came out as trans, got kicked out of school, got fired, sued her school, started getting featured in national news, met President Obama to speak with him about trans issues, got into a different school, and now, finally, has a new job.
She also suffered from depression, and dealt with suicidal ideation while she she watched her life come apart.
With the national attention, and her meeting with Obama, Gilliam is proud of the work she’s done as an advocate. So much so that, at first, she shied away from speaking about her depression. “I’ve never been like that. But in one year I lost my right to an education, I lost my career, I lost my family, and I lost friends and everything. All in one year. I got in a bad state of mind, and I’m still healing,” said Gilliam. “And I hate it, because I’ve been an advocate, and a role model — I hated getting like that. Then, I realized, that’s part of my story.”
Ryan Rogers
“We just hire people because they’re people. We don’t look at their gender identification, or what’s their sexual orientation, or whatever it is,” said Ryan Rogers, the owner of Feast Barbecue and Royals Hot Chicken. “If you’re a decent human being who says ‘I can do this job’ and you’re willing to learn and try, then I don’t care what you look like or who you are, we’re gonna give you a shot to do it.”
Rogers is the cis-gendered, odd man out in this article. That is to say, he was assigned the gender identity of male at birth, and he’s just fine with it.
He met me to share his thoughts about employing trans folk. Before he’d talk to me about what it’s like, he emailed his employees to see if they were OK with him discussing it, though he protected their privacy by omitting their names.
Those steps point to the care he takes when addressing the issue.
“We don’t hire people based on physical appearance, we hire based on who they are,” he said. “Hopefully that means we can get the best employees.” But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had push back from some employees and customers.
Transitioning and Passing
In this article, to talk about being trans at work is to talk about being visibly trans. Which is to say that we are talking about people who either cannot, or do not, choose to “pass.”
“Passing” refers to being able to pass for a cis-gendered person.
For Neary, the wedding photographer, her inability to pass as a cis-gendered woman causes a very specific problem in her line of work. “You don’t wanna upstage the bride. In a good way or a bad way. You don’t want to be the topic of conversation. Ideally, the brides or the groom are.”
Neary continued this line of thought: “It’s about passing, whether it’s OK for someone to exist … I shouldn’t say exist … operate in their preferred gender. I’m trying to use appropriate language.”
Neary struggled to find the right words to express the incredibly complicated feelings she has: “How to put it? It’s weird. It’s just weird. Obviously, it’d be much easier on all of us if we all passed. I have a big bald spot. I can’t hide it. And some genetic women do, but I have male pattern baldness.”
Castillo doesn’t seem particularly interested in passing. Before she came out as trans, she considered herself “gender queer” and has rejected the binary nature of the way our culture deals with gender roles, frequently by just expressing herself, even if it meant crossing that binary. “I’ve been wearing women’s pants for 10 years, because they come in fun colors,” said Castillo.
Whipple broadens the scope of questions about passing: “I think it’s more complex than just ‘passing,’ but when you’re not in that binary, and you don’t fit neatly, it’s harder. Period.”
He added, “I think I pretty much pass, and I have for a while, especially because I was able to have my surgery so quickly. I recognize that my experience is different than someone who hasn’t been able to have surgery.”
Along with passing comes the question of transitioning. Gilliam and Neary are both in the process of transitioning, having come out fairly recently. Whipple transitioned fully within a year, and has had four years to settle into being seen as man. Castillo on the other hand, rejects the term: “That’s kind of a whole amorphous thing for me. I’m not sure what that means, at this point. When I first came out was about three, three and a half years ago. I started talking about my feelings on my gender. I identified as gender queer for a long time, anyway, but I didn’t really — I was still performing compulsory masculinity at that point.”
All the people I spoke with had to have conversations about their gender when they came out, and began trying to transition. When I first spoke with Neary, she seemed fine with the arrangement she had with her employers and the outcome of that conversation. Castillo had a great talk with her favorite manager at a previous job, but eventually the conversation had dire effects. Gilliam’s conversation leapt from her personal life to the national stage. Whipple had the strength of his longtime relationships at Maryhurst to draw on, and another employee who had already transitioned at work to show him the way.
Rogers has had that conversation from the other side. While Castillo was already out and proud when she was hired, her unashamed attitude inspired a closeted coworker to come out.
“We were at The Post, and we were outside having a drink,” said Rogers, describing a relaxed work gathering attended by several employees. “And he, at the time, said to me, ‘Hey, I wanted to let you know, our other transgender employee is making me feel really comfortable with my own personal feelings, and I’m gonna come out. I feel like I wanna transition to being a female.’”
Rogers admitted that his first feeling was confusion. “I’m sitting here, and the person who’s telling me, at the time, was a pretty masculine individual. And I [was thinking] ‘What is going on right now — is this a joke? I don’t know what you’re saying to me.’ So I just kept quiet. And kept listening.”
Following the instinct to keep quiet and listen to his employee before opening his mouth, Rogers quickly realized the person was serious. “They continued to explain their feelings, and how they’d felt their entire lives, and I thought, ‘Oh, this is real, and, OK, great — I’m gonna be really supportive.’”
Customers, Employers, Employees
When I began interviewing for this article, I assumed the majority of the horror stories would in the form of awful customers.
And there are some of those stories for sure.
“We’ve gotten some stuff. We had one group come in, that, according to some of our employees, may have issued like, a slur, and they left a review [on Yelp] that was negative,” said Rogers. “I contacted those people and said, ‘Not cool: We’d appreciate it if you don’t come back’ — because we do not want people coming into our restaurant that are gonna be attacking our employees,” said Rogers. “We’re defensive of our employees because they do great work.”
Neary hasn’t worked at that many weddings presenting as female, but she still ran into some attitude. “The bride and groom may be cool with it, [but] there are always those country aunts or uncles, or grandparents that might not be.”
The majority of the the negative experiences I was told about came from interacting with fellow employees, or, even worse, employers.
“People complained that I was confusing the patients,” said Gilliam, who was working as a nurse’s aide when she came out.
Castillo also had run-ins with fellow employees, though, in our interview she seemed eager to gloss over the bad times. “There were some people who were assholes, just because there’s always assholes.”
Whipple suggested that there are always some difficulties and said that change is a process: “Nobody’s perfect in the trans world yet, as far as employers. A lot of people are working on getting it right, and I think Maryhurst is in that boat.”
Rogers was more open about the problems his business had with a particular employee. “We had an employee who was basically harassing our transgendered employees, and we had to fire him and tell him he couldn’t come back on the property. Because what he was saying to those employees was not OK,” said Rogers.
For two of the women I interviewed, harassment from fellow employees was overshadowed by being fired by their employers. Both women felt that being trans was the cause for being fired.
Before she came out as trans, Castillo had a job she liked, and she was working her way up to management. She was in charge of an important section in a large retail store. “There’s a lawsuit on the table that we reached a settlement on, and one of the things was that I can’t talk about them in direct terms,” she said.
Louisville’s Fairness Ordinance protects trans folk along with lesbian, gay and bisexuals people. Which may be why Castillo’s former employers settled that suit.
For Castillo, the trouble began when her section was taken away. She worked in candy, and had supervised the section, a task which includes monitoring and ordering stock, upkeep and other duties. “I had done it two years, and over two Christmases, which is a huge thing, because it explodes for Christmas. And had done it with a lot of really positive feedback.”
Then she came out as trans. “Within a couple months of coming out, suddenly it was taken away, and I wasn’t given another section, and my hours were getting cut weird, and things like that.”
Many might recognize this treatment. In retail and service industry work, managers and employers frequently refuse to fire people outright. They slowly cut hours and make your life miserable, hoping you’ll quit. Then if that doesn’t work, they start writing you up.
Castillo doesn’t recall the final offense for which she was fired, but she does remember the conversation. The same manager she had initially spoken with about coming out, a person she trusted as a friend, was forced to let her go. “They made the manager who I trusted be the one to fire me,” said Castillo.” I couldn’t even yell or scream.”
Gilliam was in school for nursing and working as a nurse’s aide when she came out. Within days she was thrown out and within a few months she was fired from here hospital job. “I mean, they’re not gonna outright say, ‘You’re transgender, get out of here,’ no ones ever told me that — they find any kind of loophole to get rid of you.”
Gilliam finally got fired over a signature on a form. She said she was called in suddenly for a 12-hour shift, given incomplete information about a patient, and then sent home an hour into the shift. Before she left, she forgot to sign a patient log.
She spent the next eight months unemployed.
The Money
“I had to immediately scramble to make ends meet,” said Castillo, discussing the fallout of being fired. “I had rent to pay, I had bills to pay, and suddenly I was making $7.75 plus tips at a coffee shop part-time, instead of $15 an hour.”
Gilliam had to spend most of her life savings supporting her children while she was unemployed.
It’s pointless to talk about the issues facing workers who are trans without talking about the dollars and cents. There is the threat of loss of employment, but there are also the financial ins and outs of trying to transition.
“It’s a financial thing,” said Neary. “Well, you’re a freelancer, too,” she said, addressing the author. “So you know the kind of insurance I have.” While some insurance companies will pay for medicine and surgery for trans folk, many won’t. It’s very frustrating.”
Even Whipple, who is in some ways the most financially stable of the subjects of this article, had to borrow against his retirement fund to pay for his transition. He laughs when talking about his fund. “It was the only financial decision in my life that has been helpful. I don’t even know how I did that: I think I accidentally signed the paper.”
While borrowing against his retirement wasn’t cataclysmic financially, it does point out the fact that even a stable, longtime employee isn’t guaranteed healthcare coverage when it comes to transitioning. “At the time, there was no insurance in the state that was doing anything of the sort, where I understand now that there are certain insurances that are. There’s lots of words, and you have to jump through a lot of hoops,” said Whipple. “But we’re taking milli-steps forward.”
For many trans folks, it’s much harder, or impossible, to cover the costs.
Gilliam ran a Go Fund Me campaign to help raise money for medical treatment. Castillo has only been able to get a little lasering done, and she had to use money from her lawsuit to pay for it. Neary hasn’t been able to afford any physical augmentation, not even hormones.
“I don’t have the money for hair transplants, the lasering, the physical augmentation through surgery,” said Neary. The juxtaposition is obvious. She loves the freedom of being a freelancer, and cares about the artistry of the photos she takes. She’s being her authentic self, professionally. But it’s keeping her from transitioning in the way she wants. Before she went pro as a photographer, she was in information technology. Maybe if she went back, she could find a company that would cover her medical costs.
“And there you have it,” said Neary. “Which part of your soul do you feed?”
Time to Make the Donuts
There isn’t a tidy ending to this story.
The work lives of trans folks will continue to be difficult. They will have to make tough decisions, and swim in difficult waters, while earning their daily bread. They’ll get stared at by customers, harassed by co-workers and fired by cowardly employers. For every Ryan Rogers, there are still too many employers who would prefer that trans folk didn’t exist.
Gilliam is thrilled with her new job. “I have finally, after going through everything that I've been through this last year, found the missing piece to my puzzle. Floyd Memorial Hospital is like a second home and the people there treat me like a regular person and that's how it should be,” said Gilliam in a follow up interview.
She’s also has a book deal to talk about the last year of her life, and she may be featured on an upcoming episode of “Ellen.”
Castillo works several jobs, including Royals Hot Chicken. She’s happy, but not as financially stable as she was before she came out.
Whipple sings the praises of Maryhurst, but stays active politically in the hopes that he can help make the transition relatively smooth for other trans people.
Neary is still a freelancer, but is struggling to stay up beat. The daily choice she is forced to make between her gender identity and her career is taking its toll.
She discussed the that toll in a recent Facebook post, which she graciously allowed the LEO to reprint here.
“Presenting as male to get by is killing me. I just can't do it anymore. I need all of you. I need your love. Help me with this. I need encouragement. Lift me up, friends. I can't do this without you. I'm not one to blindly reach out for help like this, but tonight, I really need it. I'm embarrassed. Help me, friends. Help me. Tell me it's going to be okay, please.”
We need to keep working towards equality.
