Today’s my work anniversary. I’ve been at my current company now for 8 years which is also how long I’ve been out as trans at work. So here’s a bit of reflection on my professional life so far.

When I started in 2016, I was still closeted at work. I was dressing femme on evenings and weekends but I hadn’t gotten the courage to come out in a workplace setting before so I decided to interview as presumed cis in order to try to get the job. I probably just came off as very gay.

As I was being introduced as he/him on my first day it felt increasingly uncomfortable with each intro so the moment I had some time at my desk, I emailed my supervisor and 2 immediate peers and told them that I was nonbinary and used they/them (at the time). I was terrified, but was immediately met with affirming responses and attempts to use my pronouns correctly from there on. My supervisor became one of my biggest supporters, even though she had no previous experience with trans folks. That was exactly how a professional workplace should react. She had some slight hesitation as I started to dress femme but quickly corrected course and affirmed and advised my new professional wardrobe.

However, in the background, I found out later that she was also protecting me from tokenization. She had approached HR to see how to best support me and they didn’t have any resources but they did immediately want to use me to teach them what to do. She told me this much later after I had decided (on my own) to step into a volunteer DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) leadership position. I’m also thankful for her actions to keep me from being tokenized.

In 2018, the company hired their first DEI professional. She was an excellent leader and pretty quickly opened up invitations for staff to create additional Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) rather than a single catch-all Diversity Council. At her encouragement, I co-founded an LGBTQ ERG which blossomed into a lovely community of support, community, and advocacy for better internal policies. We had a great 2 years where we were affirmed and supported by her and her team. We hired consultants and taught some very well attended Trans 101 courses.

At the beginning of 2019, I moved to the team that I had originally come to the company hoping to join. An amazing team where everyone was already well trained on how to support and affirm trans people as research participants and I didn’t have to do any education or self-advocacy. I continued to lead the ERG and 2019 was a great year at work.

However, in 2020, things started to take a turn for the worse, and I don’t just mean the pandemic. The company hired a DEI Vice President who quickly turned the department into a “my way or the highway” mentality. He started making more and more stringent requirements of the ERGs, essentially trying to turn us into social clubs and take away any ability to advocate.

As an example, we had been working for over a year to develop a Trans 201 level workshop to do what the 101 course recipients had requested which was follow up on how to apply this knowledge to their internal and external work. We had contracted with Gender Justice League and were poised to launch in-person when the pandemic hit. After a few months, we pivoted to planning a virtual workshop and had a date scheduled. Suddenly the DEI team came in and shut down our work, cancelling the workshop without so much as a warning or explanation. When asked why, they said “we are no longer doing didactic classroom trainings” and refused to listen to how this workshop did not fit that model. They also refused to discuss how to move forward with the Trans Inclusion training that was so desperately needed.

When I continued to push on it, I was met with rather extreme anger and accusations from the staff member. I requested a third party mediator several times but was instead called into a meeting with the VP and HR where he threatened my job and told me that if I ever interacted that way with his staff again, he would have me fired. It became clear to me at that moment that the only way to preserve my job and sanity was to step back from doing the DEI work I loved so much. I immediately stepped down as ERG leader with great sadness.

I continued to engage in the ERG as a member for awhile and when I heard that the company had once again denied our request to build gender-neutral restrooms, I stepped up to attempt to intervene. We had been requesting these restrooms since our founding in 2018 and by 2022 it was becoming untenable to continue waiting. So I gathered a team of trans and cis staff and requested a meeting with the President of the company and was denied multiple times. He continued to push me to go through the VP who had threatened my job and was the barrier to not getting the restrooms prioritized.

When it was clear that we couldn’t meet directly with the President, I instead authored an open letter and started passing it around internally for signatures. As soon as the VP got wind of it, he again called me into a meeting and threatened and bullied me again. Shortly thereafter however, they announced the gender neutral bathroom project which he then claimed he had been working on the whole time (apparently without telling the entire accessibility committee). That for me was the final straw.

At this point I engage only in my direct teams’ work. I keep my head down and try to survive. I don’t feel like I can thrive at work because it is clear that the culture of the company is hostile towards trans activism. And without activism, we can never move forward towards a culture of inclusion. They also issued a very racist, both-sideism statement on Israel and Palestine that further shut down my participation. While it is a well paying job and many of the teams are individually great allies, I don’t feel like I can really recommend the company anymore which is very disappointing.