Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I was fired from my job today for being transgender.

Hey fellas. Usually when I post here I’m in a relatively good mood, but today was rough.

It was the 2nd day of a new job, I informed management in beginning of Day 1 of my preferred name and pronouns and that I’m trans. It went really well and my supervisor was quite supportive.

Apparently my supervisor and coworkers were fine with it, but the HR representative, who I never even got to meet, was not.

They first had the person from my staffing agency contact me (instead of speaking to me personally) requesting that I not use the correct bathroom, because I might make people uncomfortable. When I asked him to please find out if there was a unisex bathroom in the building I could use (as I did not want to go to HR/my supervisor myself and make it a big deal) they informed him (and thus he informed me) that there is no unisex bathroom available and that I was no longer a good fit for the company.

When I contested that there was no issue, I would suck it up and use the wrong bathroom, they changed their tune to say that they didn’t interview “Aaron”, they interviewed “(legal name)”, and that I was “obviously” not the person I claimed to be.

What really disgusts me is that at 5:00pm, before I left, my supervisor was telling me how great I was doing, that I seemed like a really great fit and did so well with training, set me up my own desk and computer and told me when I came in tomorrow, I’d be on my own. At 5:40pm it was confirmed that they were not willing to work anything out, my “situation” made me an ill fit for the company, and they had already lined up someone else for my job.

It makes no difference that my skills, experience, and qualifications were the same, regardless of preferred name/pronouns. If I had requested to be called by a preferred traditionally feminine name, like say, a shortened version of my legal name or my middle name, I would still have my job.

There are no laws in the state of florida (or most other states) to protect transgender people from being terminated based on gender identity or expression. It was perfectly legal for them to fire me based solely on my trans* status.

For more information, please read the wikipedia article on the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and get involved in helping to fight for its passing.

You can also sign this petition to tell local lawmakers to support ENDA.

If you’d like to help me personally, I have a merch shop on my page where I’ve been selling trans* pride stuff to help raise money for my transition, but those funds will now have to go to my family’s living expenses. Check it out and spread the word.

Posted at 5:09 PM 1,252 notes Tags: Transitioning Fundraising submission

Notes

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    I realize I haven’t had the time to be very active on tumblr, and that I saw this two months ago. But, I meant to...
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  17. koralal reblogged this from abbyjean and added:
    This is fucking bull shit. All those idiots should burn in hell.
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    come on, world. stop
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    what. the. fuck. this kind...really REALLY bothers me. he could have not said...
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