{"id":3041,"date":"2011-09-09T12:33:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T17:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=3041"},"modified":"2013-07-14T16:41:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T21:41:40","slug":"body-politic-queer-visibility-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/09\/09\/body-politic-queer-visibility-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"BODY POLITIC: Queer Visibility at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"Body Politic is a new co-authored column at Girl w\/ Pen on queer bodies, law, and policy. \u00a0Avory will be writing this column along with Kyla Bender-Baird, our newest editor. \u00a0Kyla is a writer, researcher, and activist currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center. <\/em><\/p>\n

KYLA:<\/p>\n

When interviewing self-identified transgender people for my book, Transgender Employment Experiences<\/a><\/em>, I had several conversations about the intersections of visibility, passing, and discrimination. \u00a0These conversations were particularly striking in regards to transmen who transitioned from a highly visible, queer identity to a passing male identity (whether or not that’s how they experience their gender).\u00a0 These experiences illuminate how privilege works and underscore the importance of providing protection for gender expression in addition to gender identity and sexual orientation.<\/p>\n

Visibility was a key element in the interviewee\u2019s stories of harassment. \u00a0For instance, Carey\u2014a queer white transman in his mid-20s living in New York\u2014had this to say during our conversation: \u201cA lot of what being trans is, especially if you go on hormones and have surgery, is becoming an identity that, although it\u2019s a stigmatized and oppressed identity, it\u2019s not a visible identity anymore.\u201d \u00a0Carey was far from alone in this analysis. \u00a0Several of the folks I interviewed brought up how their experiences of harassment related to how visible their trans and\/or queer identity was. Dante, a queer South Asian transman in his early 30s also living in New York, reported that he experienced more harassment as a butch than as a transman. \u00a0Dante now passes as a gender normative, non-trans man whereas before his gender expression as a butch signaled \u201cdifference\u201d and triggered harassment.<\/p>\n

From these experiences, a strong connection between visibility, homophobia, and harassment can be drawn. As trans men\u2019s identities became less visible, they faced less harassment. Being able to blend into society, therefore, sometimes protects one from discrimination. Professor Kristen Schilt\u2019s research on trans men in the workplace<\/a> confirms this trend: \u201cas they become men, some FTMs in blue collar jobs report that their work relations became more collegial than they were when they worked as \u2018butch\u2019 women.\u201d \u00a0Schilt attributes this change to the movement of trans men from a stigmatized identity (butch) to a valued and privileged identity (man) with many workplace benefits. While I agree with Professor Schilt, I would like to push this analysis further, suggesting that it is the move from gender nonconformity to gender normativity and thus the erasure of a visible queer identity that also leads to the lessening of harassment.<\/p>\n

The trans women I interviewed also reported on the relationship of harassment and visibility, only they used the language of \u201cpassing.\u201d \u00a0For instance, Zoe\u2014a straight white trans woman in her 50s living in Texas\u2014reported instances of harassment, which she attributed to her \u201cunconventional gender presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n

While harassment caused by a visible, non-normative gender or sexual identity can happen to folks anywhere in the gender galaxy<\/a>, \u00a0the experiences of the transmen I spoke with are particularly telling due to the interplay of gender identity and sexual orientation and how changes in these identities were followed by changes in visibility and subsequently occurrences of harassment.<\/p>\n

All but two of the people I spoke with on the trans feminine spectrum transitioned from a straight male identity to a female identity; one experimented with a gay male identity prior to transitioning and the one bigender-identified person still maintains a masculine presentation on some days. For those on the trans masculine spectrum, the transition was from a lesbian or bisexual female identity to a more masculine identity. The affirmed gender identity and sexual orientation of the participants on the trans masculine spectrum post-transition was split between three straight men and three queer transmen. Thus, participants on the trans masculine spectrum articulated not only their experiences with transphobia but also homophobia\u2014particularly pre-transition. \u00a0Chris and Courtney, both young white straight trans men living on the east coast, related their experiences of homophobic harassment prior to transitioning or coming out as trans. Going from a visible lesbian identity to an invisible straight identity has decreased the homophobic harassment both men have faced. Their experiences demonstrate that it is often the visibility of queerness that triggers harassment.<\/p>\n

The centrality of visibility in the experiences of trans, queer, and gender non-conforming folk confirms the importance of including gender expression in legal protections as it is often gender expression that triggers harassment and discrimination. \u00a0The interplay of gender identity and sexual orientation also confirms the importance of working in coalition for broad social recognition. \u00a0Our social movements must reflect the complex identities of the people they claim to represent if we are to make any progress.<\/p>\n

AVORY:<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re saying about queer visibility here really strikes home for me, and I do think that a lot of it stems from the professional context, what\u2019s seen as \u201cprofessional.\u201d \u00a0Of course, that varies from workplace to workplace, but most of what I\u2019ve read in international law publications about workplace discrimination, and what I\u2019ve seen among peers, really boils down to perception <\/em>rather than a professed identity. \u00a0If someone is perceived to be queer (gender-wise or sexuality-wise), there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to push that person out of the professional circle, to stigmatize queer presentation as unprofessional.<\/p>\n

Saying that someone is \u201cunprofessional\u201d can be a convenient mask for discrimination. \u00a0It disproportionately happens to people who present a certain way\u2014visibly queer, not conforming to gender norms in terms of hair and clothing, but also \u201cpunk\u201d or \u201curban.\u201d \u00a0There\u2019s a clear intersection with class and race. \u00a0While it\u2019s reasonable to set a dress code for a professional environment, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen one that\u2019s gender-neutral.<\/p>\n

Legal protections against discrimination get at the heart of the problem with \u201cunprofessional\u201d serving as a proxy for \u201cqueer in a way that makes me uncomfortable.\u201d \u00a0If an employer wants to claim that disciplinary action is being taken due to a violation of professional standards under the kind of protections you\u2019re talking about, that person can do so, but has to prove that the standards are actually reasonably related to a business interest\u2014not just arbitrary discrimination based on \u201cnon-conforming\u201d gender expression. These laws are a definite step in the right direction against workplace discrimination based on queer visibility.<\/p>\n

KYLA<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so glad you brought up dress codes! \u00a0In the fall of 2007 (yes, the very weekend that the first trans-inclusive ENDA was split into two bills), I attended HRC\u2019s Out for Work conference. \u00a0During the conversation, several young, visibly queer students repeatdely brought up concerns about how to navigate conservative workplace dress codes while still maintaining their queer identity. For them, their identity was written on their body. \u00a0But how would that work in the job search process? \u00a0Unfortunately, panelists skirted the issue by pointing to all the companies listed in HRC\u2019s annual Corporate Equality Index. \u00a0This oversight continues to haunt me. In fact, I write about it in my introduction to the section on dress codes in Transgender Employment Experiences<\/a>\"\"<\/em>. \u00a0In addition to passing laws and policies, we also need to do a better job as a community of helping each other navigate these often hostile spaces that don\u2019t deal well with visible \u201cotherness.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Body Politic is a new co-authored column at Girl w\/ Pen on queer bodies, law, and policy. \u00a0Avory will be writing this column along with Kyla Bender-Baird, our newest editor. \u00a0Kyla is a writer, researcher, and activist currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center. KYLA: When interviewing self-identified transgender people for my book, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1922,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21098],"tags":[21727,21728,21886,21887],"class_list":["post-3041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-body-politic","tag-queer-visibility","tag-queer-work","tag-transgender-employment-discrimination","tag-transgender-employment-experiences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1922"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3041"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6287,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3041\/revisions\/6287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}