Be A Man--And Lose Your Job

I realize that when I'm not talking about my own experience on this blog, I'm as likely as not to be talking about male-to-female transgenders and transsexuals and their experiences.  That's natural, I guess, though I am trying to give some time and space to female-to-male trans people as well as others on the gender identity and sexual orientation spectra.

After all, FTMs experience many of the same things we, as MTFs, live with and through.  There is, of course, the joy of being ourselves.  But there is also the risk of incurring prejudice that can lead to anything from losing one's friends to losing one's life.

Tristan Broussard now understands this all too well.  Two years ago, he was working in the Lake Charles, Louisiana of Flowood, Missisippi-based First Tower Loan LLC.  That is, until a company executive found out that on his driver's license, he was listed as female.  That executive then demanded that Broussard sign a document promising that he would dress as a woman on the job and when out of town on business, he would stay in rooms with other female employees.

That document included a statement that his "preference (italics mine) to act and dress as male, despite having been born a female, is not something that will be in compliance with Tower Loan's personnel policies".  

Broussard would not sign the statement.  That refusal cost him his job.

Yesterday, with the support of the Southern Poverty Law Center (a great organization!), he filed suit against the company.  The National Center for Lesbian Rights is also backing him.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had previously reviewed his case and on 2 December 2014 ruled that discrimination had indeed occurred.  However, the EEOC decided not to pursue a case against Tower Loan.

Why Was Rachel Tudor Fired?

Discrimination cases aren't filed, let alone won, nearly as often as most people imagine.

Filing any sort of case takes a lot of time and money.  That stacks the deck against any individual bringing a case against an organization, especially a large one.  

Also, as any lawyer will tell you, such cases are difficult to prove.  There are rarely witnesses to acts of discrimination, and when the word of one individual is weighed against that of an organization, who do you think a judge is more likely to believe?  

Furthermore, almost nobody is stupid enough to say they've fired, or denied a job, promotion or tenure, to someone because of his or her race, gender, national origin or religion, even in those places where it's still legal to discriminate against, say, gays.  Instead, they find--or, in some cases, fabricate--another reason.  Or, if a qualified candidate "aces" an interview, the person or committee making the hiring decision will say the candidate was "not a good fit with the culture of this organization" or some such thing.

Southeastern Oklahoma State University has probably done what I've described in the previous paragraph, at least in the case of Rachel Tudor. In the summer of 2007, she announced that she was transitioning and would start presenting as female on her job, as an English professor, during the 2007-2008 academic year. She continued to work there until she was denied tenure, and terminated, in 2011.  According to her lawyer, it was the first time an SOSU English professor's application for tenure and promotion was denied after a favorable tenure recommendation from a promotion committee and department chair.  Moreover, according to the suit, she experienced retaliation after she had the temerity to complain.

Now, I know I don't have the full story, but there's good reason to suspect that she was wronged.  I really want to find out what SOSU's rationale was for firing her.  

Whatever it is, it--to be fair--probably isn't half as mean-spirited as some of the comments on the article I've linked.

Where We're Covered

Right now, laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on gender identity or presentation are in effect for jurisdictions in which 47 percent of the US population lives.

Of course, that means if a couple more states or some more cities pass such laws, the majority trans people will be protected.  Still, there will be large "deserts" in this country.  

What is most troubling, though, is only pockets of New York and other states are covered.  Granted, cities with such laws are home to vast majority of the Empire State's people. Still, it's troubling that such a supposedly progressive state is not fully on board with transgender equality.

Of course, laws by themselves don't protect us against discrimination.  Too often, we are fired or hounded out of our jobs on spurious, trumped-up charges.  I'm not using the "imperial 'we'" here:  I know from whence I speak.

Where They Can't Fire You For Being Who You Are

From Indiana Equality Action

LGBT And Labor

I have to admit that I've long had mixed feelings about unions.  Yes, I understand their importance in protecting workers from abuses.  However, I have also seen firsthand how they can be used, like political clubhouses--and, very often, the very corporations whose exploitative practices unions are supposed to fight--to further the narrow interests of a select group of people.  

As an example, faculty members--whether full-timers or adjuncts--in the City University of New York are required to be members of the union.  When you are hired, you sign a card in which you "consent" to join and to have the dues deducted from your paycheck.

Granted, it's not a large amount of money and it helps to pay for some of the benefits members receive.  It's also used, supposedly, to help pay for the materials and work that go into protecting faculty members' rights.  

The union purports to represent adjuncts and other non-tenure-track faculty members as well as those who have tenure, or are on their way to it.  But, I know from experience that the union will throw adjuncts--and others who are not politically expedient--under the bus.  They also don't like to take up discrimination cases because they're "too difficult to prove".  However, they'll bray and bleat all day about some issue or another of "academic freedom".

Still, I'll admit, we need the union, particularly in the current climate: one in which the balance sheet rather than the syllabus is the most important document in education.   

If the marketers, bean-counters and others whose values come from the boardroom rather than the academy see graduates as "products" and faculty members merely as means to production, I don't think they're going to be terribly interested in much else besides getting as much money as possible for or from each student and paying as little as possible to turn those students into graduates.  And if the means of production, I mean faculty member, complains about being sexually harassed, having a false complaint made against him or her or simply not having goals and expectations clearly communicated (let alone receiving support in attaining those goals)--or simply gets sick or has a family emergency-- such administrators would like nothing better than to get rid of that faculty member and hire someone else who won't stand up for him or her self and doesn't have so much "baggage".  

Any member of a group who regularly experiences discrimination is vulnerable in such an atmosphere.  I would argue that trans people are the most vulnerable of all.  Never mind that our health insurance plans (when we have them) don't cover us in the same ways that other people are covered.  No matter how well we do our jobs, we have a harder time keeping them (and, of course, the health plans that go with them) than other people do because there's always somebody who's resentful over "special" treatment he or she imagines that we receive.  Or such a person is simply convinced that we are going to commit, or have committed, any and all sorts of crimes and perversions that never even crossed our minds--or that we are looking for reasons to get them fired over spurious claims of discrimination.  

(As an example of what I've described in my previous sentence, I'm thinking of a faculty member who, upon meeting me for the first time, exclaimed "I always feel I'm walking on eggshells and am going to say the wrong thing around you.")

So, I realize--in spite of my experiences--that trans people, as well as lesbians, gays and others on the "spectrum", need organized labor movements.  And they need us.  That's something to think about on Labor Day, which will be observed tomorrow.
 

It Took 30 Years, But They Found A Way To Fire Him

In the winter class I'm teaching, the students are about to read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

It seems like an amazing coincidence, if not a synchronicity, given something that's just happened in a school directly between the one in which I work and my apartment.

St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows, Queens has--justifiably or not--an excellent academic reputation.  However, according to a few acquaintances of mine who happen to be alumni, it's as big and impersonal as any city public high school, and people of different races and cultures coexist but don't really interact with, let alone accept, each other.

So far, it doesn't sound too atypical for a high school in that part of Queens.  However, the fact that it is run by Franciscan brothers means that some people will most likely never be allowed as students, let alone teachers, there.

It doesn't matter that someone has taught there for more than three decades. If that teacher changes him or her self in form, his or her excellence as a teacher will not be enough to keep him or her on the school's faculty list.

That is what Mark Krowlikowski has discovered.  In his 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep, he has received numerous accolades for his work, which has included leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI.  But, last year, the parents of a ninth-grader complained about him.

Specifically, they took issue with his appearance.  He was always neat and well-groomed and routinely wore suits and neckties to work.  However, he started to wear earrings and nails manicured in a feminine style, according to court documents.  

He was summoned to the office of the principal, Brother Leonard Conway who called the transgender identity Krowlikowski revealed to him "worse than gay."  During their meeting, Conway told Krowlikowski he could no longer appear at public events if he came dressed as a woman.

The school's lawyer claims that Krowlikowski was fired for "appropriate non-discriminatory reasons".  Interesting that it took the school 30 years to find such reasons.

Kylar Broadus Testifies Before The Senate

An activist once told me, "It's all about visibility."

In this country, it's hard to beat testifying before the Senate to make one's cause, as well as one's self, visible.

That is what Kylar Broadus did last week.  That made him--a lawyer and professor from Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO-- the transgender to do so. 

Appropriately enough, he testified before Senate Health and Labor Committee hearings on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act  (ENDA).

Although he is a lawyer and professor, he is not in an easy financial situation.  In the 1990's, he transitioned while he was working for an insurance company. For that, he was harrassed and fired.  "While my supervisors could tolerate a somewhat masculine-appearing black woman," Broadus recalled, "they were not prepared to deal with my transition to being a black man." As there were no laws on the books to protect transgender people in the workplace, he found that he had no legal recourse.

As you might imagine, a long stretch of unemployment ensued, from which Broadus says he has not fully recovered financially.

What I hope the Senators realize, as a result of hearing Broadus' testimony, is that if someone with his education and work experience can have such a difficult time, things are that much worse for someone who's poor or less educated, and probably even worse for a trans teenager who was kicked out of his or her home after "coming out."   I would love for the Senators to hear testimony from them, as well as more from Broadus and transgender people in situations like his.