My Job: "Coming Out"

On Thursday, I'm going to participate in a panel discussion on "coming out" in the workplace.  It will be held at the Borough of Manhattan Community College from 12:00 until 1:00 in S-410 of the main building.

When I agreed to be a panelist, I realized that a decade has passed since I "came out" at work--and, for that matter, to my friends and family.  Reflecting on those days led me to write my latest piece for The Huffington Post, which was published the other day.

Check it out:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justine-valinotti/my-job-coming-out_b_4119867.html

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.

Advice To Someone Undergoing A Gender Transition

The other day, I was talking with a friend who is transitioning and works in an academic institution.  (It's not one in which I've ever worked.).  The environment in that school is noticeably more hostile, in all sorts of ways, than the one in which I started my journey.  This professor, though, is of a higher rank and in a specialty in which there are fewer qualified people than in my field.  Plus, that professor is, in a lot of ways, a cannier fighter and more savvy in dealing with administrative people than I was when I started. In part, those advantages come with being a few years older than I am and having other circumstances that differed from mine.  That prof also works in a field that is noticeably more male-dominated, and where there may be more people who are phobic to gender-variant people, than mine.

Still, I found myself helping this prof devise strategies for navigating various aspects of the school and its administration.  For one thing, we were trying to define acts of true discrimination.  As an example, when you're not notified of meetings, but other people in your department are, did the person who sent out the e-mails or notices simply "forget" about you?  Or, when someone attributes some manner of wrongdoing to you, is that a mistake?  Or is that person acting on some unconscious (or conscious) hatred and harassing you? Or what about a supervisor who has time to answer your colleague's questions but suddenly starts to dismiss you rudely when you are looking for his or her advice?  

What are you supposed to think when someone "loses" your file or application for some program?


Although I got guidance, from various sources, about how family members and friends might react, and some of the legal aspects of my transition (By the time I had my surgery, I thought I could become a lawyer!), I really didn't have any guidance for the issues the other prof and I discussed.  

There are times I wish I'd been more militant--or, at least, as ready to do battle as my friend.  I tried hard to appease people and to be a palatable trans woman.  I suppose I succeeded at those things, to some extent.  Some might say that "taking the Martin Luther King rather than the Malcolm X approach," as someone else described it, gained me some respect with some people, and perhaps made me "likeable" to others.  But, I realized, that supposedly educated and civilized people don't always play by the rules they make or live by the ideals their educations are supposed to represent.  And, of course, there are those who say the politically correct thing to your face, but say other things entirely to other people when you're out of earshot.  

(By the way, the person who made the "King rather than Malcolm X" comment has only comic-book knowledge about both men.  And he spouts all of the liberal shibboleths, naturally.)

In brief, one of the things I told my friend was that you need to make allies but to trust very, very few people in an academic (or, for that matter, most other work) environments.  Your friends, you make elsewhere.

Who Is Passing Whom?

I was starting tow write an e-mail to a colleague at my second job, which may become my primary job.  I haven't sent that e-mail, and am not sure I will.  If said colleague reads this post, I probably won't need to send that e-mail.

In it, I described a bit about my experience in that place this year.  In one sense, I would like to make that place my new professional "home," so to speak.  In that place,  I haven't experienced the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination I've encountered on my primary job.  Plus, it doesn't seem to have the dysfunction, the corruption or just the pure-and-simple pettiness that do so much to define the atmosphere, not to mention behavior and relationships, at my other job.

Still, I can't say that I felt "at home" at that second job, and somehow I don't expect to.  That is in no way the fault of anyone I've encountered there--at least, not anyone I've encountered in person.  (In fact, the colleague to whom I was writing the e-mail is one of the nicest co-workers I've had in a long time.) Perhaps it is not fair to say such things, as I started to work there less than a year ago.  But I have noticed that there is a fundamental way in which I am different, which may or may not have to do with my experiences of gender identity and transition.

I think that if I had to choose one word to encapsulate that difference, it might be "innocence."  There really seems to be a belief that if they work for and with the system, it will work for them.  Whatever remnants I may have had of such a belief were destroyed on my primary job; I don't know whether anyone ever regains such a sense, or gains it after not having had it in the first place. 

What that means is that they trust authority in a way that I can't, and perhaps never will.  The interesting thing is that it's the most "liberal" people there who seem to have that faith (I can't think of a better word for it):  They still think that governments and administrations can be moved to act in enlightened ways.  I'm thinking in particular of one prof--whom, actually, I like personally--who wants me to become an organizer for the union.  It is the same union to which faculty members at my main job belong; both colleges are part of the same university system.  The prof says he "admires" my "intelligence" and "courage."  (Little does he know!)  However, I would have a very hard time in helping out a union that said it couldn't help me in what was a blatant case of discrimination.  

And--let's face it--after an experience like that, and of being "used" by various people and organizations, you tend to become a bit wary, to say the least.  Sometimes I don't simply feel I can't, or am not sure I can, trust certain colleagues and superiors:  I'm not even sure that I want to trust them.  Having been brought up on trumped-up charges, and being blamed for sexual harassment I experienced, may simply have made me less capable, and less desirous, of giving trust, at least on the job.

A few days ago, someone at my main job remarked that I am "outgrowing" that place.  I don't think I've been at my second job long enough for that to have happened.  But I sometimes wonder if I'm "outgrowing" the academic world entirely.  Or, perhaps, it is leaving me in some way.  

Transploitation

After Sophie's comment on yesterday's post, I could not stop thinking about the ways we are dehumanized, wittingly or not.


The reason why so many otherwise well-meaning people turn us into "things" is that the act of identifying someone by a label strips that person of his or her humanness.  And that is the surest and easiest way to destroy that person's humanity, as well as one's own humanity.


Pardon me if I seem bitter in writing this post.  But I have come to realize that some people who might go and march for someone else's civil rights would think nothing of being manipulative, controlling or otherwise abusive with us.  And the perpetrators don't think they're doing anything wrong, much as previous generations of white people thought it was OK to be condescending, demeaning, abusive or even violent toward black people in ways that would get them thrown into jail if they so treated another white person.


To me, they're no different from the sorts of guys--like the fugitive doctor I mentioned in my previous post--who use us to satisfy their sexual curiosity, or simply their horniness.  Too many of us can recall at least one relationship like that.  It's almost as if they think they're doing us favors by being involved with us and that we are so starved for love that we'll serve as their mental (or, in some cases, physical) punching bags.


I was in such a relationship, and am still recovering from it.  As bad, though, are the ones who are not dating us but with whom we have to live or work, and do not let us forget that, and what wonderful people they are for not throwing us out like a carton of yogurt that's past its "sell by" date. 


They are the bosses who deny us pay, make demands on us they won't make on other employees and who look for reasons to get rid of us because we "don't fit in with the culture" of the workplace.  They are dismissive of our ideas, which they take for themselves or hand off  to some co-worker who gets credit for it.  Those co-workers are the ones who make spurious, false complaints--anonymously, of course--about us that are as likely as not to include some sort of sexual allegation or innuendo.  They may not know anything about us, but they know that attaching sex to our names yields a stereotype or cariacture that too many other people  are all too willing to believe and use as rationales for the things they do to us.


Isn't it ironic that the thing that, according to no less than Mark Twain, people care about more than everything else put together is the very thing that they will use against us?  Yet it is the very same thing for which they come to us--and, in some cases, react with violence when we don't give it to them, or when it turns out differently from what they expected.  Or, after getting it from us, they toss us aside like soiled napkins.


What's ironic is that I'm writing this post at a time when I'm meeting some people who are not treating me in the ways I've described, and when I'm in a different work situation from the one I've depicted. In my second job, my gender identity or transition doesn't come up.  Some know about it; a few have told me they've seen this blog and some of my other writings.  But they haven't pressed me to talk more about them, and I haven't.  On the other hand, on the job I've been working the past few years, I was "outed" by a faculty member a few weeks after I started there.  Then others goaded me into giving lectures and workshops; still others wanted me to be their "show-and-tell" exhibit for their classes in human sexuality or gender issues.  They people who asked--or, in some cases, coerced--me into doing those things are the very same people who used my doing those things (not to mention the fact that I am who I am) against me.


On that job--which I'd like to replace with my second job if and when I can become full-time in it--some other faculty members (Notice that I'm not calling them my colleagues.) and members of the administration seem to think they're entitled to not only knowing about the intimate details of me and my life, but to use them as they will.  If I were to do the same things, I probably would have been out of that job long ago. In fact, I might even be in jail or the target of a lawsuit.


The doctor I mentioned in yesterday's post definitely deserves to be in prison for the things he did to his patients and the way he abused the system.  But if I were the transgendered Dante, I'd have an especially tortuous circle of Hell set up for him and others like him.  

Workplaces

For a while, I thought about pursuing a full-time position at my second job.  In a lot of ways, the atmosphere is more pleasant than at my regular job.  However, it's not terribly stimulating.  I get the feeling sometimes they're getting along to go along when they're not going along to get along.  


At my regular job, people are dying of stress-related diseases.  Sometimes you can feel the corrosive acrimony on your skin, or so it seems.  But at the second job, some people do battle on the listserv, but are polite and even friendly to each other in person as if they were neighbors separated by a lawn and sprinklers.   Actually, some of them are.  And sometimes the campus seems to be set up that way.  


Could it be that I've spent so much time working in tense environments that I can't work in a friendlier one?  Or, perhaps, having worked around people I simply could not trust, I'm not so sure of what to do around people who have something resembling integrity--and are being hospitable to boot. That's what a friend seems to think.

Along The Way

The strange thing about goals is that, so often, when you reach them, they turn out not to be goals after all.  You realize that they were just landmarks or mileage markers.  Or they were just check-points in which you had to get some imprimatur or another before proceeding.

I'm thinking now about the stages of my transition, and my early life.  I mean what most people would call my current or post-transition life.  Before I came here, taking hormones, getting my name changed, and various other events leading up to my surgery, seemed like destinations at which I'd arrived.  Of course, I always had a longer-term vision of how I wanted to live, as a woman.  But each of those events and accomplishments seemed, at least for the moment, to be like grand train or bus terminals.  Of course, for some people, they mark the end of their trips.  But, for many others, it's just a station on the way to someplace else.

One of the office assistants at work--at the college in which I'd been moonlighting last semester--helped me to realize what I've just said.  The surgery and the events leading up to it were just preludes or prerequisites to what I would do next.  They were not goals unto themselves.  


In talking to that office assistant, I realized that if I'm not at a goal or destination, I'm at least on the road I hoped to take.  Or, at least, it bears a strong resemblance to what I hoped to have.  


I asked her whether the department chair would think I was doing something shady when I talked to a young woman who'd come for an interview.  She was in the office; I asked if I could help.  I forgot what she asked, but I sensed that she just wanted to talk to someone who's encouraging, or at least friendly.  The assistant and the department chair both saw me talking to this young woman.  "I hope she doesn't think I was coaching her or doing something I shouldn't be?"


The assistant's looked at me with a touch of pity.  "We're not like that around here," she assured me.  I wondered if she knows about some of the experiences I've had at my other school.


"I'm sorry."


"Don't worry.  You'll get used to this.  Besides, I think what you did was nice.  And she seemed happy about it," referring to the young woman.


But something in that assistant's tone told me so much more.  I hadn't heard anything like it at work in a long time.  I realized, then, the real reason why I like this new school:  I don't have to explain or defend myself.  To her, to the department chair, to my colleagues and students, I'm just a middle-aged woman who's teaching there.   There aren't any qualifiers, from me or them. And, best of all, I haven't encountered the sort of people who wants me to talk about my history and share it with my students precisely so they can use it against me.  


Just a woman going to work.  Maybe this isn't the goal or destination.  But I'd hoped to come this way.  Even so, every once in a while I need someone to remind me of where I've come.  

It's Not Because You're A ....

I didn't ride my bike yesterday:  I didn't have enough time to get to the doctor after finishing work.  The sad thing is that I almost didn't make the appointment because I almost didn't get out of work at the time I'm supposed to.


And I fully expect that someone went looking for me long after my appointed hours, didn't find me and will make--or has already made--a complaint about me.  Then my department chair, the provost or the legal compliance officer will give me a lecture, if not a dressing-down.  And the fact that I've stayed until nearly midnight on days when my commitments ended at 4 pm will be conveniently forgotten.

Heaven forbid that I should leave workplace when I'm done with whatever work I had to do, whether or not said work was in my job description.

I work all those hours and go well above all expectations explicit and implicit expectations, yet I make less than a bus driver.  And people from whom one normally believe an account of current weather conditions suddenly have more credibility than the Pope once had among Catholics when they make a complaint about me.  The powers-that-be insist that it has nothing to do with my being transgender.  Uh-huh, and Hemingway accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.


Is it any wonder that I'm always tired, or seem to be?  Wait a minute:  I didn't feel as tired after riding as I do now.  And, after pedalling there and bike, I don't have the kind of anger I've been expressing.  Could it be that I'm having "withdrawal" symptoms--from missing one day of riding after riding two days in a row? 

On the other hand, a lot of other profs and employees at the college feel the way I feel--or so they've told me, without my prompting or asking.   So maybe it really isn't about being trans, after all.  It's great to know that I'm in such an egalitarian place.

After The Trauma

Today I taught two sections of the intro to literature classes. They are normally different, as the earlier class has more mature, or at least older, students than the later class. In the earlier class, it seemed that the students had read the works I assigned and took good notes on them. On the other hand, it seemed that only a couple of students in the later class had done the assignment.

Fortunately for me, I was observed in the earlier class. And I was observed by the prof with whom I began to develop something of a rapport last semester. She was the same prof whom I'd assumed was feeling self-important over having gotten a prestigious fellowship, or simply didn't like me.

The students were great. But I must have been doing a really good job of teaching. After all, they--including the younger male students--were paying attention to me. And the prof who was observing me is obviously younger and definitely more attractive than I am!

The rest of the day at the college, however, was more of the same insanity that one experiences there on any other given day. Nothing particularly bad happened, at least not to me. Still, I sensed the same sorts of hostility and tension I've been able to practically feel on my skin at that place. Maybe that's what you're supposed to feel after you've been treated as if you have a mental deficiency or character defect when you ask people an honest (though not politically incorrect) question and they attack your integrity or character, or treat you as if you have a mental or character defect.

At least tonight I had dinner with Regina, who used to work at the college. Now she's at LaGuardia Community College, where I used to teach. Ironically (and sadly) enough, she said that she was "traumatized" by her time there. That, in essence, is how I've described my experience at the college in yesterday's posting. For some time after she left, she still expected her current co-workers to act the way her supervisior and the administration at my current college did and still do. In fact, she told me, one of her current co-workers said, "Relax, you're not at (College X) anymore."

At this moment, I envy her that. Of course, I don't want to have no job--or money. I'd just like to be in a situation where more of the people are like Regina, and I don't have to defend myself for trying to do a better job, or simply being who I am.