The Transgender Role to Equality By Michael Taylor
SARAH slouches in a chair outside of Reflections Café. She says she is tired from working late the previous night. The only way I can tell Sarah used to be a man is the slight glimpse of an adam’s apple I caught when she adjusted her scarf. She keeps fidgeting with her sunglasses as she tells me about her previous life, when she was known as Andrew.
Andrew graduated from UMass-Dartmouth in 2003 with a degree in Business Administration. He began working for a local retail chain shortly after as an assistant manager. In 2006, Andrew decided that he was going to transition from male to female. “It was something that I had always wanted to do,” says Sarah. “I always knew I was born in the wrong body and I needed to become the inner me.”
Andrew began taking hormones and letting his hair grow out. He took on the name Sarah, and then began to buy and wear women’s clothing. “The one thing left for me to do was come out at work,” she says. “Everyone knew that I was gay, but nobody knew this.” Andrew went in to speak with a representative from his employer’s Human Resources department and explained his intentions. He was told that the company would do what ever it could to support him. Sarah claims, “They showed me support alright, right out the door.” She lost her job two weeks after first reporting for duty as Sarah. “Some of the co-workers laughed at me, they harassed me and they wouldn’t share the restroom with me,” she says with tears in her eyes, “It was so hard to deal with that.”
When Sarah went back to HR to report the harassment, she was told that she was creating a disruption in the workplace and was fired. Sarah ended up having her car repossessed, she was evicted from her apartment and had no money coming in. “I looked everywhere, nobody would hire me,” she says with anger in her voice. “I lost my car and my apartment. I probably wouldn’t have hired me either. I didn’t have an address or transportation.”
Just like so many transgender Americans, Sarah now calls a local homeless shelter home. She makes a living as a prostitute here in Providence. “I’m not proud of it, but I need to make money,” she says. “I can’t afford to have reassignment surgery, and I can barely afford the hormones.People take one look at me and say, ‘nope…not gonna her.’ It’s a shame; I have a college education and hooker.” There are thousands of transgender Americans who find themselves in similar situations.
With the debate on Marriage Equality heating up in Rhode Island, another civil rights issue is expected to take center stage on a national level this month. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act will be re-introduced to Congress by Rep. Barney Frank. The bill known as ENDA would provide employment protections specifically directed toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees throughout the U.S. There are currently only 25 states, including Rhode Island, along with the District of Columbia that have laws protecting against workplace discrimination based on both sexual orientation and gender identity with pending legislation in 6 additional states. That means it is legal in the other 25 states to be fired or refused employment based on one’s gender identity and expression.
Trans-employees are presented with unique, daily challenges in the workplace, assuming they were even hired to begin with. There are many companies and corporations that have equal opportunity employment policies prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and expression, trans-employees still face the possibilities of discrimination and harassment from co-workers, being denied health insurance, and even getting passed over for promotions. Members of the trans-community earn an average annual income of just over $15,000. Many, like Sarah, resort prostitution just to make ends meet and purchase needed hormones on the black market. There is a 35% unemployment rate in the trans-community. That rate is 8 times higher than that of the general U.S. population and the poverty rate is 5 times higher, not to mention that trans-Americans are 31% more likely to commit suicide. Those differences are direct results of discrimination, nothing else.
State laws that protect trans-employees from discrimination do not guarantee it will not occur and we are not doing enough to end it. It is the responsibility of every employer in this country to treat all of their employees with dignity and respect. Employers need to be proactive in eradicating employment discrimination so that they can utilize the skills and abilities that trans-Americans, such as Sarah, can bring into the workplace. Passing ENDA is not the cure, it is a beginning, and it is the right thing to do.