Thread by @aidapsibr, I haven't shared my work coming out story in awhile.I came out [...]

I haven't shared my work coming out story in awhile.

I came out to my manager (our HR has been super tiny and more focused on recruiting). I was told to send an email explaining the transition to the engineering department (~80 mostly men).

I declined and said nobody should be asked to that and that I feared if I did that, I would be setting an expectation for trans people who followed and came out while working there. It was contentious, lots of downplaying my concerns, a bit of mockery...

And maybe even a possibly? trans person coming out before I did and they did it that way? I couldn't find any reference to that, and I remember that person quit upset. So, if real, only validated my concern, because here I was being pressured to do it the same way.

I ended up with a compromise I still hated, but did anyway: I talked to each member of my team (I was the architect) individually and allowed them to ask questions, understand name and pronouns etc.

I was lucky this wasn't a miserable experience, the people I work with are OK.

There was one awkward experience where I tried to understand the concern a non-native English speaker had and ended up over sharing, not grossly, but still, a position I never should have been put in.

Turns out that employee has family that are trans and just didn't understand why I was pulling them into a room to talk about trans topics. They didn't get the context that I was effectively being forced to talk about my gender and sex with a professional colleague. FAIR!

I talked to HR about it later when I brought other complaints and they essentially said it never should have happened, but they can't expect managers to know to ask HR, so I should have known to engage with HR, huh?

I think at that time HR may have been expanded to 2 people?

There was no playbook, managers weren't expected to know how to escalate, and I was blamed for going to my manager, but also apologized to about it.

So far this was 10 people, 70 to go.

I was being told I can't expect people to use my name or pronouns without an email.

After the negative experience with 1-1 conversations and KNOWING the inappropriateness I was being told to engage in and would inevitably encounter in a reply somewhere that nobody else would see as an issue: I decided I wasn't playing along.

The summer party came about and without having come out to more than 13 people in engineering, I just wore a dress. Now I'm a baby, so I wore it tucked into jean shorts as a blouse at first. As I got more comfortable, I wore it as a dress. In front of 200 people who knew me as he

It was wonderful. I got face painted and spent time with a new coworker who is a woman and now my best ally. Nobody said anything negative, only affirmation. Nobody asked why I was in a dress or was smiley or why I suddenly wanted to dance. They just... let me.

The next Monday I had a talk to give to all of engineering with the architect team. I think my talk was on Azure App Services performance with asp. net optimization and performance analysis.

About 30 minutes before, I switched the intro deck to say Aida and gave the presentation

Nobody missed a beat. A few people asked for pronouns, a few asked if I'd be comfortable talking about what it was like, but everyone was comfortable and engaged and had already seen me there, out, proud. That's something an email could never do, convince people you are you.

I hope someone can learn from this that the best way for someone to come out is however they want to come out. It's their experience and they need to live it. Dont try to protect us from cruel monsters, it shows us you have some cruel thoughts. Just be by our side and let us lead

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