“How do you deal with it?” my colleague said leaning forward to keep his voice down.
“Cope with what?” I said.
“All the people looking at you, talking about you, laughing…?”
“Where?” I said, turning in my seat to look at the people sitting in the hotel lounge, apparently carrying on their own meetings.
“Oh, they’ve stopped now that you’ve looked,” my colleague replied.
“Who was making comments?” I asked raising my voice a little.
“Leave it,” he said quickly raising his hand a bit, obviously mortified by the thought that she might make a scene and embarrass him even more.
I relaxed. “I manage because I don’t see it,” I told him. “People do it behind my back. They hide their prejudices.”
That was a real incident 10 years ago when I first changed my gender and started my journey to change attitudes towards people who break unwritten gender rules. Since then the law in the UK has changed beyond recognition and most public sector organizations have equality policies in place to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and is protected from discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
People have learned over the last decade not to be seen as discriminatory and will rightly be disciplined if they behave inappropriately. Unfortunately, changing the law does not change attitudes and beliefs. That is much more difficult and the challenge facing organizations today is the unconscious and hidden bias and prejudice that is affecting the way people are treated every day.
My experience over the last decade has confirmed to me that people are prejudiced mainly out of ignorance. Many have never met or talked to anyone who is trans or gay, and have been heavily influenced by homophobic and transphobic comments from friends, family, and the media. They see and hear trans and gay people and their friends being humiliated and ridiculed, often behind their backs, and they feel harassed and silenced.
My voice is still very masculine, so I always have challenges on the phone, but I also have problems on a day-to-day basis. A few weeks ago I attended a workshop and set out to dress in a distinctively feminine way. However, despite that, the taxi driver referred to me as “sir”, as did the employee at the railway information desk.
My partner also has a hard time. She sees people laughing behind my back; she sees staff in stores and offices making faces when they hear my voice. A friend had to endure a transphobic rant from a cashier at a store that he felt I shouldn’t be allowed to use female changing rooms and female toilets. She lost her job the next day.
Prejudice is often very subtle. I see people actively avoiding me or not making eye contact, or making aside comments to a colleague and laughing. I often find that I am not given the same level of customer service, even turning down service over the phone because my voice does not match the gender on my customer record.
And it’s not just me; Often my friends and family are subtly prejudiced simply because they are with me.
I hope some people talk about me behind my back, refer to me with a “he” instead of a “she”, point and laugh when I walk by, but I rarely see or hear any of that. My friends, family and acquaintances do it. When people hide their deep prejudices from me, they show it openly to people who know me, even confronting them about being with me.
What they don’t understand is that my friends, family and acquaintances are just as hurt and upset by their behavior and comments as I would be if they didn’t hide it from me. And this could also be happening every day in your organization.
Sometimes when people are victims of this subtle discrimination and prejudice, they complain; we mostly don’t. We just don’t go back, and we tell our friends.
And remember that it is the organization that gets a bad rap for homophobic and transphobic behavior, not individual staff members.
The solution is to make sure that everyone receives awareness training and, where possible, training by people who have the protected characteristic that is being addressed. I’ve seen some incredibly entertaining trainers who are trans, gay, have cerebral palsy, burn victims, etc.
Talking about prejudices is not enough. We have to confront our hidden biases in order to address them.