Work Recently
Jul. 10th, 2009 05:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmuppetNew Boss continues to impress me. Today during some casual group conversation he'd talked about a story from his past that happened to involve a trans woman. Although there wasn't any hostility in what he said, it did hit me a little wrong. We just spent 15 minutes talking about it; he was apologetic, and happy to learn a simple rule about pronouns (use the pronoun a person chooses, just as you'd use the version of their name by which they introduce themselves). I'm pleased with his response, and more pleased that the environment he's creating made that conversation possible.
Edit: Originally a post from my b'berry, so a bit more context, while I'm not having to thumb-type.
I'd already ended up explicitly coming out to New Boss during our long, rambling conversation last week. He handled that without batting an eye, and generally feels like friendly people. Given that he's a straight guy coming out of a military background, which tends to lower my expectations in terms of cluefulness, he's generally remarkably on the ball. In the conversation today that'd bothered me, it was mostly the way he was handling pronouns that was bothering me, and when I came into his office to say that it had kind of hit me wrong, he was really receptive in a way that's somewhat rare, and sorry that it had come across as at all negative toward trans folk, and not toward his own awkwardness, which is what he was intending to joke about.
A lot of why work is so much less stressful now is that he's really honestly interested in feedback, and seems to have a pattern of treating his employees respectfully. As I explained to him when we talked tonight, mostly I was happy I was comfortable enough to come talk to him about what had bothered me, and get it sorted out. And although he'd probably need some further education about trans issues, if he were to have an employee transition on the job, I'm pretty sure he'd be an ally.
Edit: Originally a post from my b'berry, so a bit more context, while I'm not having to thumb-type.
I'd already ended up explicitly coming out to New Boss during our long, rambling conversation last week. He handled that without batting an eye, and generally feels like friendly people. Given that he's a straight guy coming out of a military background, which tends to lower my expectations in terms of cluefulness, he's generally remarkably on the ball. In the conversation today that'd bothered me, it was mostly the way he was handling pronouns that was bothering me, and when I came into his office to say that it had kind of hit me wrong, he was really receptive in a way that's somewhat rare, and sorry that it had come across as at all negative toward trans folk, and not toward his own awkwardness, which is what he was intending to joke about.
A lot of why work is so much less stressful now is that he's really honestly interested in feedback, and seems to have a pattern of treating his employees respectfully. As I explained to him when we talked tonight, mostly I was happy I was comfortable enough to come talk to him about what had bothered me, and get it sorted out. And although he'd probably need some further education about trans issues, if he were to have an employee transition on the job, I'm pretty sure he'd be an ally.
