TRANSSEXUALS IN THE WORK PLACE
A GUIDE FOR EMPLOYERS
By Barbara L. Chambers, contributing editor (WEST COAST)
Gender Expressions Magazine grants permission for this
material to be freely copied and distributed provided
that the article is reproduced in its entirety and this
notice is retained intact.
To the employer:
possibly you were presented this material by one of your employees,
quit likely soon after learning that the employee was
undergoing or had already undergone a "sex change." Much
information and misinformation abounds in the media, but
little of it is helpful to the employer in comprehending the
new status of their employee. Also, small or new companies
are likely to have never encountered such a change in
status before; hopefully the text that follows will be
useful and informative.
This article is written in respect to the case of the
male-to-female employee; however,most of the information applies
identically to the female-to-male employee if the sense of the
pronouns and gender-specific statements is reversed. The remainder
of the text is presented in question/answer format.
What IS a transsexual?
The answer to this question is best given in rather technical
medical terms. Strictly speaking, a transsexual is a
person with the condition known as Gender Dysphoria
Syndrome, a psychiatric term which means "feelings of
conflict and discomfort felt by a person due to the
anatomical gender of their body". Research indicates that
Gender Dysphoria Syndrome is the psychological condition
which results from a birth defect in the matching of
brain and body, similar and perhaps related to the
condition known as intersex, in which a child's body at
birth has genitalia which are not clearly ether male or
female or has the characteristic of both male and female.
Inother words, transsexuals are persons born with a perfectly
normal and healthy brain of one gender, but in a body with a
perfectly healthy and normal anatomy of the opposite gender. The
affected person lives with a struggle to reconcile their natural
personality, gender identity, and body image with their physical
body and social status until a time in their life when the conflict
becomes too great to bear and they seek medical help to change their
anatomy and social role. No effective psychotherapeutic treatment
for transsexualism exists, since the only defect is the mismatch of
body and brain, and a heathly gender identity (even a mismatched one)
cannot be changed; therefore the only effective treatment is to
surgically change the gender of the body to align with the person's
natural gender identity, a "sex change." Such treatment is effective
in relieving the secondary problems of depression, low self esteem,
and anxiety which often accompanies gender dysphoria,and thepatient
is then able to pursue a normal life in their new gender.
Today, transsexuals are potentially valuable research subjects in
the new studies of pre-birth programming of gender identity and
personality into the brain during fetal development,though the rarity
and desire for privacy of transsexual persons often
makes the gathering of data difficult. At present there is
little agreement in the medical community as to the cause of a person
being born transsexual; researchers and physicians today are largely
divided into groups advancing theories of ethergenetic cause or
fetal-development causes. Environmental
conditions seen to have an effect on how long the individual
isable to adapt to their reversed-gender life situation before
seeking medical help to correct it. Transsexualism is rare
occurring at a rate of one in every ten thousand births.
Currently no method capable of detecting the condition at birth is known.
Why aren't there female to male transsexual person?
There certainly are: about 45% of all transsexuals are female
to male. Male to female transsexuals receive the largest amount of
exposure thought the media of TV and print, apparently because
they are considered more "newsworthy" in our traditionally
male-oriented society.
Are Transsexual persons homosexual?
No, transsexualism has nothing directly to do with sexuality
at all; the "sex" root of the word refers to gender rather
than sexual preference. This misconception, largely disappearing
today, apparently resulted from public confusion of transsexuals
with two much larger groups: effeminate homosexuals (gay
males imitating feminine mannerisms or dress as an expression
oftheir sexuality) and transvestites (males, usually heterosexual,
who find enjoyment in wearing female clothing); neither of these
two groups has the body-identity gender conflicts which are
experienced by transsexuals and lead to an eventual change of
physical gender. Transvestites out number transsexuals by at
least 50 to 1; gay males out number transsexuals by about 900 to 1. in
addition, these other two groups are composed entirely of males only;
transsexuals are nearly evenly divided between male-to-female cases
and female-to-male cases. Transsexual, both before and following surgery,
may be heterosexual, bisexual, Lesbian, or celibate, with the proportion
of celibacy being some what higher than with the general population of women.
transsexuals are NOT members of any known AIDS high-risk group.
Dose this effect our company's medical insurance?
Many group insurance policies have specific exclusions which
limit or eliminate payments for transsexual surgery; if your
policy has no such exclusions, your employee may seek coverage
for medical expenses under your current plan. Insurance companies
with exclusion provisions do so only because the surgical costs
are expensive--surgical and hormonal treatment for transsexuals
has ben legally established as medical necessary treatment, and
not cosmetic in nature. An insurance company might, for instance,
have similar exclusion for liver transplants, another vary
expensive procedure. Whether or not your insurance company
provides coverage, it should not affect your rates.
Will this affect the productivity of my employee?
Often, the employee in their new gender role is more productive
and produces higher quality work than in the past, due to improvement
in their own self-esteem and motivation. Time off from work to recover
from surgery procedures may be necessary, however--but it should be
noted that your employee will have no need for maternity leave in the
future since she will not be ableto bear children, so net time lost from
work may prove to be less than in the case of your other female employees.
the process of changing gender usually takes several years to
complete, with surgical, hormonal, and social changes progressing
at different rates with different individuals; you can expect a
dramatic change in her appearance and in expression of her personality.
Your employee may already have completed much ormost of the
transition before advising you. Transsexuals are often conservative
individuals and frequently set high standards on their appearance and
performance following their gender change.
If your employee is doing heavy physical work, bear in mind that her
entire muscular structure will change to femalenorms. and she
May not handle task requiring physical strength aseasily as she
did before. [The opposite applies to the female-to-male, of course.]
How do other companies handel this?
With the increased public awareness of transsexuals today, the
major problem which remains is that the employee is an object of
curiosity among co-workers for several days following her appearance
in her new gender role. Vary large corporations with large numbers of
employees may encounter a transsexual employee every few years, and
often set up internal guidelines. in nearly all cases. a memo is
circulated among co-workers informing them simply that the employee
will return to work at a certain date as a female employee.
Some companies call a short meeting of co-workers at which management
and the employee is present to inform them of the change and to answer
questions which may appear; this techniqueis particularly effective in
keeping the transition smooth.
One company (IBM) also transfer the employee laterally for
several months to a different department; at the end of than
time she is given the option of ether returning to her
original department or staying in her new position.
If the employee is new to the company sometimes no action at
all is nessary,since her former gender status may be undetectable
to others, or even to management itself.
What is my employee's legal
status?
Upon completion of her surgery, under state law in every stat sheis
consider to be female, and entitled to all the considerations
applying to that gender. There are differences in detail of how
administrative law handles such cases from state to state
-- your employee will take care of any needed legal matters concerning
state and federal identification papers, tax status,social security,
and legal name change herself. Please note that for employers
participating in a state-subsidized equal- employment plan, your
employee may now be a "double bones" person, fitting into both the
female and handicapped categories, and entitling the company to a
substantial subsidy(details vary from state to state.)
