A day late? Scandalous! I have very good reason however. I wanted to see how my fight for workplace equality went.
I work at Wendy's, which has a strong anti-discrimination policy. However, I have an issue with the managers it would seem. They almost all call me by my birth name. This is troublesome because I present female at work. It literally is psychologically tolling and physical endangerment. The wrong person hears I'm trans and I could be beat up on the way home.
The ACLU caught wind of my complaining. They expressed wishes to use me as a reasonability request for making workplace policy in NJ to have mandatory social recognition rights for trans workers. As a medically diagnosed GID patient, I shouldn't be subjected to mental attacks such as being referred to as my temporarily legal name. All of my co-workers respect me. Hell, we have a drag queen there as well. However, I don't want my superiors to ass-ume ignorantly that the fact that he still identifies male means I must too. I have attempted to explain this to some of the managers. One had the gall to respond "Well, that's not the name on the sheet, so I'm not calling you that". Know how some people have that mental thought they wish they could yell but don't? I don't have that. I yelled back at her, "Yeah? Check my name tag, listen up to everyone around you, you're the only one a prick enough to disrespect a medical condition. Marianne (the general manager) would LOVE to hear this, no?"
She never went to Marianne about it, though I did set the restaurant on fire later that day to make a point. (I only set the fryer on fire, and that's a lie. it was my stupidity that did it xD).
My problem is... I don't WANT a lawyer getting involved. Do you know how awesome it would be to be able to make it legally obligated to be recognized as your actual gender in the workplace? But I don't want to have a lawyer involved to do that. I talked to Marianne, and hopefully it stops.
Is it weird that I can't trust in the law? This class is all about public policy and law, yet, I don't trust in getting law involved. Am I scared? Is the world scared? It's not that I'm afraid of outing myself to the state. I've done that already. Why are people so afraid to believe that fighting for what's right will get you anywhere? I realize now that this is why so many things are silenced. People fear they are alone in their thoughts and don't do anything about it. (That, and people could lose their jobs over suing the workplace, and I need the money.)
So that's my two cents. I'm interested to see how things will go the next time I go to work. Fuck the man.
I have to say actually, at least part of the lesson that can probably be taken away from this class is that the law isn't necessarily reliable...
ReplyDeletehave a great break!
-WW