It’s also more often shortened to just trans people or trans folk. Using “transgender people” can sound a bit stilted.
Quite so. Perhaps “transgender” on first use, and “trans” thereafter.
I don’t quite know why, but “people who are transgender” sounds more natural to my ears that “transgender people.” But that may just be me.
I’d say “trans” has such a well known meaning you probably don’t need to use the full term except when you are trying to be more formal/academic/etc, or are contrasting it with other meanings of the word.
I work in a global 50 company. We have a thriving trans community that I am tangenetially involved in. Outside of the LGBT+ group, everyone’s gender is not a talking point as we all have work to do.
I have been pleasantly surprised at just how much of a non-event it was for my son (originally female) to transition as a high school freshman. For the most part, classmates couldn’t care less. His example allowed a handful of other kids to be more open about being trans as well.
I have one co-worker who I happen to know is transgender, because she mentioned it in an organization-wide meeting for female and nonbinary employees.
There are some other co-workers in the organization who I vaguely think might be transgender and/or nonbinary, but I don’t know for sure and nobody discusses it, because it’s none of our business.
Hell, there are probably some co-workers who vaguely think I might be transgender and/or nonbinary, just based on my not-super-feminine looks. But nobody discusses it, because it’s none of their business.
May I suggest that you don’t insist on the term “transsexual” (especially without even spelling it correctly). In post #9 @ekedolphin correctly explained that this is an outdated term but nearly 20 posts later you’re still using it. Ugh. Think of it as continuing to talk about “negroes” or “colored people.”
I’m not really on board with your question, to tell the truth. It seems as odd as if you’d asked, “I’m interested in anyone’s experiences working with redheads.”
But since you ask, I’ll tell you of my recent experience. We recently accidentally discovered that someone on the board of our non-profit, who recently moved to our community, is a trans man.
Since we love be diverse and welcoming and market ourselves as such, one board member said, “wow, this is great … now we can says we have a trans board member.”
My response to that was, “no, we can’t do that. If [trans board member] wanted us to know he is trans, he would have told us. He did not. I think we can safely assume he just wants to be known as the man he is now, and he’s not interested in exploiting his trans status to help us get funding.”
So we have let sleeping dogs lie, which I believe is the morally correct action. If this Board member had offered us his trans status as something we could use to publicly market our inclusiveness, I’d have been grateful and I would have done so. But he kept quiet about it, which is absolutely his right.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never worked with a trans person. Or maybe I have; I don’t know.
But I’ve known a few, and really, they’re not any different than anybody else. I’ll admit, that it was a little difficult to get used to calling my old friend Peter by her new name as Cynthia, but I dealt; and Cynthia was always forgiving when I called her Peter by mistake.
Like I said, they’re just people. Cynthia still loved slugging back beers with us while watching NFL football, or NHL playoffs. Nobody ever asked her about her motivation; it was more like, “OK, can Brady get himself out of this problem?” Perhaps a good model to follow in the workplace.
In one capacity I’ve interacted with a few people at work who are transgender and specifically discussed transition and other things with them, because one part of my job has been helping people with their transitions in the workplace. Sometimes this happens by word of mouth when people approach me for help, and sometimes HR contacts me and asks me to help. I’ve really enjoyed this and the people I’ve interacted with say they have too. I’ve put together and delivered training sessions to prepare the workplace to accept people if they’ve included a medical leave for surgery as part of their transition, and just done some handholding and monitoring for people who didn’t do any medical leave.
Cisfolk also contact me looking for help with their own interactions with the transgender community as a whole. For example just yesterday afternoon somebody called me for help as they were preparing a diversity discussion about women in the workplace, and wanted to properly manage discussing this without being trans exclusionary while also not trying to deliver a lot of content that was trans specific.
Other than these things, what I do with trans coworkers is not ask them about the state of their genitals or whether they’ve had any medical treatment to change that. Whatever gender they say they are, I just accept that. Which rarely comes up, unless somebody is asking directions to the rest room. This is a great formula for how to interact with anybody who’s transgender, because it’s exactly the same formula I’ve always used with anybody who’s not transgender, and anybody about whom I don’t happen to know if they are trans or cis or anywhere in between (meaning practically everybody I interact with).
My wife had a trans employee at her restaurant. I don’t know if we would have known, but she mentioned it up front when she was hired. All that mattered was that she was a good employee.
For about 20 of my 28 years working as a medical provider for a large nonprofit system, I both worked with trans people (we eventually developed an entire gender health system) and practiced adult transgender medicine. I do ask for preferred pronoun if it isn’t already in the email or chart. In person I would generally use preferred name. Helping people get through and then maintaining transition was a highlight of my (largely) women’s health career and gave me enormous satisfaction. My colleagues who were trans would share stories occasionally, as one woman internist had to travel for surgeries due to her relatively early (70s) transition. She was instrumental in beginning the gender health program. I’m cis and hardwired straight and made some bloopers myself, but the training helped.
I work with a person who either male to female or female to male. Goes by the their initials, so that’s no help. But matters not to me as long they continue to be as efficient as they’ve been in the past in our business dealings.
About 30 years ago we were told that someone was transition female to male and would be using a bathroom on the first floor. I think they said it in case anyone cared. As far as I could tell, no one did. No discussion, no issues, no worries.
To make a long story short… I started work the same day as a guy. We were in class together for a few weeks. After that we were basically friendly but not particularly close, saying Hi in the hall, etc. A few years later, one day in the elevator I noticed he was wearing makeup and a dress. A few days later, I saw him/her in the kitchen (without anyone else there) and I complimented him/her on what they were wearing. Later that day they texted me and said that it really meant a lot that I had said that. So my point is, try to remember how difficult it is for someone to come out or transition, and remember to be kind to them.
I don’t believe I’ve ever even met a transgendered person let alone worked with one. The number who have had that procedure is likely very small. But even if I did, I don’t think it would be a very appropriate topic of discussion.
I have a coworker who was female when I met her, transitioned to male shortly thereafter, and after a few years de-transitioned back to female. When she transitioned she legally changed her first name to a usually male but generally gender-neutral version of her former name (like, for instance, going from ‘Charlotte’ to ‘Charli’ or ‘Samantha’ to ‘Sam’). She changed it back when she de-transitioned, but pretty much everyone still calls her by the gender-neutral version anyway and she’s OK with that.
Fyi, trans refers to having a gender identity different from your sex assigned at birth. Not everyone who is trans has surgery. Some are closeted. Some publicly identify as their gender, but don’t change their body. Some just take hormones (which are amazingly effective at making them “feel” like their preferred gender to random people who met them.) Some have top surgery but not bottom surgery.
But yeah, that’s not a work-appropriate discussion, unless you are also close personally and they bring it up.
And school? I’ve had (college) students who were.
Including the guy who was a big, tough-looking biker, who’d wear his club’s leather jacket to class. Needless to say, I was surprised (as was the whole class) when he casually mentioned it.
That’s awesome.
I find the college kids cut me a little slack, too, due to my age.
I don’t have any coworkers who are trans, but I went to law school with a trans man, and our paths have crossed since on some pro bono projects. In school, he still identified as female, but he presented as a butch lesbian, so it wasn’t a huge shift to see him as a guy instead. (What did surprise me was that his sexual orientation shifted with his gender identity; he’s now married to a man!) He is very open about everything; he blogged about the details of his transition (hormones and top surgery), and also his experiences going off testosterone so he could carry a child. Because of his openness, I would feel comfortable asking follow-up questions, if I had any. But I wouldn’t do it in the workplace; I’d bring it up when we were out to lunch or happy hour, and I’d still preface it by asking if he minded if I asked some questions. If we weren’t close enough to hang out outside of work, I wouldn’t ask. And if he didn’t make that info so public in the first place, I’d err on the side of assuming he didn’t want to talk about it until he brought it up.
One other change that I still haven’t fully made sense of is how my perception of his personality has changed. In school, when he still identified as female, I regarded him as rather arrogant and smug. Since his transition, I have come to see him in a more positive light–“confident” may be a better word. Maybe that’s some latent sexism in me; certainly, those traits are valued more in men than in women by society at large. Perhaps it’s more that becoming his true self has taken the edge off, and he really is a nice guy, instead of a frustrated, defensive, overcompensating woman. Maybe we’ve both grown up a bit in the last decade, becoming more tolerant and tolerable. Maybe it’s something else, or a combination of things. In any case, I feel richer for knowing him.
I do think that the traits that make a man “confident” often make a woman “arrogant”. I feel I’ve run into that, as an arrogant woman. 
Interesting that you noticed a change. I would guess it’s a little of each of those. Most people also mellow with age, and get better at social stuff. And it must be hard to “fit in” when you have gender discord confusing everything.