Return to Office

Back in 2020, I was privileged to have a job that could be done fully remote from my home with a company that, when COVID first hit, immediately sent us to work from home. I’m sure you’ll recall the feeling that we’d hunker down for a couple of weeks and things would then go back to normal and the feeling then when things never really did go back to normal.

At that point, I still lived as a man and was doing my darnedest to fulfill the role I was told to have. I had a good job that paid the bills. I worked every day and came home to my very stereotypical All American family: wife, son, daughter, dog, cat. I wore suits every day even though there was no specific dress code. It helped me stand out in a good way; I’ve never been great at Networking but I was recognized as The Guy in the Suit by everyone who saw me and being The Guy in the Suit has relatively positive implications in Corporate America. Pretty sure I received at least one promotion mainly due to this.

Even though I was trying very hard to be the quintessential White Collar Worker Man, my true self would peak out in some small ways. I immediately joined the Pride employee resource group even though I thought was the straightest, cis-est guy around. I considered myself a staunch trans ally, in particular. There were a couple of times that I (hypothetically, I thought) would consider what it would be like if I were trans - how that would impact my life of going to work and going home and going to work and going home. I had worked pretty hard to cultivate my professional image and I became scared of the (hypothetical) thought of changing my presentation, (hypothetically) asking people to make room for my identity rather than fulfilling the role other people have given me.

In retrospect, The Office was a prison. Or, perhaps, part of a prison my Good Kid tendencies and only Masculine Ideal I could achieve built. The suit was my prison uniform. Society was my warden. As long as I was locked away it would be challenging to accept who I truly was.

Then we were sent home.

The first thing was my hair. I didn’t like getting haircuts. My pattern was that when I got a haircut I would ask for the shortest “business professional” haircut. Close-ish shaved in the back and sides, but just enough length on top I could comb it to the side. If you google “short men’s business hair cuts” it will be the least interesting looking style. I would then let it grow out as long as I could - basically until it became “unprofessional”. This was usually about every 6 months.

Working from home, I didn’t have to worry about “unprofessional”. While “other” men I knew were anxious about their shaggy hair and figuring out how to trim their hair at home, I relished in seeing how long my hair could grow.

I no longer wore suits. I wore pajamas. My appearance no longer mattered. We didn’t even do meetings on camera. My work persona was entirely conveyed in chat, emails, and phone calls. This gave me much more freedom to just be who I wanted to be rather than expending so much energy on being who I thought I should be.

It did take some time. Fortunately, my employer wasn’t in a rush to bring everyone back in, even after society stopped collectively caring about the ongoing pandemic. In 2021, I began using the extra time I gained from not having to get ready and commute to/from work to pursue my own goals, albeit only remotely. In 2022, I felt comfortable enough getting out and about that I, well, went out and about and pursued goals in person which meant meeting people and interacting with people. This lead to, in 2023, finally recognizing my True Self and beginning to transition.

I continued to benefit from not working in an office with co-workers and strangers. I didn’t have to suffer comments from practical strangers about why I shaved my beard. I didn’t have to worry about what people would think as I started to dress different. I didn’t have to wonder if people were aware enough to notice my body changing or be concerned about what they thought about it if they did. I only needed to “come out” to people I wanted to. I had freedom to find out who I am without broadcasting it to a full office building.

It cannot be stressed enough: working from home was freedom. It wasn’t until I was freed from the shackles of expectations regarding my appearance and persona that I felt able to open up and just be myself. There are plenty of (i.e. most) transgender people who don’t get that privilege and have to worry about the stares and opinions of their peers as they discover themselves. They have to decide whether to stay in the closet at work and find secret spaces to be authentic or open themselves up for harassment and judgement. I’m very lucky to not have been forced to make those decisions.

This week, my employer expects everyone to return to the office full time.

There are the common complaints from the majority of employees: this costs employees time and money from getting “office ready” in the morning and the commute in to work and back home each day; there has been no loss in productivity from working from home, so there is no tangible benefit for forcing people in to the office; people crowded in to an office space day in and out increases the risk of spreading illnesses; many people will be forced to pay out of pocket for daycare or even buy a new car to enable them to be in the office each day; many teams are not limited to a single geographic location causing meetings to be virtual anyway and in person collaboration to be rare; etc.

These are all very valid concerns with returning to the office full time arbitrarily. But I (and other transgender employees) have additional concerns and even fears.

Speaking for myself, I never made a wide announcement at work regarding my transition. Some people do; I did not. I shared only my name change with those that I worked directly with so I could be addressed properly. I updated my corporate info so those who encountered me for the first time wouldn’t be confused by a discrepancy. That was it. What people made of it I left to their imagination. So long as they referred to me by the right name I wasn’t worried about what they thought.

I’ve switched teams since then. There are some people I work with now that I’ve worked with before and they probably can gather what happened. Others who didn’t know me before may or may not just accept me as a woman at face value. Either way, I don’t know what they think or how they perceive me and I don’t particularly care because it doesn’t really matter so long as they refer to me with the right name and pronouns.

Being in person changes that dynamic and widens the sphere of people I need to be concerned about. I know for a fact there are plenty of people in the same office who (in the language of the oppressor) would “not agree” with the “lifestyle choices” I have made - i.e. would prefer I didn’t exist. Company policy ostensibly still protects me (for now, anyway), but being visible in person opens me up to forms of judgement or harassment that aren’t particularly possible (or likely) in virtual spaces. It is harder to act on a slur or insult whispered while passing in a hallway compared to a persistent chat or a group call.

The current state of the country and the active erasure of trans people empowers people to act on their hate and bigotry. If the president of the US has declared transgender people as a whole dishonorable and dishonest and a Congresswoman can shout transphobic slurs without consequence, why shouldn’t the common person also be empowered to fight against the trans ideology, they might think.

The long and short of it is that being in the office opens me and other transgender employees of this company to harassment, discrimination, and assault that we don’t have to face when interacting primarily through a screen. This isn’t an unfounded fear. This is not guesswork. This is known through the experiences of other transgender individuals who were not privileged to have an employer who allowed everyone to work from home for 5 years.

I’m disappointed. I’m frustrated. I’m scared. I’m angry. But I’m past the point of complying without word. I’ll raise my concerns. I’ll share the data. I’ll warn them of the danger they’re placing me and others like me in and make them state they don’t care. Maybe it’ll all be fine, but if its not people will know. I am increasingly feeling powerless due to the state of world, but I’ll use what I got and do what I can.