Transformed

1/11/2014

There is a guy where I work named John Smith.  He is the manager in another department.  I only have to talk to him occasionally.  When I do, it might be every day for a couple of weeks and then several months before I have to work with him again.  He is good at what he does and easy to work with.  We seem to get along ok, but only ever talk about work.

One day, I needed his help after no interactions with him in many months. So I tried to send him an instant message over our company’s network.  He was not on there.  That’s kinda weird, but maybe the network was down.  I tried the next day.  Same thing.  OK. Maybe he doesn’t connect to instant messaging anymore.  I will send him an email.  He is not in email directory.  Let me check the alternate phone and seating directory.  No there either.  He must have left the company.  Since I am not in his department, there is nothing unusual about me not knowing that he would have left.  So, I decide to look up his former subordinates and see who they now report to.  It seems they now report to Jane Smith.  What a coincidence!  The new manager has the same last name as the old manager.

Before going to meet Jane and ask her for her help, I talk to one of my coworkers in my own department who used to work with John much more closely than I did.  I asked if he had heard that John had left the company.  He told me that John had not left.  I am now totally confused.  

You may guess where this is going based on the title I gave it, but before I continue with John and Jane, let me tell you more about me.

I am one of those raised-in-the-south evangelical Southern Baptists Christians that sided with Chik-Fil-A, the Boy Scouts, and Duck Dynasty. I supported DOMA.  I believe in the adage that recommends you “hate the sin and love the sinner” which shows that I believe 1) there is such a thing as sin and 2) homosexuality is one.  I am believe it can be “cured” with counseling.  I know that to many, that makes me an outdated, uneducated, homophobe suffering from cognitive dissonance.

While I do not see gay rights as an extension of the civil rights from the 1960’s, I can certainly see that it has moved across our culture in a similar manner.  I am repulsed by racist ideology and can not fathom how someone’s skin color can determine their worth.  The very ideas of segregation, slavery and apartheid are an enigma to me.  So too is the link that is drawn between gay rights and civil rights and yet the movements are strikingly similar.  Not long ago, I watched “Guess Who Is Coming To Dinner” from 1967 which chronicles two affluent families trying to cope with the idea of a mixed race marriage.  The overall implication was that society was moving forward with new ideas about race and each of us could move forward as well or be left behind in the past.  I graduated high school in 1989 and was very unaware of any gay rights movement.  While the practice is thousand’s of years old, it’s acceptance is not.  It is remarkable to me in just 25 years how public perception has been transformed.  I love to listen to public radio except for the fact that they overwhelming condemn any person not forward enough to openly embrace homosexualtiy as a genetic fact and not a choice.  Many of the shows I watch on TV often portray religious people in a negative light.  The word ‘homophobe’ is attached to anyone that dares to disagree with the cause of gay rights.  Anyone labeled as such can expect the same condemnation as someone labeled ‘racist’.  Some other time I would like to discuss why this offends me and the intolerance of the tolerant.  Suffice it to say that my views are rapidly becoming outdated and unpopular.  Many corporations have fallen in line and added “sexual orientation and transgender status” to the litany of discriminations guarded against in their Equal Employment Opportunity statement.  Such companies may also hold seminars from time to time in order to encourage employees to better understand and accept those that fall into such categories.  Mine is one such company.  The vice president over our department (my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss) is openly gay and once spoke at such a seminar.

This brings us back to John and Jane and the point that my company strongly supports ideas that I do not.  

When I asked my coworker what he meant, he said that John now goes by Jane.  After pressing him to some degree to explain he showed me an email that he had received several weeks prior.  It said that our company supports gender identity of it’s employees and that John has now decided to identify as female and was to be treated as such for now forward.  The email was only sent to those that worked closely with John and was not to be forwarded or copied.

I was shocked to say the least.  John never seemed any different to me before and gave no indication that he was not comfortable with his born gender.  He was not feminine or effeminate in any way that I could discern.

I spoke with a few other coworkers that I knew worked with John and they were equally surprised.  While most of them tend to support the same ‘homophobic’ views as I do, the general consensus was “whatever floats your boat”.  

I decided to do a “drive by”.  Jane works on a different floor so I walked down to her floor.  I walked by her office and looked in quickly and kept walking.  Sure enough, to quote Aerosmith, “Dude Looks Like A Lady”.  Jane was wearing a long haired wig and a women’s blouse.  She also had some flowers on her desk and a purse in the corner.

I had confirmed that John was now Jane.  Whatever I thought of the transformation did not change the fact that I needed to work with her to get my job done.  The next day, I sent her an instant message.  After chatting for few minutes, it became clear that I needed to go to her office to work side by side.  The conversation suddenly went silent.  I then informed her that I was aware of her recent change.  After she consented, I went down to her office.

Looking at her face to face, I noticed that, not surprisingly, she had the exact same features as John.  She was John.  Except now she is Jane.  Not knowing what to say, I begin to immediately talk about the work issue, completely ignoring the elephant in the room.  She helped me with what I needed and I was on my way.

I related the meeting to the previous mentioned coworkers.  Only one expressed dismay and the others were more bewildered than anything.  I found myself in the very odd positioning of not so much defending or condoning what John had done, but rather encouraging my peers to accept it and move on.  I began to use the name “Jane” exclusively as well as feminine pronouns.

Several weeks passed and another occasion arose for a face to face meeting.  This time I took a coworker with me that I was training.  On the way down, I asked if he had ever met John Smith.  He said no, so I just said to nevermind.  I did not see a need to inform him that a guy he never met was now dressed like a girl.  We went down, conducted our business and left.  My coworker never mentioned anything about it, so neither did I.  

A few days after that, I went down there again, but this time by myself.  As we sat there working on our project it occurred to me that Jane had the exact same speech pattern and mannerisms as John.  There was no change in voice.  If I closed my eyes, I would never know that something was amiss.

This is when it hit me.  Jane was still the same person as before.  She deserved the same normal human respect as before and the same respect due to anyone.  I did not feel ill will toward her what so ever.  In fact, I felt compassion.  John felt so out of place, so misunderstood, and so conflicted, that the best way he saw fit to address it was to cross genders and identify with the opposite gender.  He was willing to risk everything not the least of which was exclusion from his friends and family to present himself in a different way.  That requires some pretty strong feelings of desperation to go through with it.

Don’t get me wrong.  I still don’t think it is right or normal or ok.  But on the other hand, it doesn’t really matter what I think.  It only matters what Jane thinks.  For me to come to this conclusion was rather a shock.  It seems that John was not the only one that was transformed.