Three Ways You Can Be a Transgender Ally in the Workplace Today

When I shared my “Hello, world” article on LinkedIn last month, I expected it to only be noticed by a handful of former and current coworkers. I meant the post as an “FYI” with a minor plug for this blog–although anyone who’s ever started a blog knows how unlikely it is that your content will actually be read by anyone other than family 😂

Based on a similar announcement I had made on Instagram, I expected maybe a hundred reactions and comments from people I knew, and that would be awesome. The visible support of one hundred people for a professional change as vulnerable (and, in my mind, as radical) as a name and gender switch in the workplace would feel very protective, and that protection would mean a lot. It would mean that at least one person would smile at me in the men’s room when we get back into the office (or at least not be majorly awkward). It would mean that at least one person would know why my voice was breaking and getting deeper as I lead our weekly syncs. It might even mean that at least one person would side thread a coworker who accidentally misgendered me or called me by my birth name and gently correct them.

You might imagine my shock when, two weeks later, the post was still alive and had reached the feeds of over 50,000 people with over 1,000 reactions. Did you think that so many people would support and encourage a transition in the workplace? I did not, and what a wonderful, empowering surprise.

It’s clear from the messages I’ve received publicly and privately that people care about being a trans* ally, and are eager for more information on how to do so. This blog post is dedicated to a few things you can start doing in the workplace today to become an even better ally.

Add your pronouns to your display name.

• Why? We need to normalize declaring pronouns, because assuming that your pronouns are “obvious” is actually a cisgender privilege many do not have. I haven’t been called “Sir” or “Mister” once yet, including on phone calls. Comically/tragically, I have been called “Miss Jude”, “Judy” and “June”, all because it is assumed that I am a woman based on my voice.
• How? Start with LinkedIn (see the bottom of this post for instructions) and your work’s chat app. Once that feels comfortable to you, update your Gmail signature and Zoom name.

Learn about gender and sex, why they are not the same thing, and why neither is binary.

• Why? We’re never really taught this in school (even in sex ed!), but “sex” is biological (male, female, intersex, DSD) and “gender” is social (woman, man, nonbinary, trans*, agender, gender-fluid, and many more). This is why you might hear people say that “gender is a social construct”; in my own life, this resonates via something that a therapist said when I first came out as nonbinary: gender identity is comparable to stars and planets in a universe. Everyone has their own unique identity, and the oversimplification of this huge piece of you is typically quite harmful over time.
• How? You’re already on your way! Feel free to read the “Why?” again and call it a day, or check out one of these articles: [Trevor Project] Trans + Gender Identity, [CNN] Gender identity: The difference between gender, sex and other need-to-knows

Introduce yourself with your name and pronouns.

• Why: same as “Add your pronouns to your display name” above.
• How: Start with interviews. When you hop on a phone/Zoom call with a candidate, say your usual greeting but add “My name is [name] and my pronouns are [pronouns]”. For me, this greeting is: “My name is Jude and my pronouns are he/him.” This will feel awkward for a bit, and I myself am still getting into this habit. But normalizing it will go SUCH a long way towards building a relationship with the candidate (it signals that gender inclusivity is something that you and your company care about) and will make the world a safer place for people like me who don’t “pass” in their gender.

These three things are just the first steps a person can take to become a trans* ally in the workplace. In future posts, I’ll cover more advanced steps you can take to be an even stronger ally in the workplace and steps you can take to become an ally in other areas of your life (I’m particularly excited to do a post for parents). Until then, please feel free to ask any of your ally-related questions in the comments below.

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