The Trans Job Search
Since early December I’ve been applying for summer jobs. I’m trying to find a more corporate job where I can learn the applicable side of sales and marketing to bring back to my social entrepreneurship. But this job search has been really different from the last few in a couple of ways. First, I’m applying to corporate jobs instead of nonprofit (where being transgender did not make a significant difference) or entrepreneurial work. Second, I’m applying to as many jobs as possible and seeing what happens rather than focusing all of my energy on one or two job applications. Third, this is the first time I’m applying for jobs being openly transgender and using the name Elliot in my applications, while still using my dead name on the contractual and legal parts.
The summer of 2018 I worked at the Feminist Majority Foundation, where I was able to openly be the only transgender person in the office, and one of few gender non-conforming people. Before that in 2017 I interned for an organization called Student Painters.
Student Painters was an entrepreneurship internship where I was a branch manager of a house painting business for a summer. It’s a male-dominated space, and an incredibly difficult experience. The benefit of making it through months of rigor and stress and overwork is that the managers always offer to be a reference for their alumni. One of the harder parts of the internship was that the contract of nondiscrimination in employment did not explicitly protect me from being discriminated against based on sexuality or gender identity. I could have been fired the entire time for being pansexual and nonbinary/trans. So when I worked there I stayed very closeted. I didn’t tell anyone that worked there about my sexuality and I certainly didn’t tell anyone that I was starting to socially transition as nonbinary.
Open is a relative term. I do not list “transgender” on my resume, but I do have LGBTQ organizations on it. I do not openly tell people the reasons, but “Pronouns: they/them” is in my email signature. I don’t introduce myself as trans, but I will answer honestly when asked. I don’t tell people why, but my legal name that I sign documents with and my name I apply under are two different names.
There are a few really important lessons I’ve been learning as I’ve been applying to jobs. The first is that when the job applications ask if you’re Male, Female, or Choose not to Disclose, picking “Choose not to Disclose” is a lie and a trap. If you pick that you are almost guaranteed to go in a pile of “no’s”. So that leaves me to chose “Female” on those forms, which is a lie and inaccurate description, because my gender is not female.
I’ve applied for 75 jobs like this, doing dozens of phone screen interviews with varying degrees of success. I had yet to move past a phone screen interview until this week, when I heard that I made it to the face-to-face interview with a Logistics company.
Coincidentally, I also ran into an old boss, Ryan, from Student Painters yesterday. Ryan greeted me by saying, “Hey Julia”, which took me aback right away. Sometimes I forget that people genuinely know me as a different name because I haven’t taken the time to tell them otherwise. He offered to be a reference for me in the future, which he does every time he sees me. I like this, because it reminds me that the hard work I put in was not in vain, and that the managers take their word seriously. But it also made me very nervous, and I had a realization that I hadn’t had before - what happens if he gives me a reference under the name Julia Draznin, instead of Elliot Draznin, but I’ve applied for the job under Elliot Draznin.
Do I tell him that I’ve come out? Do I tell him to use a different name? Would he still give me a reference? Would he still say hello to me? He saw my name tag at the career fair and it said Elliot - does he care to ask why? Would I totally jeopardize my entire future by doing it? This new job might want to check in with past employers, where they will find out I went by a different name. Will they still want to hire me? If they ask why I had a different name I can lie, or I can come out and tell the truth about it. I can risk the fact that Ohio doesn’t protect my employment status and just hope I get a job anyway.
I’m scared. I’m scared I won’t get a job this summer because of my identity. I’m scared the Logistics company will contact Student Painters and somehow find out I’m trans and decide they don’t want me to work for them.
In the back of my head I hear the voice of “you should have thought of that before you changed your name” or “you could have come out and kept your name”. The problem was that in order to come out I had to shed the identity that didn’t match how I felt. To be my true self I had to accept the new part of myself, knowing full well this was a risk I was taking.