” … and that over there is a bridge!” Cary Grant as Transman doing a teaching demonstration.
Transman finally has been invited for an on-campus interview for a full-time teaching position. So, yay! And now panic has set in because even though he has all the qualifications, a genuine calling to teach, and passion for the subject, he’s not sure how to handle that whole transgender thing at this point.
He doesn’t feel like it needs to be discussed at all because he’s not being interviewed for a Gender Studies position. However, he is afraid that if he doesn’t say something the committee will think he was being dishonest if he does well enough in the interview for the committee to ask for a background check, and some of his paperwork shows up with the wrong gender marker or if one of his previous employers refers to him by the old name/gender.
This is strange territory to navigate. If he had had a name change due to marriage or adoption, that’s easy enough to explain. If he were in the GLB part of the acronym soup, then that’s nobody’s business, especially in a job interview. Legally, employers can’t ask interviewees about sexual orientation and gender identity during an interview, but having a mismatch in the records will cause them to ask for clarification.
Transman knows that one of the universities where he attended has a policy to not change gender markers without a court order, so even though his name has been updated on his transcript, the “F” marker is still there. There’s also the fact that he isn’t registered with Selective Service and still needs a letter of exemption. Several of these little items piled on top of each other may make it look like Transman is hiding something or has failed to be honest on his application. (Yes, he did put former names in the space where the applications asks for that info, but there is no place to explain those former names if they don’t match up with one’s present gender.)
Transman doesn’t feel like he needs to hide his transgender past from the world, but he wants the committee to focus on his present self and his ability to teach and publish.
He will have to acknowledge his past, but just doesn’t know the right time to do so. During the interview itself? After the interview and to the HR department only or also to the head of the hiring committee? Wait and see if they call him and ask about it (and take the risk that they may decide not to proceed at all if a mismatch does appear)?
For others in the same boat, here are two articles:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
