I recently started my transition (almost 3 months on HRT now) after discovering that I am transgender and am thinking about the day I have to come out at work, especially so far being very responsive to HRT and already having significant changes including development in my face. I have few years of experience, somewhat close to ACAS, and have been at my current company for over a year exceeding expectations so far, in 3 out of all 3 performance reviews I’ve had so far. In fact, I was surprised seeing in my most recent review, it appeared that my manager was selling me better in the comments than I would have even thought to do if I was job searching myself!
I work fully remotely and my job is not client-facing. The culture overall feels pretty good and I don’t really see any red flags as far as that goes, but no green flags specifically either. I am hoping that the career capital and the reputation I have made for myself thus far will carry me but still, I am worried about the off-chance of being retaliated against and/or losing my job thereafter in this societal climate. Do you all have any advice for the principles to keep in mind for handling this in a way that minimizes risk? The key thing I am fighting to retain is my income and health insurance; as long as that’s the case, I can figure out the rest.
I have forehead reconstruction planned this spring and am putting in a lot of effort into training my voice for which I’ve made some really great progress (I’m working with a top-tier transgender vocal coach who seems to be impressed with my development so far). I mean I’m personally very binary trans and want to be as passable as is prudently possible, so I’m speed-running other aspects of transition too such as hair removal. My plan is to continue my approach of incremental feminization, habituating them to my gradually changing appearance, and after getting the forehead reconstruction done and subsequently the legal transition, come out at work and mainly just characterize it as a procedural, administrative issue related to updating names and such and downplay the significance of it otherwise.
I don’t know if you all have any tips or perspective to provide on this, but if you do, I would be happy to hear! [Note: I may need to take down aspects of this post on a future date to protect my privacy; I hope you all understand. ]
Congratulations on making good progress on your voice. That’s something that many people I know struggle with, and for me makes a big difference in interactions.
I don’t directly interact with clients, so opted to only come out to my immediate team. They were all very supportive. In retrospect, I wish that I had come out company wide (it’s a small company) to have better control of my narrative, but it wasn’t a big deal that I didn’t. Some of my non-actuarial friends were able to send out their own company wide emails, which seems to have gone well (albeit in things like tech in New England). Some were asked by HR to let HR make all of the announcements, and that has led to more awkward experiences but again overall positive.
My experience with the actuarial world is that I haven’t run into anyone hostile or who has a problem with me being trans, so the things that you are afraid of shouldn’t be an issue. But at the same time, most people are clueless and will be at best passively supportive rather than actively supportive. See Alyssa’s thread, for example, about how the CAS will still do things like schedule big meetings in Florida
Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I think part of what has been making me anxious is that I just haven’t seen many examples of how this tends to go in the actuarial world so far, aside from Alyssa’s thread, so the uncertainty was kind of getting to me. But what you all said makes a lot of sense and I am glad that you have generally found such to be the case!
hi girlie! dmed you but wanted to reach out here, will just repost some of the things i’ve sent
not in industry yet obviously but i’ve been out to a couple of people in various actuarial communities (in private of course) and have had a variety of experiences. some of my coworkers in my future internship know i’m trans and i haven’t really told anyone else. not really sure what else i can say haha
with that background, as with all trans people you’ll find that people who knew you before will have a harder time adjusting (i really only talk to like. four people pre-hrt as opposed to the 100 or so people i knew off the top of my head) and keep a tighter circle now (not necessarily because i’m trans, just a thing i’ve pushed towards mentally)
hope this helps! let me know if you wanted more thoughts or feel free to add more to this thread
It takes a while for the brain to rewire. People ive only known post transition, well thats all i know. Otoh my buddy’s one kid transitioned and for a year their name was ‘deadname-sorry-newname’. I knew them for 20 years by their deadname, in my head it was their identity. Thats gone away now, my brain’s rewired.
i agree with the two above posts – there’s a reason why i made a point to transition as soon as possible. the most important thing for me was the name change since most people won’t bother enough to try to find my old name. and like majority of photos i have of myself are post-hrt as well! so like, majority of the people in my life have only known me by my new legal name at the very least haha
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