Not quite grandmother's house
Sometime in the next two days, I'm planning on sending this email to work. I'm excited. Well, excited and scared.
Dear all at $COMPANY,
As some of you know or have guessed, I'm changing my gender to female. I'm changing my name to Naomi, and I now accept feminine pronouns (she, her) instead of masculine ones (he, him, his).
I'd like to request that from Monday on, people use my new name and feminine pronouns (or any other forms of address) in all work contexts. I'll also be using the women's restroom. I'm not changing my day-to-day appearance at work, at least not most days. Don't expect me to suddenly look drastically different. Also, I will correct people if they get my name or pronouns wrong. If I correct you, it doesn't mean I'm mad at you, I just want to help people get used to the switch more quickly. My new work email address is $ADDRESS.
If you have any questions or concerns about my transition at work, please feel free to ask me. If you're not comfortable with that, $PERSON1 and $PERSON2 have also both graciously agreed to field questions and concerns.
For the years I've worked here, $COMPANY has been a comfortable and accepting place to work. I have no doubt you all will continue to make this true.
--$ME
If you want to learn a bit more about trans experience, I've collected a few links that might form a good starting point.
These three are all blog posts from about the same time, of three different people attempting to describe what being trans means to them. They're clearly not all the same as my experience, but a lot of what each of them says I can relate to.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/11/28/what-trans-means-to-me/
http://sexualambiguities.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-it-means.html
http://drakyn.livejournal.com/79043.html
If you want to go more deeply into the interaction between gender transition (to female) and feminism, I highly recommend Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.
http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html
I don't really anticipate any problems -- I've come out to a lot of people at work already, and had only good reactions. We'll see, though.
Dear all at $COMPANY,
As some of you know or have guessed, I'm changing my gender to female. I'm changing my name to Naomi, and I now accept feminine pronouns (she, her) instead of masculine ones (he, him, his).
I'd like to request that from Monday on, people use my new name and feminine pronouns (or any other forms of address) in all work contexts. I'll also be using the women's restroom. I'm not changing my day-to-day appearance at work, at least not most days. Don't expect me to suddenly look drastically different. Also, I will correct people if they get my name or pronouns wrong. If I correct you, it doesn't mean I'm mad at you, I just want to help people get used to the switch more quickly. My new work email address is $ADDRESS.
If you have any questions or concerns about my transition at work, please feel free to ask me. If you're not comfortable with that, $PERSON1 and $PERSON2 have also both graciously agreed to field questions and concerns.
For the years I've worked here, $COMPANY has been a comfortable and accepting place to work. I have no doubt you all will continue to make this true.
--$ME
If you want to learn a bit more about trans experience, I've collected a few links that might form a good starting point.
These three are all blog posts from about the same time, of three different people attempting to describe what being trans means to them. They're clearly not all the same as my experience, but a lot of what each of them says I can relate to.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2007/11/28/what-trans-means-to-me/
http://sexualambiguities.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-it-means.html
http://drakyn.livejournal.com/79043.html
If you want to go more deeply into the interaction between gender transition (to female) and feminism, I highly recommend Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.
http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html
I don't really anticipate any problems -- I've come out to a lot of people at work already, and had only good reactions. We'll see, though.