I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thrilled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding LGBTQ people in the work they place. I actually teared up when I heard the news on NPR Monday morning.
With this interpretation of Title VII, workers can’t be fired for solely being transgender or gay. Employers can still can no doubt invent other reasons without having to mention that individuals were fired because they were gay or trans. This may sound cynical, and I guess it is, but I know it is true.
The other major issue at play is that many qualified people won’t be offered some jobs just because the employer finds out the job candidate is gay or transgender. We can also expand that to black, Hispanic, female, Jewish, Muslim, basically anyone that a hiring manager doesn’t like, understand, or feels won’t fit some narrow image of the ideal candidate.
I feel blessed to have employers since I transitioned for whom my transgender status has not been a problem. Unfortunately, many of those jobs were lower-paying retail jobs where employers were just happy to have a reliable, warm, body to come in as scheduled. I tried to get technical jobs in the field of engineering, a field I worked in for 20 years and hold two degrees in, but did not have much success. Was it because of my female name or did the employers figure out that I was transgender — I’ll never know.
Currently, I am working in a field where I think, and I believe my employer agrees, that being transgender is actually a huge asset. I am working in the field of mental health, frequently serving patients that fall under the LGBTQ umbrella. To me, it seems, at least in this part of the country, that health care is a good, growing, area for LGBTQ job candidates.
For years, this community has not been well served by some portions of the medical establishment. That has changed dramatically in the time since I originally came out as transgender in 2006. Legalized gay marriage was a step in the right direction, allowing individuals to be involved in their partners’ health care. Hospitals are allowing patients more leeway when it comes to preferred name and gender on hospital forms, and patients are addressed using the pronouns they prefer (for the most part.)
Despite new laws and new interpretations of the existing law, we cannot change what I like to term the “-isms and -phobias” that persist. We are still fighting racism, decades after civil rights laws were put in place, women still don’t earn as much as men, and in many parts of the country, homo- and transphobias continue to persist, often with tragic results.
Laws are not going to help. They might give someone a legal leg to stand on, but only after they have been wronged. What is needed is education, a universal education that we can’t count on children getting from their parents. Many religious denominations have stepped up to the plate to celebrate individual diversity in their congregations and communities, but many have not. I think that it is ultimately going to fall to the school systems of this country to be the great equalizers, something they currently are not.
Students need to hear accurate stories about our nation’s history from the time we arrived here, from the killing and displacement of native peoples, the real history of slavery, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, women’s suffrage and the still unpassed Equal Rights Amendment, the story of the Stonewall Inn and the LGBTQ movement, and so, so, many more.
This is the history our children have not always been taught, but they need to learn. Then, maybe slowly, we’ll be able to turn the tide on all the “-isms and -phobias” that still exist.
Mariel Addis is a native of Florence.