Thread by @NotLasers

There is so much about being a transmasculine person who started transition in mid-adulthood that feels like an inescapable catch-22. Every time I think I've run out of cracks to fall through--well. There are a lot of them.

Especially when you spent your pre-transition years working in aggressively sexist industries, where opportunities and promotion rates--both internal and intra-company--for men and women were (and are) very, very different.

And now my resumé says "Jay," and the thing about companies that care about diversity is that they often don't really get that there are ways to be a gender minority that don't involve being female. They see CV items with "(as Rachel Edidin)," and assume I used a pen name.

The alternative is, of course, to make a point of explicitly outing myself in cover letters; which also runs the risk of being a massive liability for a lot of reasons.

(I'm never going to know whether having to correct pronouns at several interviews was a contributing factor in not getting those jobs; but I would not be surprised. It makes people uncomfortable; and that leaves them with a bad impression.)

All of this is compounded by the conditioning that goes with growing up and spending your 20s female-designated and half your 30s still largely read as female; which time constituted most of my life, but--

And I feel shitty even talking about this, like, what kind of asshole complains about life as a mediocre white dude, but--

I need you to understand that it's really, really, REALLY different for trans men. Especially ones like me, who came out and transitioned as adults.

How do I do this? I can't stand up and say, "Hi, yeah, I did not have the privilege and opportunities that you assume go with this name and gender; and I am struggling in ways for which there is neither language nor support."

There are a lot of supports and counterbalances built into activism and diversity initiatives that assume that only women (and sometimes, but rarely, female-assigned nonbinary folks) experience or have experienced specific kinds of discrimination, and--

--a lot of trans men don't talk about this publicly, because we know that "Okay, but what about men?" is a shitty thing to throw into those conversations; but at the same time, the experience of being a trans man is REALLY different from the experience of being a cis man.

Trans men who transition later have spent their lives on the receiving end of a lot of gendered discrimination and abuse and violence; and then suddenly found ourselves not only cut off from support for that trauma, but implicitly associated with its perpetrators.

Anyway, that's my Tuesday night. Don't forget to tip your bartender!

This thread is still being passed around, so I will add that I am increasingly frantically job hunting in the NYC metro area. Resume and portfolio at edidin.wordpress.com/professional-s….

I am an excellent and experienced writer, editor, researcher, social media wizard, podcaster, retail worker, crisis wrangler, and tutor; a competent knitter; and a friend to reptiles.

I would love to work somewhere LGBTQ+ friendly, where a history of activism and advocacy would be an asset.