There’s a risk involved in coming out as trans at work, although there shouldn’t be. “You’re stuck with them, your colleagues, in a small room. If they take that information as something to be mocked or insulted, or just laughed at and ignored, it goes from being an accidentally unpleasant workplace to an actively dangerous one.”
Paris, who’s 21, worked as a kitchen porter in Leith, a district by the Edinburgh shore. They’re non-binary and use they/them pronouns, but accepted misgendering at work because they didn’t feel comfortable discussing their gender identity with colleagues. “Kitchen environments are very straight-male-dominated. I didn’t feel safe correcting people, so I just dealt with it,” they told me. “Frankly, the fact that I walked in there with boobs was weird enough, let alone trying to do something like that.”
Before starting their last job, Paris was asked to complete online training including how to communicate with customers who have disabilities or speak another language. The training said little about LGBTQ+ identities and nothing at all about being trans, they told me, and focused on “the way workers treat customers” rather than employees’ safety at work.
