A Transgender Woman’s Take on Dealing with Employment Discrimination
This is Alec McDonough, she is a 21-year-old transgender woman from Southern Illinois. Right now Alec is in the midst of employment discrimination investigation with her employer.
“My complaint is the disregard of improper handling of employee gender expression or gender identity, and how that relates to the behavior of my supervisors at work,” says Alec.
The actions started in April 2016 and continued on until May of 2016.
“My boss (we’ll call her “B”) was having a conversation with my Assistant Manager in which I was misgendered by way of referring to me as “he”.
When Alec’s Assitant Manager corrected B. by saying the correct pronouns which are she/her. B. replied with “IT never told me what IT wanted me to call IT”
According to Alec, she says that she has never been dehumanized by an employer before and says that it felt terrible. She describes that she felt like the people she works under didn’t view her as a human.
“To make matters worse, she also touched me without consent and pulled on the skirt of my dress from behind me, making my body feel like public domain. It’s a complex debacle.”
While dealing with her employment discrimination she posted a video titled “Why Transgender Discrimination Now?” that explains how 12 states are suing The Obama Administration for their directive to public schools to allow Transgender students to pee in whatever restroom they wanted to. The video was originally posted on June 3rd, Alec’s 21st birthday on Facebook. Later she uploaded it on Youtube which you can view below.
In the video, Alec goes on to say, “The video I posted is a timeline of the trans-specific discriminatory whirlwind that is happening and where it is all streaming from. Namely the Kim Davis case last year stemming from the Supreme Court ruling on the same-sex marriage.”
While talking to Alec I asked her why she decided to record the video shown below and she told me that while she was looking around online, there seemed to be a lot of misinformation surrounding the current legislation about trans people and where it was coming from. The people though that trans people were crafting bills to sneak into restrooms. “We are such a small demographic that we don’t have legislative sway like that.”
She says that her goal was to educate people on where this discrimination was coming from (by which she means conservative evangelical hate groups) and how organized and ruthless they really are. “I think the video accomplished what I was setting out to do. My only qualm is that my reach is limited”
Right now Alec is engaged. She got engaged November 2015 to her boyfriend of 3 years. Right now they are planning to have a small wedding in September. “It’s weird being transgender. You live your life knowing that you are a romantic gray area, and wonder if you’ll ever find someone. And I eventually did!”
Alec has an Etsy shop where she sells her amazing paintings. She’s super duper talented and I believe you should check it out!
