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Okay, this situation is a little complicated so I'll condense it as much as I can. I am a transcriptionist. I type transcripts for courts in my home state. I work in a big office with 30 or 40 other typists. Because the management don't really understand human nature (being some kind of rodent-like creatures themselves) the typist are all sorted into teams of about seven in order to hold little meetings to increase productivity. How forcing us to stop typing for 15 minutes twice a month is meant to make us type more, I don't know. That's not the problem, though, that's just the set up.
Management wanted us to come up with names for our groups, and while I was sick my group came up with what has been our name ever since; The Trannies.
Yes, the Trannies. Short for transcriptionists, obviously, with a side helping of an offensive term for transgendered people. It's like calling us the Faggots because we're fond of bundling sticks together.
I objected immediately, asking a few people in my group if they'd mind changing the name. They didn't see why, because, "We're not meaning it like that." I flat out stated that I didn't care how it was meant, I wasn't comfortable using a derogatory term for trans people as a joke name. I eventually had to out myself to those team members, admitting that I'm gay (something I had avoided doing because I work with a hellova lot of conservative middle-aged and elderly women) and telling them that I wouldn't accept the use of a derogatory word for people in a subculture I'm a part of. It doesn't help that I have some gender identity issues (I am tentitively identifying as genderqueer right now, but I'm still working out where exactly on the spectrum I lie) so it's a sensitive topic for me. The women I talked to agreed and said we could bring it up at the next team meeting.
Cut to now, a few months later, and management is finally forcing us to go to the meetings again. I overhear one of the women I told telling someone else in our group that I wanted to change the name and why, and ten minutes later I've got a war on my hands.
Half of my group is up in arms because they don't want to change the name. They say it's not offensive because they don't mean it to be. I say fuck that, I wouldn't let you call us the Dykes so I'm not going to let you call us the Trannies. I know it seems petty to cause so much fuss over a name of a group I don't care about, but I don't want to be associated with transphobia even in a minor way like that. It's not okay and I'm sticking to that.
What I'm really looking for are ways to explain myself and my feelings on it without resorting to A) outing myself as being on the trans spectrum or B) calling everyone else raging fuckwits. I need some way to make them - or at least management - see that using a term that's offensive to trans people is just as bad as using racist or sexist ones.
/long thread is LONG.
TL;DR version: need to convince management that transphobia is just as bad as homophobia and racism. Thoughts/COmments/Suggestions?
Management wanted us to come up with names for our groups, and while I was sick my group came up with what has been our name ever since; The Trannies.
Yes, the Trannies. Short for transcriptionists, obviously, with a side helping of an offensive term for transgendered people. It's like calling us the Faggots because we're fond of bundling sticks together.
I objected immediately, asking a few people in my group if they'd mind changing the name. They didn't see why, because, "We're not meaning it like that." I flat out stated that I didn't care how it was meant, I wasn't comfortable using a derogatory term for trans people as a joke name. I eventually had to out myself to those team members, admitting that I'm gay (something I had avoided doing because I work with a hellova lot of conservative middle-aged and elderly women) and telling them that I wouldn't accept the use of a derogatory word for people in a subculture I'm a part of. It doesn't help that I have some gender identity issues (I am tentitively identifying as genderqueer right now, but I'm still working out where exactly on the spectrum I lie) so it's a sensitive topic for me. The women I talked to agreed and said we could bring it up at the next team meeting.
Cut to now, a few months later, and management is finally forcing us to go to the meetings again. I overhear one of the women I told telling someone else in our group that I wanted to change the name and why, and ten minutes later I've got a war on my hands.
Half of my group is up in arms because they don't want to change the name. They say it's not offensive because they don't mean it to be. I say fuck that, I wouldn't let you call us the Dykes so I'm not going to let you call us the Trannies. I know it seems petty to cause so much fuss over a name of a group I don't care about, but I don't want to be associated with transphobia even in a minor way like that. It's not okay and I'm sticking to that.
What I'm really looking for are ways to explain myself and my feelings on it without resorting to A) outing myself as being on the trans spectrum or B) calling everyone else raging fuckwits. I need some way to make them - or at least management - see that using a term that's offensive to trans people is just as bad as using racist or sexist ones.
/long thread is LONG.
TL;DR version: need to convince management that transphobia is just as bad as homophobia and racism. Thoughts/COmments/Suggestions?
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