Reason #14: The Kindness - 11/20/25
Recently, I received my shiny new work email address. I'm not in a position where I'll need to be checking my email constantly, but it is a pretty common point of contact in the company. So I will be reading it and my coworkers will be seeing it.
There was a problem however; when IT created my account, they fully used my deadname as my handle and display name. For 36 hours, my deadname was publically available to everyone that used our company computers - which was the entire team I had already introduced myself to using my actual name. So that sucked pretty bad.
I was thrown off by it from the get go. I didn't know what to say in the moment when I received my email log in information and realized what was happening. My direct manager saw that I was uncomfortable, but explained that the email format utilizes your legal name and there was nothing I could do.
This made me anxious on top of another, more vague anxiety: for legal reasons, the company I work for has a strict 'no politics' policy. Everyone has been very kind to me so far and the company's reputation paints them in a pretty progressive light but, with how things in this administration have been going, I got incredibly anxious that being more overt about my transgender identity could be seen as a 'political statement' and therefore against company policy.
I left that day feeling incredibly anxious and scared that quibbling over this could cost me my job.
After consulting with friends and my therapist on my day off, I walked into to work today wearing my pronoun pins and ready to advocate for myself. I still felt scared, but my entire social circle had agreed with me that this was an egregious mistake and that I was in the right for wanting to correct it. So I steeled myself and got in touch with our HR representative, who I met with later in the day.
And she was amazing!
This wasn't my first time speaking with her; she's actually the person who initially interviewed me! So I was very comfortable with her from the beginning. I explained the situation as best I could (sweating and rambling and fidgeting with my hoodie zipper) and waited for the worst. And she immediately agreed with me! She said she wanted me to feel comfortable and she anticipated that this would be an easy thing to fix; she would just need to send an email out, which she would do right away. She then asked me about how everyone had been treating me vis-a-vis my gender identity (the answer: everyone has been very cool) and we talked a little about what documentation I would need to bring in after I get a legal name change.
The nicest part was that she shared a bit of her story with me. I won't give details, but she recently had to change her last name for personal reasons and she now considers it a deadname - she understood the situation I was in and how hard it can be to make these adjustments. She told me that if I needed anything or had any problems, I could always come to her. I'm sure a lot of this could be standard HR talk, but it genuinely made me feel heard and supported. My fear about my identity being politicized and downplayed was gone right away.
My name was changed in the system probably 20 minutes later.
I'm almost 30 and still struggle to advocate for myself and my identity, but her allyship really really helped me today. I feel a lot more confident! It's ok to be open about what I need! I'm genuinely so grateful and will 100% be considering getting her an Edible Arrangement™ for the holidays!