Back in 1986, a hair salon client of Erica Carter's, a pastor, wanted to perform an exorcism on her.
"I said, 'Well, Janice,' and I never forget a name ... 'This isn't a choice,'" Carter, a transgender woman, recalled in an interview with Crain's. "I explained everything to her based on medical science."
The Black native Detroiter, 54, has faced discrimination on the job many times over. She is a cosmetologist, singer-songwriter, actress and model, among other pursuits.
LGBTQ workforce makes gains, but transgender discrimination remains pervasive
Molly Kaplan for ACLU
A demonstrator holds up transgender flag colors in Washington, D.C. Oct. 8 as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether civil rights law prohibits job discrimination against LGBTQ individuals. The high court in June ruled in favor of LGBTQ workers.
Dorian Le'Grand of Le'Grand Photography
Erica Carter
Things have changed since 1986, Carter said. Availability of information has improved understanding, including in employment. Visibility has risen in recent years. And the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a major victory June 15 for the LGBTQ workforce, arguing that civil rights law protects them from discrimination, based on sex. One case was the firing of late Michigan resident Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman.
But transgender individuals, especially those who are Black and other people of color, still get mistreated in the workplace, from misuse of pronouns to firing and violence.
Explainer: The T in LGBTQ
LGBTQ is an acronym for an array of sexual orientations and gender identities including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer. Often media or employers get terminology for these groups — and specifically transgender people — wrong out of lack of information or understanding. While preferences on language differ and evolve (and no accounting can be called exhaustive or correct for everyone), here are some rules of thumb from GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign and Crain's reporting:
Transgender is a term for someone with a gender identity different from the sex assigned to them at birth. It's different from sexual orientation, which describes a person's attraction to others.
Gender identity includes not just man or woman, but those whose identity doesn't fit in those boxes (non-binary or genderqueer, for example).
Cisgender is a term for people who are not transgender. Put another way, their identity doesn't differ from the gender typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Widely accepted rules for terminology dictate that people call a transgender person by their chosen name, even if not legally changed. Referring to a no-longer-used name is often called "deadnaming."
Use their preferred pronouns, and when you don't know, ask (this is why you may see "she/her/hers" or "they/them/theirs" in a Twitter profile or email signature). Using an incorrect pronoun is often called "misgendering" and can increase stigmatization.
Violence and discrimination disproportionately impact transgender Black women and transgender women of color.
More than a quarter of Michiganders who identify as transgender have been fired, denied a promotion or not been hired due to their status. That's according to the U.S. Transgender Survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2015 — the most recent year available.
Carter, an activist who works with nonprofit LGBT Detroit, said as an independent contractor she's been somewhat insulated from employer discrimination. But she's still been "called everything — it, she-he, he-she."
"But I just kept myself in a very dignified space and people eventually come to terms with it," she said. "I'm open about being a trans woman, and I'm proud of it ... I'm just too fabulous for all that mess."
Discrimination against transgender workers is commonplace and often blatant, said Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan's LGBT Project.
He said there's less awareness about what it means to be transgender than there is for gay or lesbian identities.
"There is a high tolerance and a high mentality for disrespect," said Jeynce Poindexter, transgender advocate at Equality Michigan and founding board member of the Trans Sistas of Color Project. "For misgendering, for outing ... A situation where someone may (not be visibly transgender) and going to work and someone goes and tells the superior, and they're fired. We have to have a level of respect so that we even can connect. If you don't honor me as a person, you're not going to hear me."
Kaplan said policies like gender-based dress codes and conditions about restroom use can be harmful.
Mistreatment isn't limited to traditional workplaces, Poindexter said. In the past, though still in the social justice field, she said she experienced issues like being micromanaged, triple-checked or deferred. It can also happen in smaller companies, without a designated human resources department, she said.
"A lot of Black trans women, our first level of violence and harsh disrespect, it comes from right within our household," Poindexter said. "So then you tell a person to get out and expect them to make it through life disconnected, unsupported, unstabilized, and not invested (in). That's a hard pill to swallow, but it is our reality."
Poindexter also co-chairs Fair and Equal Michigan, a ballot initiative to amend state law (the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act) to prohibit discrimination based on LGBTQ status. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision bans employer discrimination, and Poindexter said Fair and Equal is now weighing its options on how to move forward.
Jeynce Poindexter
"A lot of Black trans women, our first level of violence and harsh disrespect, it comes from right within our household," Poindexter said. "So then you tell a person to get out and expect them to make it through life disconnected, unsupported, unstabilized, and not invested (in). That's a hard pill to swallow, but it is our reality."
Poindexter also co-chairs Fair and Equal Michigan, a ballot initiative to amend state law (the Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act) to prohibit discrimination based on LGBTQ status. The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision bans employer discrimination, and Poindexter said Fair and Equal is now weighing its options on how to move forward.
Discrimination reporting
Transphobia, a dearth of legal protections and lack of trust in the law has meant low public reporting of harassment or discrimination in the workplace for transgender individuals.
"A thing to keep in mind is it's certainly an undercount, because a lot of people still don't realize they have these remedies available," Kaplan said.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission started tracking charges filed for discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation in 2013. And Michigan's Department of Civil Rights was able to take and process such complaints starting in May 2018.
Nationally, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received 1,868 charges of sex discrimination based on LGBTQ status in fiscal 2019, according to data on its website. That's 7 percent of total sex-related charges filed and 2.5 percent of total charges for the year. LGBTQ cases also resulted in less monetary benefits paid out — $7 million total, or 4 percent of the benefits for all sex-related charges.
In Michigan, 43 LGBTQ-related charges were filed in fiscal 2019, or 1.8 percent of total equal employment opportunity charges, according to commission spokeswoman Kimberly Smith-Brown.
Supreme Court ruling
The most prominent recent local case of transgender workplace discrimination is that of Aimee Stephens. She died May 12, before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in her sex discrimination lawsuit for being fired by a Garden City funeral home after coming out as a transgender woman.
Allison Shelley Photography
Actress Laverne Cox (left) meets Aimee Stephens (center), who sued her Garden City employer over firing due to transgender status, and her wife Donna outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. Oct. 8 as the high court hears her case.
"The consequences of the discrimination for Aimee Stephens losing her job, this was her purpose in her life, she'd got great evaluations, she'd got a raise," said Kaplan of the ACLU. The ACLU represented Stephens in the case. "So the economic consequences of losing her work. Then trying to find other jobs in that field, she had a great degree of difficulty. She underwent some training to be a medical assistant because she couldn't find work in the funeral home business."
But what does the Supreme Court's decision mean for transgender and other LGBTQ people in Michigan?
"Michigan, up until very recent times, it's sort of been a mixed bag when it comes to recognizing protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and gender expression," said Matthew Disbrow, partner and labor and employment attorney for Detroit-based Honigman LLP.
But, Disbrow said, two conservative Supreme Court justices joining the decision likely means more Michigan jurists will be persuaded to interpret the state civil rights act as the high court did for the federal Civil Rights Act's Title VII. He expects to see more employment discrimination-related court challenges come through the system.
Kaplan said employers should understand that if they discriminate against LGBTQ employees, they can be held liable under sex discrimination in civil rights law.
Uphill battle
Transgender people still face an uphill battle in employment.
Nineteen percent of transgender Michigan residents were unemployed as of 2015, the latest U.S. Transgender Survey. It had 27,715 respondents, 894 of which were in Michigan. The state's overall unemployment rate for that year was 5.4 percent.
Of those surveyed, 27 percent reported losing a job, being denied a promotion or not getting a job due to their identity. Sixteen percent of those who had jobs reported being verbally harassed for those same reasons, while nearly a quarter reported mistreatment such as having to use a bathroom different from their identity, being told to present as the wrong gender in order to hold onto a job or having their private information shared without consent.
Michigan has around 32,900 residents who identify as transgender, or 0.43 percent of the population, according to a 2016 Williams Institute study. It ranks 40th in the nation for transgender-identifying population.
"At the end of the day, from the '80s to now, it's a whole lot better, but the challenge is still there," Carter said. "I will say ... the young people are up for the challenge. They're not hiding, and it's a wonderful thing to see."
Companies looking to bridge the divide, said Poindexter of Equality Michigan, need to allow space to say they've done things wrong and correct them.
"The number one thing, if you want to know how to engage or uplift a community ... is you go to that community, you identify a person or connect with that person and you allow them to tell you how to do that to cultivate a plan of how to engage," Poindexter said. "That just goes back to community engagement 101."
People respond to deliberate investment in safe, accepting spaces, she added. She pointed to when Starbucks expanded health benefits for transgender employees.
"I know people who literally went to work at Starbucks for that reason," Poindexter said.
Letter
to the
Editor
Want to get something off your chest? Send us an email or hit us up on Facebook or Twitter.
