I try very hard not to hate the general populace for its ignorance and blindness, but there are times I fail miserably.

My boss called me into a meeting yesterday. Someone had complained about my using the ladies' room at work. He admitted that he thought it was a stupid complaint but he had to address it. When I first started my transition, I naturally started using the women's bathroom at work as one would have expected, but someone complained and so I was asked to use the unisex restroom at the front of the building, the one reserved for visitors outside the secured area. I guess I should have been fortunate that the bathroom was there, but I was irritated at the inconvenience and what I considered the discrimination. At the time, I was told it was because I wasn't legally female and that if I had been, there would have been no issue. Thus, when I got my gender legally changed, I simply went and began using the appropriate facility. Someone again complained.

Now, I admit that I didn't tell Human Resources about my legal gender change. However, all of my corporate paperwork already said female on it anyway, so I figured the issue was behind me. This was probably a mistake
on my part, but in hindsight it may not have mattered. I found out later that my HR department is horrible, according to my manager and my head of department.

At any rate, they called me in to ask me what I understood of the agreement I had made about the bathroom. I told them that I was legally female now and entitled to use the appropriate facilities. I then handed over my driver's license and waited while they blinked and very rapidly agreed that the thing to do was chastise HR for allowing the complaint to get out of hand like this. However, in the meantime, they asked me to please go back
to using the bathroom up front until they could hammer out something with Human Resources.

It isn't the bathroom that bothers me, really. That's an annoyance, but at least the facility is there and I don't have to use the men's room or something equally dumb. What bothers me is that the complaints are allowed to affect me at all. One person has a problem at my workplace with my transition, and she has the ability to determine where I pee, and possibly more. I can't talk with her, reason with her, or otherwise address her because I'm not supposed to know who it is. Everyone in a position of authority over me thinks it's stupid that I have to go through this, and yet they still put me through it because someone above them doesn't think it's so outrageous.

I am so hoping to get a job at a place where I am simply accepted as female from day one and never have to fight this kind of battle.