Before I start, I just want to say that I know the way I was treated is illegal where I live. But unfortunately as an immigrant there are not many ways I can challenge this that actually benefit me and don't cause me unreasonable stress during an already vulnerable time in my life. Just using this here to rant about it.
So I'm an art teacher at some private schools in southern Germany. I'm also a trans woman. In the past few months I have been transitioning and have been basically out with everyone except for the schools I work at. Because I didn’t know how they would react, I came out first to my private students (which are a variety of ages) to see what would happen. Nobody had an issue with it, I get to be myself at work, yay.
The issue came when I wrote the school I teach at to let them know that in a month I will be coming out fully and I offered to talk to the parents of the students (it’s an after school thing for kids up until university). As a trans person who came from a conservative environment growing up, I understand that many people just aren’t really familiar with what it means to be trans. I have no problem answering questions and am not easily offended, so I offered to talk to the parents, answer their questions, and if they don’t want me teaching anymore, to help them switch teachers.
But it didn’t go super well. One of the schools was incredibly accepting and offered to help in any way and to let them know if I have any issues with parents. The other school, though, wrote a vague message about how this puts them in a difficult position and they will have to take a few days to see how they can “get out of it”. Then they wrote asking if I could come in an hour early for my shift, I say yea, we meet.
What happened next was an incredibly humiliating discussion. I went in with an open mind and didn’t want to be difficult, I wanted to answer any questions they had and help them understand. However, it went south real quick. The first question was “so, what are you doing with your body?” after which they pushed me to basically describe what I’m doing for my transition. Their reason? They said there are trans people who are “shrill, aggressive people who dress like carnival people” and they wanted to make sure I was going to act like a “normal woman”.
They asked to describe what I do when I dress myself and how I am changing my body and which surgeries I am getting. I didn’t go into too personal details but since the conversation was going so badly and I wanted to work there at least until the end of the school year, I told them a bit and showed a selfie, after which they were glad that I chose to be a “normal woman” and not a freak.
Then it got worse. The conversation basically ended up with them wanting to have a parent teacher conference in which the parents are allowed to ask me the same questions, get an idea of what I’m doing for operations, etc. I was very resistant to this idea and told them that my appearance and my medical history has nothing to do with the fact that I just teach lessons and have been one of their top-rated teachers and I believe that allowing the parents to even ask things like that will reinforce the moral panic that people have around trans people. That being said, they seemed very hesitant to even offer explaining things and instead talked about how they have nothing personal against me, but this creates a huge problem for their school.
They kept grilling me about when my transition would be “done” and when I would be a “real woman”. I told them that because of the hectic and unpredictable nature of transition, the medical system, and people’s expectations of trans people, unfortunately I can’t give them a date. I can only exist and express myself as a woman and I can’t control how other people see me. I identify as a binary trans woman and therefore can fit into their definition of extra womanly womanhood, but my heart hurts for all of my friends who don’t identify that way and who would be treated differently.
At this point, I understood I probably wasn’t keeping the job. My original plan was to teach until the end of the school year, but they had made it clear just how much of an issue this was and how much they would be monitoring my transition. So, I made them an offer: I said the magic phrase, that I wouldn’t consider it discrimination and that I am fine with leaving after Easter break and not coming out while at school, or I can come out and stay on until the end of the year. There are anti-discrimination laws that would protect me in these situations, but honestly, as an immigrant I just don’t want any trouble or drama and just wanted to be out of the conversation ASAP, so that’s why I said that.
But as time has passed after the discussion, I just feel more and more humiliated. None of this has anything to do with my job and I feel horrible knowing that I now have to navigate my life knowing that many people will see me not as a human, but a problem that is a threat to their world.
…but it gets worse. As I thought, about a week after sending the email I indeed got a message saying they think it's best for me to leave the school after Easter break. However, they blamed it on me wanting to leave the school at the end of the year, saying it was just too impractical to expect their students to have to switch teachers so quickly.
They said that if I accept their offer to leave after the break, then they want to organize a parent teacher conference to clarify what is going on and my absence.
I said no, I didn't want to do that, and then the owner said that they would do it themself. When i asked if they would be telling the parents that I am trans, they said that they would only tell if I gave them permission to. I said no, it's a personal thing and irrelevant to my teaching and since I was leaving anyway, it's not relevant.
I thought that was the end of it, but then I go to school the following week and meet with the owner who said that they wrote a letter to the parents saying that I decided to leave for “personal reasons”, but that I was always welcome back. I thanked them for not mentioning me being trans, they said they totally understand that it’s a personal matter, they handed me the stack of letters. They also said that I’m welcome to come back after I was “fully done” with my transition”, but after our previous conversation I’m not exactly keen to have someone scrutinize my transition and have to know intimate details.
After I give one out to my first student (who is an adult who I already came out to), I go about my day and then the owner of the school rescinded the letter, the person came in and said “sorry, have to redo these” and then left.
I later found out that the reason why they had to redo them was because the adult student called them and was furious on my behalf. It was then that I learned what was really in the letter: the school owner wrote a really contrived, lengthy thing that did mention “personal reasons”, but was mostly about how I’ve been “battling” with my health and my “ego” (the Freudian one) and that we both decided that I shouldn’t be teaching until I’ve made a “full recovery”. It also wished me luck in my “experimentation phase”. Which is it, am I sick, or not? Lol
Thankfully that student who told me about it got them to rewrite it, as in Germany there are a lot of privacy protections and what they did was in violation of that.
And that’s where it’s left off. My last week of teaching is next week and I’m looking forward to being done with the place. However, this whole situation makes me terrified of coming out to the parents at the other school I teach at, because who knows what the other parents will say.
Thankfully, even if me being trans means that many people will hate me, I will no longer be at war with myself on the inside. Despite all of this, I’m feeling blessed for that.