Gender, Work and Organization. Vol. 14 No.

6 November 2007

Do Workplace Gender Transitions

Make Gender Trouble?
Kristen Schilt* and Catherine Connell

This article examines what happens when an employee makes the transi-
tion from one recognized gender category to another and remains in the
same job. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transmen and transwomen
in Texas and California, we illustrate how a new social gender identity is
interactionally achieved in these open workplace transitions. While trans-
gender people often are represented as purposefully adopting hyper-
feminine or masculine gender identities post-transition, we find that
our respondents strive to craft alternative femininities and masculinities.
However, regardless of their personal gender ideologies, their men and
women co-workers often enlist their transitioning colleague into gender
rituals designed to repatriate them into a rigid gender binary. This enlist-
ment limits the political possibilities of making gender trouble in the
workplace, as transgender people have little leeway for resistance if they
wish to maintain job security and friendly workplace relationships.

Keywords: gender and work; transsexual; transgender employment; gender

trouble; doing gender

Introduction

G endered expectations for workers are deeply embedded in workplace

structures (Acker, 1990; Britton, 2004; Gherardi, 1995; Padavic and
Reskin, 2002; Valian, 1999; Williams, 1995). Employers often bring their
gender schemas about men and women’s abilities to bear on hiring and
promotion decisions, leading men and women to face very different relation-
ships to employment and advancement (Acker, 1990; Britton, 2004; Valian,
1999; Williams, 1995). However, when an employer hires a man to do a
‘man’s job,’ he or she typically does not expect this man to announce that he
intends to become a woman and remain in the same job. Open workplace
gender transitions — situations in which an employee undergoes a ‘sex

Address for correspondence: *Department of Sociology, Rice University, MS-28, P O Box 1892,
Houston, Texas, 77251-1892, USA, e-mail: [email protected]

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DO WORKPLACE GENDER TRANSITIONS MAKE GENDER TROUBLE? 597

change’ and remains in the same job — present an interesting challenge to

this gendered division of labour. While the varied mechanisms that hold
occupational sex segregation in place often are hidden, gender transitions can
throw them into high relief. Becoming women at work, for example, can
mean that transwomen lose high powered positions they are seen as no
longer suited for (Griggs, 1998). On the other hand, becoming men can make
transmen more valued workers than they were as women (Schilt, 2006).
Beyond illuminating deeply naturalized gendered workplace hierarchies,
however, these open transitions also have the potential to make workplace
‘gender trouble’ (Butler, 1990), as transsexual/transgender people denatural-
ize the assumed connection between gender identity, genitals and chromo-
somal makeup when they ‘cross over’ at work.1
This article considers the impact of open gender transitions on binary
conceptions of gender within the context of the workplace. Drawing on
in-depth interviews, we illustrate how transsexual/transgender people and
their co-workers socially negotiate gender identity during the transformative
process of open workplace transitions. As gendered behavioural expectations
for men and women can vary greatly depending on organizational cultures
and occupational contexts (Britton, 2004; Connell, 1995; Salzinger, 2003), trans-
men and transwomen must develop a sense of how to facilitate same-gender
and cross-gender interactions as new men or new women in their specific
workplaces. In this renegotiation process, some of the interviewees in our
study adopt what can be termed ‘alternative’ femininities and masculinities —
gender identities that strive to combat gender and sexual inequality. However,
regardless of their personal commitments to addressing sexism in the work-
place, many transmen and transwomen are enlisted post-transition into work-
place interactions that reproduce deeply held cultural beliefs about men and
women’s ‘natural’ abilities and interests. We argue that the strength of these
enlistments, and the lack of viable alternative interactional scripts in the
context of the workplace, limit the political possibilities of open workplace
transitions. Rather than ‘undoing gender’ (Butler, 2004) in the workplace, then,
individuals who cross over at work find themselves either anchored to their
birth gender through challenges to the authenticity of their destination gender,
or firmly repatriated into ‘the other side’ of the gender binary.2
After laying out our research methodology, we provide an overview of the
two theoretical approaches to the social construction of gender that frame this
article: the doing gender approach (West and Zimmerman, 1987) and gender
performativity theory (Butler, 1990). Both bodies of theory rely on theoretical
conceptions of a transgender subject to suggest ways that gender binaries and
hierarchical gender arrangements that devalue femininity can be challenged.
Drawing on our interview data with transgender workers, we show the
importance of keeping focused on transgender/transsexual people’s actual
lives, as well as the interactional contexts in which they exist, when theorizing
how to undo gender.

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598 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

Putting our focus on the context of the workplace, we examine how our
interviewees negotiate cross-gender and same-gender workplace interactions
after their open workplace transitions. Rather than causing gender trouble,
transmen and transwomen report that their co-workers either hold them
accountable to their birth gender, or repatriate them into the ‘other side’ of the
gender binary. Even when our interviewees want to challenge this rigid
binary thinking about gender, they can feel pressured to downplay their
opposition because of their need to maintain steady employment. In the
conclusion we argue that the potential of transgender/transsexual people to
undo gender at work can be constrained by their real-life need to keep their
jobs, as well as the slow-to-change gendered organizational cultures of most
workplaces.

Methods

This research was conducted with 28 transsexual/transgender people in Los

Angeles, California and Austin, Texas between 2003 and 2005. Both cities
have vibrant transgender communities, as well as recently adopted citywide
employment protections for transgender workers. Seventeen interviewees
came from the first author’s study of the workplace experiences of transmen
in southern California and 11 interviewees came from the second author’s
study of transwomen’s workplace experiences in Austin, Texas. The inter-
viewees were recruited from transgender activist groups, transgender
support group meetings, transgender list-serves and personal contacts. All
the interviews were conducted either in the interviewees’ offices or homes,
the interviewees’ friends’ homes, or at local cafés. The interviews ranged from
two to four hours. All interviews were recorded, transcribed and later coded
for analytic purposes. The characteristics of the interviewees are summarized
in Table 1.
In both studies, transsexual/transgender people’s experiences at work
both before and after their gender transition were examined via semi-
structured interviews. In addition to their own personal sense of how their
workplace experiences changed, the interviewees also were asked about the
reactions of their co-workers and employers. This type of self-report data on
interactional events presents a limited perspective, as we were not able to
check the interviewees’ perceptions with observational methods, such as
participant observation. As workplace transitions are sensitive events, many
interviewees also were uncomfortable with the idea of their co-workers being
interviewed about their perceptions of the transition process. However, while
observational data and co-worker interviews would have been a useful addi-
tion to this study, we do not feel that our reliance on self-report data is a fatal
flaw of this research project. As Garfinkel (1967) argues, transgender/
transsexual people can be considered ‘practical methodologists’ in regard to

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 Table 1: Sample characteristics for sample (N = 28)

Approx. no. of
years working as
Pseudonym Race/ethnicity Sexual identity destination gender Occupation

Transmen (n = 17)
Aaron Black/white Queer 5 Semi-professional

© 2007 The Author(s)

Christopher Asian Pansexual 3 Semi-professional
Colin White Queer 1 Lower professional
David White Bisexual 2 Higher professional
Douglas White Gay 5 Semi-professional
Elliott White Bisexual 1 Retail/customer service
Jack Latino Queer 1 Semi-professional
Jake White Queer 9 Higher professional
Keith Black Heterosexual 1 Blue-collar
Kelly White Bisexual 2 Semi-professional
Ken Asian/white Queer 0.5 Semi-professional

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Paul White Heterosexual 2 Semi-professional
Preston White Bisexual 2 Blue-collar
Riley White Dates women 1 Lower professional
Simon White Bisexual 2 Semi-professional
Thomas Latino Queer 13 Higher professional
Trevor White Gay/queer 6 Semi-professional
Transwomen (n = 11)
Agape White Queer 4 Higher professional
DO WORKPLACE GENDER TRANSITIONS MAKE GENDER TROUBLE?

Brenda White Bisexual 4 Blue-collar

Carolina Puerto Rican/white Queer 4 Higher professional
Ellen White Queer 9 Retail/customer service
Jackie Latina Queer 8 Retail/customer service
Kasey White Heterosexual 3 Lower professional
Katie White Bisexual 0.5 Lower professional
Kirsten Latina Heterosexual 5 Retail/customer service
Lana White Heterosexual 6 Semi-professional
599

Volume 14 Number 6 November 2007

Laura Native Amer/White Unknown 3 Lower professional
Layla White Bisexual 8 Semi-professional
600 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

how gender ‘works,’ as they are forced to negotiate social identities as new
men or new women. This negotiation process carries a deep awareness of
gendered nuances in interactions, meaning that transmen and transwomen
often clearly recognize differences in treatment ‘before and after’ — especially
as changes in treatment often mean a gain of privilege (for transmen) or a loss
of privilege (for transwomen).

Doing/performing gender and the possibilities of

gender trouble

In ‘Doing gender,’ West and Zimmerman (1987) argue that while individuals
have many different social identities that are constantly adopted, dropped, or
made more salient in certain contexts, ‘we are always women or men’ (1987,
p. 15). Emphasizing this omni-revelance of gender, West and Zimmerman
make the case that individuals are always doing gender, as gender is a social
process that is constantly negotiated, rather than something innate to men or
women.
They posit that ‘participants in interaction organize their various and mani-
fold activities to reflect or express gender, and they are disposed to perceive
the behavior of others in similar light’ (1987, p. 4). As everyone is accountable
to gendered expectations, gender inequality is socially produced and main-
tained in interactions, as men continually do dominance while women do
deference. Yet, while doing gender, and thus doing inequality, is an active
process, they argue, drawing on the ethnomethodological theory of Harold
Garfinkel (1967), that this interactional work becomes obscured by incorri-
gible propositions about gender that position masculinity and femininity as
binary opposites that occur as natural offshoots of biology (that is, chromo-
somes and genitals).
West and Zimmerman’s conception of doing gender shares a great deal
with Butler’s theorization of gender performativity in Gender Trouble (1990).
Butler draws on post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories rather than
sociological theories of symbolic interaction to frame her argument. Arguing
against conceptions of gender as the result of a priori internal essences, she
frames masculinity and femininity as citational — or, as Prosser paraphrases
it, ‘culturally intelligible stylized act[s]’ (1998, p. 32) that are given meaning
only through their constant repetition. Emphasizing the necessity of social
norms to provide meaning to gender, Butler notes in Undoing Gender,

One only determines ‘one’s own’ sense of gender to the extent that social
norms exist that support and enable that act of claiming gender for oneself.
One is dependent on this ‘outside’ to lay claims to what is one’s own.
(Butler, 2004, p. 7)

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With this emphasis on social norms, Butler, like West and Zimmerman,
positions gender as an overarching system that restricts possibilities of
gender expressions for men and women at the same time as it provides
necessary structure for a ‘livable life’ (Butler, 2004, p. 8).
Seeing gender as a social product or a citation for which there is no original
opens up the possibility of de-gendering the social world (Lorber, 2005),
ungendering one’s self (Bornstein, 1994), or undoing gender altogether
(Butler, 2004). Envisioning how gender could be done differently in ways that
alleviate inequality and remove restrictions on gender expressions requires a
serious reconsideration of binary thinking on gender. As Gherardi notes:
If we are to escape the gender trap, if we are to free ourselves of the idea
that there exist two and only two types of individuals, if we are to ensure
that social differentiation is no longer based on sexual differentiation, we
must destabilize all thought which dichotomizes (either male or female)
and hierarchies (male as one, as the norm, and female as the other, the
second sex). (1995, p. 4)
However, while some practical suggestions about how to de-emphasize the
social importance of gender have been offered (Lorber, 2005), challenging
binary thinking about gender often remains located in the realm of theoretical
possibilities of the gender crossing of transgender people.
In theoretical conceptions of gender performativity and doing gender,
what can be referred to as the ‘transgender subject,’ a person who gender
crosses in some way, plays a central role. In ‘Doing gender’ (West and
Zimmerman, 1987), how Agnes — a young woman who was born male —
learns to do femininity without a biological claim to womanhood is used to
illustrate the everyday social production of gender.
Butler, in contrast, uses male-bodied individuals who perform femininity
in drag productions as a concrete example of gender performativity (Butler,
1990, 1993). As she notes, ‘drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of
gender itself — as well as its contingency’ (Butler, 1990, p. 130). Interestingly,
Agnes and Butler’s drag performers can be seen as at odds with one another
in their theoretical deployment. While drag performers can be seen as pur-
posefully playing with gender, or even purposefully challenging binary
views on gender, Agnes, like many individuals who can be classified as
‘transsexuals’, seeks ‘very pointedly to be nonperformative, to be constative,
quite simply, to be’ (Prosser, 1998, p. 35, emphasis in text). What these con-
cepts share, however, is representing fixed, allegorical representations of
transgender subjects — subjects who are removed from actual, lived social
contexts.
It is not, of course, that these theories do not talk about real people. In
Bodies that Matter (1993), Butler uses the drag performers showcased in Jennie
Livingston’s film, Paris is Burning (1990), as concrete examples of the perfor-
mativity of both sex and gender. However, as Prosser (1998) and Namaste

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(2000) have argued, these real people are reduced to mere allegory in Butler’s
work. And, in talking about the political possibilities of gender crossing in
Paris is Burning, ‘Butler’s essay locates transgressive value in that which
makes the [transgender] subject’s real life most unsafe’ (Prosser, 1998, p. 49)
— living in between officially sanctioned gender categories. Agnes, too, was
an actual person who sought sexual reassignment surgery at the University of
California, Los Angeles in the 1950s. Immortalized in the work of Harold
Garfinkel (1967), however, she ceases to have agency, complexity, or
materiality as her life is used to form the theoretical backbone of West and
Zimmerman’s work. In these frameworks, then, the materiality of the trans-
gender subject (Prosser, 1998) and the importance of social context (Namaste,
2000) is elided.
An empirical question that emerges from these theoretical conceptions is
whether transgender subjects can purposefully, or as an unintended conse-
quence of their decision to gender cross, actually undo gender? Until recently
this question could be asked only rhetorically, as individuals who gender
crossed were ‘encouraged’ by medical and psychological personnel to ‘pass’
in their destination gender (that is, not to reveal their gender transition)
(Bolin, 1988; Bornstein, 1994; Stone, 1991). With the rise in transgender activ-
ism in the last 15 years (Califia, 1997; Frye, 2000; Green, 2004; Whittle, 2002),
people who gender cross are increasingly opting to openly identify as trans-
gender or transsexual.
This type of visibility, for those who can do so safely, carries potential
benefits, such as educating the general public about transgender lives in an
effort to gain wider legal protections. For some individuals, publicly gender
crossing also is a way to break down the gender binary, as it challenges the
basis of the categories of man and woman (Bornstein, 1994; Stone, 1991). In
the same way as politically motivated drag performances can reveal the ways
in which gender binaries are performative citations with no essential basis
(Butler, 1990; Rupp and Taylor, 2004), visibly gender crossing could conceiv-
ably disrupt the assumed natural connection between genitals and gender
identity. Additionally, these open transitions could challenge binary opposi-
tions of gender, opening up possibilities for a continuum of gender identities.
Open workplace transitions — the focus of this article — offer a new
interactional context for examining the question of whether transgender
people make gender trouble for binary views on gender. In these transitions,
individuals undergo gender changes while remaining in the same job. These
transitions bring gendered practices and interactions in the workplace — an
organizational context that is heavily gendered (Acker, 1990; Britton, 2004;
Williams, 1995) — into sharp focus, as transsexual/transgender people
are actively violating the assumed naturalness and permanency of gender
(Garfinkel, 1967) under the gaze of co-workers and supervisors.
These open workplace transitions are not necessarily motivated by a politi-
cal desire for visibility. Rather, for many individuals, undergoing a gender

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transition is a way to make life more livable; staying in the same job during
this process can provide welcome stability to a life that is in physical and
emotional transition on many levels. Additionally, transgender/transsexual
people can avoid losing any of their job history — a common sacrifice that
accompanies the decision to find a new job where one’s gender transition is
unknown. Rather, co-workers can neutralize the transformative potential of
open workplace transitions by encouraging transgender people to conform to
rigid stereotypes of how men and women ‘just are’.
This challenge theoretically could lead to an undoing of gender inequality
in the workplace, as co-workers and employers could begin to rethink
their stereotypes about gender, work performance, and ‘natural’ abilities.
However, as we demonstrate in this article, even when transsexual/
transgender people openly challenge what they view as sexist gender dynam-
ics in the workplace, or attempt to introduce co-workers to a continuum of
gender identities, the theoretical possibilities of undoing gender at work via
open workplace transitions are not always born out. Rather, co-workers often
neutralize the transformative potential of open workplace transitions, as they
actively enlist transgender people to conforming to rigid stereotypes of how
men and women ‘just are’. By repatriating transgender and transsexual
people into the gender binary, co-workers repair the potential trouble to their
naturalized attitudes about gender — demonstrating, we argue, that in the
gendered context of the workplace, the theoretical potential of gender cross-
ing does not necessarily translate into an undoing of gender.

Analysis

Workplaces are not gender-neutral locations filled with bodies, but rather
complex sites in which gender expectations are embedded in workplace
structures and reproduced in interactions (Acker, 1990; Britton, 2004;
Williams, 1995). Gendered behavioural expectations for men and women
vary greatly depending on organizational cultures and occupational contexts
(Connell, 1995; Salzinger, 2003). While there is always some personal leeway
in how to do gender, workers face pressures to conform to specific gender
expectations for their workplaces. Not meeting these expectations can result
in gender harassment, ostracization and loss of advancement possibilities
(Miller, 1997; Rhode, 1997; Talbot, 2002; Valian, 1999).
In undertaking an open workplace transition, transgender people face the
task of doing gender in their new social identity in a way that fits with both
gendered workplace expectations and their personal gender ideologies. In the
next two sections, we outline how interviewees see their transitions impact-
ing on cross-gender interactions, interactions with co-workers who do not
share their destination gender, and same-gender interactions, interac-
tions with co-workers who do share their destination gender. Rather than

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challenging binary views on gender, we demonstrate that these renegotia-

tions often push transmen and transwomen towards reproducing workplace
gender hierarchies that privilege masculinity and devalue femininity, thereby
reaffirming their co-workers’ belief in the naturalness of the gender binary in
the workplace.

Negotiating cross-gender interactions

While doing gender reinforces socially constructed differences between men
and women (West and Zimmerman, 1987), it also reproduces notions of a
natural connection between men or between women. This presumption of a
natural connection between people of the same gender can create specific
behavioural expectations, such as demands for men in all-male groups to
talk about sports and sex, or women in all-female groups to talk about
romance and menstrual cycles. Even though transmen, for example, may
not have felt that they fit into all-women interactions at work prior to their
transition, they still were often included in this female bonding based on
their birth gender. Once transitions are officially announced, however, both
transmen and transwomen can find themselves struggling — in what are
now cross-gender relationships — to negotiate new gender boundaries and
new interactional styles, and challenges to the authenticity of their destina-
tion gender.

New gender boundaries. After the public announcement of their gender tran-
sition in the workplace, both transmen and transwomen describe the erection
of new cross-gender boundaries in workplace interactions. As transmen
increasingly develop a masculine appearance, many find that they are less
frequently included in ‘girl talk’ at work — generally conversations about
appearance and dress, menstruation and romantic interests. For transmen
who describe themselves as ‘always already men’ (Rubin, 2003) despite being
born with a female body, these new boundaries are a relief. Illustrating this
type of reaction, Aaron says:
Even when I was living as a female, I never did get the way women
interacted. And I was always on the outside of that, so I never really felt like
one of them.
For Paul, who transitioned while working in one of the ‘women’s professions’
(nursing and teaching), these new boundaries signaled a welcomed end to
being held accountable to stereotypical feminine interactional expectations,
such as noticing new hairstyles or offering compliments about hair and
clothing — interactions he describes as not coming to him naturally.
Some transwomen also express relief about the cessation of gendered
expectations to participate in stereotypically masculine interactions. Laura,
who transitioned in a professional job, notes that her actual interactions with

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men changed little with her transition. When working as a man, he — at the
time — had removed himself from ‘guy talk’; generally conversations about
cars, sports, and the sexual objectification of women, as participating in these
types of interactions did not fit with his personal sense of being a woman,
despite having a male body. Now that she has made her feminine identity
public at work, she feels that men in her workplace have a new interpretative
frame for understanding these boundaries. ‘I think they understand a little
more why I could have cared less who won the football game!’
Rather than challenging their ideas about the permanency of gender, inter-
viewees felt that co-workers reincorporated their pre-transition interactions
into an understanding of ‘being transgender’ and the innateness of gendered
interests. In other words, Laura’s lack of interest in football and Paul’s lack of
participation in the feminine niceties were re-evaluated as proof that trans-
gender people are somehow trapped in the wrong body, a situation that is
made right through a gender transition.
Not all interviewees felt a sense of relief at the creation or sudden accep-
tance of cross-gender boundaries. For some transmen who formerly identi-
fied as queer, bisexual or lesbian women, these new boundaries create a sense
of sadness and exclusion. Describing this feeling, Elliott, who transitioned in
a retail job, says:

It’s just like a little bit more of a wall there [with women] because I am not
one of the girls anymore.... Like [women] have to get to know me better
before they can be really relaxed with me.... I grew up surrounded by
women and now to have women be kind of leery of me, it’s a very strange
thing.

Transmen who are saddened by their perceptions of a new distance between

themselves and women in the workplace still try to be respectful of these
boundaries. This acceptance, however, does little to challenge notions of the
gender binary; rather, conceding a loss of participation in ‘women’s space’
reifies divisions between men and women as natural. Yet, showing the impor-
tance of context in theorizing the potential of gender crossing to undo gender,
transmen who seek to have masculine social identities at work have few other
options, as most workplaces do not provide accepted interactional scripts for
men who want to be just one of the girls. In order to keep social relation-
ships smooth during the turmoil of an open workplace transition, then,
transsexual/transgender people can hesitate to create additional challenges
to gendered workplace expectations, as they desire to retain steady and
comfortable employment.
In some cases, these new cross-gender boundaries can translate into work-
place penalties. Agape, who transitioned in a high-tech company, remembers
her boss worrying that taking oestrogen would adversely affect her program-
ming abilities. She says:

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I think he just doesn’t really have that high of an opinion of women. I think
it’s just he, he thinks fire and aggression is what gets things done.... And I
guess he sees women as being more passive, and was worried my produc-
tivity would decrease.
Lana faced a similar situation. As a man, Lana co-owned a professional
business, a company she describes as a ‘real boys’ club,’ with three other men.
While they began their business as close friends, the friendship did not
survive the announcement that Lana — he at the time — intended to become
a woman. Moving from being a hegemonically masculine man who did not
outwardly acknowledge his inner feminine gender identity, Lana’s transition
disrupted the homosocial bonds of the company’s power elite. After multiple
expressions of their discomfort about both the transition and having a
woman as a business partner, Lana was forced out of the company. Under-
scoring the gendered aspect of these drastic new boundaries, she recalls that
during the negotiations to buy her shares of the company:
The only thing I remember [my business partner] saying in the entire three
days was, ‘How can you expect to run a company when all you’re going to
be thinking about is nail polish?’
As this comment suggests, Lana’s partners locate their challenge to her in
terms of gendered expectations that women cannot be serious business part-
ners because they are too concerned with frivolities of appearance. Her tran-
sition does not undo gendered expectations, but rather is reincorporated into
a workplace gender hierarchy that disadvantages and devalues women and
femininity.

Interactional styles. Open workplace gender transitions reveal the gender

dynamics behind what are considered workplace-appropriate cross-gender
interactions. Both transmen and transwomen recount their sudden realiza-
tion that changing gender at work requires a renegotiation of once comfort-
able interactional styles. In some cases, transmen and transwomen make
personal decisions about changing cross-gender interactions in an effort to
meet their personal ideals of how men and women should act — such as
the case of Preston, who transitioned from woman to man in a blue-collar
job. When working as a woman, Preston — who publicly identified as a
lesbian — describes frequently engaging in joking, sexualized banter
with both men and women in her dyke-friendly workplace. However,
after his transition, he suddenly felt uncomfortable engaging in similar
conversations:
I used to flirt a lot as a lesbian! It was easy for me to flirt.... Since I have
transitioned, a lot of the stuff that I could say as a dyke is so inappropriate!
[laughs]. There is this one woman at work ... she is just really straight. Very
much. I used to tease her about ... switching sides.... And if I say that now

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[as a man], it is just like so fucking inappropriate. There is no way for me to

find a justification for that, even though that is the history of our relation-
ship. It is the history of how we have interacted with one another.... [It]
could be perceived wrong. Even though my motive for it hasn’t changed,
but it is still inappropriate.
Preston’s sense of discomfort with this interactional style translates into
adopting a policing role toward sexualized banter at work. His co-workers
were surprised at his behavioural changes, as he used to engage in the same
type of behaviour he now critiques. However, for him, this type of behav-
ioural change was necessary, as he did not want to enact a form of masculinity
that can be construed as sexist. As he gains cultural competency in the variety
of ways men and women interact, he might feel more leeway to adopt differ-
ent interactional styles, as some men in his workplace did engage in sexual-
ized banter with women. At the onset of transition, however, many transmen
err on the side of caution by policing their behaviour, as — even with legal
protections for gender identity in the workplace — they can feel vulnerable as
openly transgender employees.
Other changes to cross-gender interactional styles can be a result of
implicit or explicit pressure from co-workers. Ellen, who transitioned from
man to woman in a customer service job, describes implicit pressure to tone
down stereotypically masculine styles of interaction:
There is one thing that really drives me crazy — when I’m asked for my
opinion on a subject [from men], I have to remember — ‘Do not express it
as firmly as I actually believe’.
While she personally does not wish to change, she realizes that muting
opinions and emotions is the predominant interactional style for women in
her workplace. She continues:
At work I tend not to trumpet my own horn very much, and the workplace
environment demands that [women keep quiet]. I don’t know if that’s
anything about me as transgender. I think that’s just being a woman.
While this change to her interactional style does reproduce men doing domi-
nance and women doing deference (West and Zimmerman, 1987), Ellen, like
Preston, feels she needs to make these concessions in order to gain a femin-
ine social identity at work and to keep friendly relationships with her
co-workers.
Pressures to change cross-gender interactional styles also can be explicit.
Several transmen describe women in their workplaces enlisting them into
what can be termed ‘gender rituals’ (Goffman, 1977), stereotypical interac-
tions that are typically played out between heterosexual men and women.
After the announcement of their transition from woman to man, transmen
recount women raising expectations that they will now, as men, do any

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requisite heavy lifting around the workplace, such as changing office water
bottles, moving furniture, or carrying heavy boxes. Interestingly, this change
in behavioural expectations occurs almost immediately after the transition
announcement. The change was so rapid that many transmen were, at first,
not sure how to make sense of these new expectations. Kelly, who transi-
tioned in a semi-professional job, notes:

Before [transition] no one ever asked me to do anything really and then

[after], this one teacher, she’s like, ‘Can you hang this up? Can you move
this for me?’ ... Like if anything needed to be done in this room, it was me.
Like she was just, ‘Male — okay, you do it’. That took some adjusting. I
thought she was picking on me for a while. And then I realized that she just,
she just assumes that I’m gonna do all that stuff.

Ken describes a similar experience in his semi-professional workplace. While

his co-workers were slow to adopt masculine pronouns with him, women
did enlist him in performing masculine-coded duties in the workplace imme-
diately after his transition announcement, such as carrying heavy items to the
basement and unloading boxes.
For some transmen, being enlisted into these masculine gender rituals is
exciting, as it gives them access to chivalrous behaviour they were sanctioned
for when they performed them as masculine women. For others, this enlist-
ment is viewed as blatant sexism. Describing this reaction, Trevor says:

[In one job] I had a supervisor who kept asking me to move fucking
furniture and to do electronic equipment. And I would have to explain to
her all the time. This would happen several times a day because it was a
new program and we were setting up the office. There was furniture that
needed to be moved but I have a hand disability, so I can’t do it. I had
already told her that like four or five times. And in the meanwhile, there
were a couple of big, strong women who were much bigger and stronger
than I was. But [my supervisor] asked me. I am kind of a little guy! I
pointed out to her [assuming a man should do heavy lifting] is a really
sexist assumption.

While this enlisting signals a certain level of social validation for his mascu-
line social identity, it conflicts with his physical abilities as well as his per-
sonal gender ideology. Trevor’s frustration comes from this supervisor’s
constant slippage into gender rituals that position women as frail and men
as able. Even when he challenges what he sees as a sexism assumption,
however, she continues to make the requests, illustrating how gendered
workplace assumptions come to be naturalized. In other words, his attempt to
undo this kind of gendered interaction has little impact on workplace ideas
about what tasks are appropriate for men and women.

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Challenges to authenticity. A small number of both transmen and trans-

women experienced explicit challenges to the authenticity of their destination
gender in cross-gender interactions. Kirsten transitioned from man to woman
in a retail setting that was predominantly staffed by women and gay men. She
found that once she began to transition, her friendly relationship with a
colleague, a gay man, ended: ‘We used to laugh and joke together on the floor
all the time. But he totally changed’. As a drag performer, her colleague
appeared to be threatened by Kirsten’s decision to become a woman. Kirsten
notes that while her co-worker had adopted facial surgery and had breast
augmentation to enhance his drag performances, he thought transition ‘was
wrong, and [said] he would never do that’. He began to critique her appear-
ance and behaviour after her transition.
[He would say], ‘Sometimes you look a little thrown together, and I think
you need to work on that ... and you need to build relationships with
[co-workers] at the counter because they’re saying that you’re real bossy.’
This co-worker’s response is unsurprising — there is a history of competitive
border wars between gay men who do drag and transwomen (Perkins, 1983;
Rupp and Taylor, 2004). In the case of Kirsten, her co-worker’s animosity
precludes her from becoming a woman at work, as he is continually refer-
encing her birth gender. Additionally, he challenges her feminine authenticity
by suggesting she retains too many masculine traits — assertiveness that is
suddenly labelled as ‘bossy’ once she gains a feminine social identity. Located
within this challenge, again, is explicit pressure for Kirsten to conform to a
particular type of femininity to fit into her specific workplace.
For transmen, challenges to the authenticity of their masculinity were less
explicit. Typically, it came in the form of feminine advice. Jake, who transi-
tioned in a professional job, recounts his irritation at a woman he worked
with who began to offer unsolicited advice about hysterectomies after he
announced his transition. While this advice might have been well intentioned,
he read it as an attempt to connect with him on a level of bodily sameness, a
move that disregarded his transman identity. In this context, this type of
advice can take on a mother/daughter dynamic that is uncomfortable and
unwanted by many transmen.
Paul encountered similar advice at work from women who were concerned
about his decision to pursue chest surgery — a procedure that requires a
complete mastectomy. Attempting to relate to him as woman, these colleagues
encouraged him not to ‘cut off his breasts’, a decision they saw as mutilation of
healthy tissue. This type of reaction from women appears to be located in body
identity, as these women co-workers make sense of transmen’s surgical
choices through the lens of something shared — a female body by birth.
Women, then, react with consternation to transgender body modification
from their own position of feeling ‘appropriately’ gendered, or not trapped
in the wrong body. However, while these reactions from women negate

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610 GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

transmen’s masculine social identities on some level, they also keep them
anchored in a binary view of gender: transmen are still women rather than
really men.

Negotiating same-gender interactions

In crossing over at work, transmen and transwomen must grapple with a new
same-gender reference group. Fitting into same-gender groups is particularly
salient in these types of open workplace transitions, as transmen and trans-
women eventually must gain access to same-gender sanctuaries in the work-
place: the men’s room and the women’s room respectively. People in these
new same-gender reference groups, men for transmen and women for tran-
swomen, might be expected to offer opposition to their transitioning col-
league, as they do not have a biological claim to these gendered spaces. Yet,
our interviewees generally report being included in same-gender spaces and
interactions, and, in some cases, being taken on as gender apprentices. As
with cross-gender interactions, these renegotiated interactions do not disrupt
binary views on gender, but rather repatriate transmen and transwomen into
us versus them enactments of masculinity and femininity.

Inclusion in same-gender spaces. Attempting to gain access to same-gender

spaces in the workplace, such as bathrooms and locker rooms, can create a
great deal of anxiety for people transitioning at work. In transsexual/
transgender autobiographies, bathroom horror stories abound, such as Kate
Bornstein’s (1994) description of being forced to use a women’s room that was
under construction and several floors away from her desk when she transi-
tioned at IBM. However, while negotiating these spaces can take finesse, most
transmen and transwomen in this study describe being included in same-
gender spaces at work.
For transmen, this inclusion often came by direct invitation from men.
Keith, who transitioned in a blue-collar job, waited to move into the men’s
locker room until he had been taking testosterone for several months and
felt that he passed as a man. Elliott took a similar approach at his retail job.
Eventually men in their workplaces began to ask Keith and Elliott when
they were going to start using the locker room, signalling that they were
open to this change. Once in the locker room, men also went out of their
way to make Keith and Elliott feel comfortable by including them in locker
room social interactions. Douglas and Trevor had similar experiences when
they began to use the men’s room in their social services jobs. Both of them
worked predominantly with gay men who explicitly encouraged them to
feel comfortable using the men’s restroom. Douglas’ co-workers even held
a mock ceremony in which they presented him with his own key to the
men’s room.

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DO WORKPLACE GENDER TRANSITIONS MAKE GENDER TROUBLE? 611

Transwomen also describe their inclusion in same-gender workplace

spaces positively. Carolina notes that she eats lunch with the ‘girls’ at work
now, as she is included in this woman space. Agape describes her excitement
at her new ability to interact with women in the bathroom, saying, ‘It’s so nice
to be able chat in the bathroom — it’s so nice! I never realized I was missing
that because I never had it before!’ However, this same-gender inclusion was
not so readily available for all transwomen. Jackie recalls an initial coldness
toward her on the part of other women at work. Eventually she found accep-
tance by befriending one socially influential woman. She says of the process:

It’s like a waterfall. It took one person to get through ... and then the rest
came forward. You know, at every workplace there are ‘the girls’, you
know, the social clique.... As soon as [one woman] started being nice to me,
the rest followed.

Interactional styles. Open workplace transitions bring with them opportu-

nities for engaging in same-gender interactions as new men or new women.
In describing their relationships with other women in the workplace post-
transition, transwomen express a new sense of freedom. When they were
working as men, many transwomen had very stereotypically masculine
workplace personas, as do many pre-transition transwomen (Griggs, 1998).
Achieving these personas meant that they did not acknowledge their personal
sense of relating more to women and ‘women’s interests’ than to men and
‘men’s interests’. As women, however, they now are able to openly express
interest in feminine things that they often denied when they were working as
men. Describing this new freedom, Laura, who transitioned in a professional
job, notes:
I got a bigger field of friends in this building. And of course, they’re all
female, because we all have lots of talk about. You know, I have grandchil-
dren that range from two and up, so you know, we can talk about kids, we
can talk about babies, you know, just about anything any other woman
would talk about is what I’m knowledgeable and like to talk about. I like to
cook, I like to sew. So it makes it pretty easy.
Prior to her transition, she did not, as a man, attempt the same types of
interactions with women, as she worried these interactions would be seen as
inappropriate, or she would be labelled as an atypical or gay man.
Illustrating the greater leeway for women to admit interest in activities
coded as masculine (Thorne, 1993), transmen do not recount having to hide
their preference for masculinity — indeed, most transmen in this study
describe themselves as embodying this preference in their personal appear-
ance. Yet, many transmen recount men explicitly engaging them in ‘guy talk’
immediately after their announcement of their impending transition. Kelly,

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who transitioned in a semi-professional workplace where men were the

minority, says:
I definitely notice that the guys ... they will say stuff to me that I know they
wouldn’t have said before [when I was working as a woman].... And like
one guy, he never talked to me before. I think he was uncomfortable [that I
was a lesbian].... Recently we were talking and he was talking about his
girlfriend and he’s like, ‘I go home and work it [have sex] for exercise’. And
I know he would never have said that to me before.
Jake describes a similar enlisting into what can be described as masculine
gender rituals. In his professional workplace, he recounts making few
changes in his interactional style with men in his workplace. However, he
notes:
One of the funny things that happened that was gender specific was that a
lot of my male colleagues, at least at first, started kind of like slapping me
on the back [laughs]. But I think it was with more force than they probably
slapped each other on the back.... And it was not that I had gained access
to ‘male privilege’ but they were trying to affirm to me that they saw me as
a male.... That they were going to try to be supportive and that was the way
they were going to be supportive of me as a guy, or something of the sort
[laughs]. Slapping me on the back.
As he remarks, he does not take this backslapping as a signal that these
men have forgotten his birth gender. Rather, he interprets these actions as
a kind of social validation performance his colleagues are acting out in an
attempt to signal acceptance. The awkwardness of these backslaps illustrates
his colleagues’ own hyperawareness of trying to casually do gender man to
man. As Jake actively cultivates a transman identity, he, like Kelly, is uncom-
fortable with this incorporation, as he perceives it as intended to gloss over
his life history. Yet, while he is able to disrupt this incorporation momen-
tarily by mentioning things from his life as a woman, such as when he was
a Girl Scout, he notes that men in his workplace appear more comfortable
trying to relate to him as ‘just a guy’ rather than a transman with a female
history.

Gender apprenticing. Rather than challenging the authenticity of transmen

and transwomen’s destination gender, some same-gender colleagues took
their transitioning colleague on as what can be described as a gender appren-
tice. For transmen, this form of apprenticing typically came from heterosexual
men who sought to socialize them into how to be a man. Colin, who transi-
tioned in a professional workplace, remembers being stopped by the director
of his office the first day he came to work in a tie. ‘He’s like, “Oh no, no, no.
That’s not a good tie. Come here!” And he showed me how to tie a Windsor

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DO WORKPLACE GENDER TRANSITIONS MAKE GENDER TROUBLE? 613

knot.’ In this situation, his older colleague adopts Colin as a younger protégé,
teaching him ‘masculine’ knowledge — how to tie a Windsor knot — that
typically is handed down from father to son.
Simon, who transitioned in the ‘women’s professions’, also encountered
apprenticing from the father of one of the children he worked with, as well as
from his brother-in-law. While some transmen appreciate this form of appren-
ticing, others chafe at it, as it coerces them into hegemonic performances of
masculinity that do not fit with their personal identity projects. This pressure
from men in the workplace to do gender as men in the ‘right’ way suggests,
as well, that co-workers may have more anxiety about appropriate gender
performances than the person who is actually transitioning.
While transwomen describe less frequent occurrences of gender appren-
ticing, they are, in contrast to transmen, typically appreciative of these
apprenticing efforts of women they work with. This gender difference in
reactions may be a result of the different reactions to gender crossing. In other
words, as women, pre-transition transmen have more leeway for adopting
masculine appearances and behaviour, which gives them more experience
with masculinity when they transition. As men, on the other hand, pre-
transition transwomen face severe social sanctions for expressing interest
in feminine styles and behaviour. This difference, an adult version of the
‘tomboy/sissy’ dynamic (Thorne, 1993), means that transwomen have little
experience with how to do femininity once they become women, and are
appreciative of women’s efforts to socialize them. Describing this reaction,
Laura, who transitioned in a professional job, recounts how moved she was
when a woman at her work took her shopping for make-up:
I’ve had other women here help me with make-up.... There’s a lady here
who said, ‘Oh, let me do it! I can show you simple things’. I said, ‘Ok!’ and
we went shopping, that kind of thing.... I forgot how it was brought up —
but somebody said, ‘You know, Crystal loves to do makeup’. And I said,
‘I’m gonna have to get a hold of her and see what her ideas are’. And that
is how it began. And so — I paid for lunch and we ran out to Target or
someplace and picked out a few things that would work. And she taught
me how to put it on.
Laura initiates her own apprenticing by directly approaching her colleague
for make-up advice. This apprenticing allows her to develop more confidence
in her feminine appearance. While other transwomen describe being
‘allowed’ to engage in ‘girl talk’ about children, romance, and fashion, they
do not recount such strong incorporation into their destination gender by
women as transmen do from men. As with the previous examples in this
section, men appear more invested in including transmen as just one of the
guys than women are in incorporating transwomen into the world of women
at work. In both cases, however, this kind of gender apprenticing reinforces
strongly held cultural beliefs about how men and women should act and

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look. Even when transmen attempt to create new ways to be a man at work,
they often are socially repatriated into the gender binary as men — showing
again the difficultly of undoing gender in the context of the workplace.

Discussion

In this article we consider the impact of open gender transitions on binary

conceptions of gender in the context of the workplace. While transsexuals
often are represented as being gender overachievers (Garfinkel, 1967; Kando,
1973; Raymond, 1979), this article shows that in open workplace transitions,
co-workers, rather than transmen and transwomen, can overdo and reinforce
gender. This over-doing of gender typically occurs when co-workers attempt
to demonstrate their acceptance of their transitioning colleague. Men slap
transmen on the back and engage them in ‘guy talk,’ while women begin to
ask transmen to do heavy lifting. Co-workers also try to teach transmen how
to be men, or begin to hold transwomen accountable to restrictive standards
of appropriate work femininity.
As everyone re-negotiates the meaning of gender and sexual difference
made visible by open workplace transitions, binary thinking about gender is
often upheld and the resulting gender hierarchies interwoven with heter-
onormativity and sexism are reproduced. Transmen and transwomen can be
frustrated by the rigid gender expectations placed upon them by co-workers.
For some transwomen, facing the devaluation of femininity in the workplace
is detrimental to their careers, as they are rejected from powerful homosocial
men’s networks or classified as less able workers. The reactions transmen and
transwomen describe to their gender transitions suggest that co-workers may
face more anxieties about how to properly do gender in open workplace
transitions than their transitioning colleague. Rather than causing gender
trouble, however, these anxieties result in a reinforcement of binary views on
gender through the reproduction of gendered hierarchies that disadvantage
women and rigid adherence to the ‘right’ way to do gender.
Some challenges to the authenticity of transmen and transwomen’s desti-
nation genders do arise. In the case of transmen, women may be more likely
than men to have concerns about the transition, or to see the transition as
inauthentic, as they believe they share something — a female body by birth —
with transmen. Operating from this frame of similarity, women may have
more qualms about bodily transformation as they can imagine a similar
transformation of their own body.
Demonstrating how shared birth gender may impact on reactions to
surgery, transwomen also face workplace resistance to their transition pre-
dominantly from heterosexual men at work. Transwomen have noted that
biological men have a visceral reaction to the news of their ‘sex change,’ as
they can vividly imagine the removal of their own penis (Griggs, 1998).

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Transwomen also are viewed as giving up male privilege, particularly if they

were hegemonically masculine prior to transition. From this place of being
the same, heterosexual men may have difficulty justifying why a man would
want to move to a lower gender status, and remove his penis; the literal
signifier of patriarchal dominance.
Transmen, on the other hand, are moving up the gender hierarchy. Women,
then, may balk at what they perceive as gaining gender privilege. Exempli-
fying this attitude, several transmen noted that some women in their work-
places made comments that transmen were — now as men — going to benefit
from the ‘good ole boys’ network’. Even with this challenge, however, the
gender binary is upheld; transitioning individuals are simply returned to the
‘reality’ of their birth gender (women trying to be men, men acting like
women) rather than being viewed as a third gender, or being repatriated into
the ‘other side’ of the binary.
Co-workers who shared the destination gender of transgender people
offered less resistance to the transition, and in fact did work to incorporate
their colleague into being one of the guys or one of the girls.3 Heterosexual
men might be expected to bar transmen from becoming men at work, as this
move could challenge their own claim to masculinity. However, transmen
describe heterosexual men going out of their way to incorporate them into
all-male interactions.
Looking at the behaviour of heterosexual men co-workers from the per-
spective of the social construction of masculinity, and the dovetailing of doing
gender and doing heterosexuality, these incorporation responses in are not
entirely surprising. While these men may not see their transman colleague as
really a man, they recognize that in this particular context — the workplace —
this identity is being socially validated. And, as their colleague begins to look
like a man with hormone therapy, raising oppositions to their masculinity
becomes problematic. Transmen noted that heterosexual men asked them
questions about the physical aspects of their transition when it was first
announced at work, such as ‘Are you gonna grow a dick?’ But as they began
to look like men with the use of hormone therapy, they are enlisted into ‘guy
talk’ about sex with women and working out. As homophobia governs men’s
interactions with one another (Connell, 1995; Messner, 1997), men appear to
realize that showing a continued interest in the genitalia of someone who
looks like a man can render them suspect to other co-workers. To avoid
charges of homosexuality, it is easier for heterosexual men to ‘forget’ about
the transition and try to relate to transmen on the level just being a guy.
These reactions show that in open workplace transitions, co-workers,
transmen and transwomen all are renegotiating and managing gender and
sexual difference. Yet, within this identity work, these data suggest there is
little initial challenge in the workplace to naturalized attitudes about the
immutability of gender, binary views about the complimentary nature of
masculinity and femininity, or gendered workplace hierarchies. In other

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words, the mere introduction of a visibly transgender subject does not result
in an undoing of gender or the creation of gender alternatives, such as a third
gender category or a gender continuum (Bornstein, 1994; Garber, 1992).
We are not suggesting that gender crossing has no potential to create social
change within rigid gender hierarchies. However, we argue that in theorizing
about the potential of the transgender gender subject for causing gender
trouble, the materiality and subjectivity of transgender people must be taken
into account, as well as the context in which gender crossing occurs. As
Prosser (1998) notes, a desire to challenge the gender system does not inher-
ently underlie all gender transitions. And, as we show in this article, even
when transsexual/transgender people do seek to challenge gender inequality
and binary views on gender, their potential impact is limited by the context of
the workplace.
Transgender workers —a vulnerable population economically — must
balance political desires to shake up gender with job security. Retaining job
security can mean participating in existing workplace gender structures of
doing dominance for men and doing deference for women. As transgender
workers settle into their new gender at work, they may have more leeway for
creating gender trouble. However, organizational cultures are slow to
change, even with direct confrontation or legal reforms, making the docu-
mentation of this type of workplace transformation difficult.4
In conclusion, we suggest that theoretical conceptions about the transfor-
mative potential of gender performances that are not in line with birth gender
(Butler, 1990, 2004) should pay close attention to context, as well as the way in
which these performances are socially interpreted. While intentional gender
trouble performances can have political possibilities, such as in certain drag
performances (Rupp and Taylor, 2004), they also can — as in the context of
the workplace — be repatriated into a binary, or dismissed as inauthentic.

Notes
1. The term ‘transgender’ has become an umbrella term for a variety of gender
identities (Green, 2004). ‘Transsexuals’, individuals who transition from one rec-
ognized gender category to another, can be placed under the transgender rubric.
However, some individuals in this study prefer to identify as transsexual rather
than transgender. Our use of ‘transsexual/transgender’ in this article is an effort
to allow them to maintain their subjectivity, rather than choosing a label for them.
We also employ the terms ‘transwomen’ and ‘transmen,’ as these terms — though
not representative of specific identities — allow us a less cumbersome way to talk
about gender differences between the collectives of our interviewees.
2. We use the term ‘destination gender’ to refer to social gender identity transsexual/
transgender people seek to attain with their transition. In other words, the desti-
nation gender for transmen is male, while the destination gender for transwomen
is female. The destination gender is in opposition to what we term ‘birth gender’,
the gender transsexual/transgender people are assigned at birth.

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3. These receptive responses are not par for the course for transgender people who
openly transition at work. Legal cases and news stories about transgender
employment demonstrates that transwomen can face strong opposition from
women colleagues, as transmen can face from men colleagues (Schilt, 2006). These
‘gender guarding’ reactions typically occur, however, when management has not
officially sanctioned an open workplace transition, which was not a factor for the
transmen and transwomen in our study.
4. Showing how workplace transformation is possible, several Fortune 500 compa-
nies, such as IBM and General Motors, have begun to cover transition-related costs
on health insurance (Buchanan, 2007). This type of change in organizational policy
is a direct result of transgender activism from employees in these companies.
However, these policies do not necessarily change cultural schemas about gender
embedded in workplace structures and interactions.

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Volume 14 Number 6 November 2007 © 2007 The Author(s)

Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd