Been doing lots of pondering lately. Recently, in Red's journal on Insomniaville, she discussed the problem of online journals and employers. Basically, she was considering the question of, since she was looking for a job in web design, whether she should use the Insomnia pages as an example of html proficiency, especially considering that her journal contains some rants regarding her employer. The options? Screw it and let what happens happen, censor her own words, or establish another set of html samples. Personally I tend to go for option #1, "screw it". Though I do realize that's not workable for everyone, frankly, I find that if an employer really can't handle my quirks or eccentricities, than I probably don't really want to be working for them anyway.

Anyway...thus the setup. This situation caused me to revisit my own feelings on personal privacy (as I think we all do sometimes). There's a flap that seems to ebb in popularity every year or so about our own privacy. Especially now, with companies databasing everything about us and selling it to the highest bidder, and individuals exposing every personal detail in online journals. What do we want to allow people to know about us? What rights do we have? What rights do they have? I was somewhat "forced" to examine that question about five years ago, and discovered...I really don't care.

About five years ago, I had a pretty good job, paid well, though I have no real idea how I managed to find myself working in investment advising. At the time I began to see a psychologist about my transgendered feelings (if that's coming as a suprise to anyone, you've got to be a Cland newbie:). The psych I had, frankly, was excellent. He put down some benign and general insurance code on my insurance forms (I think it was something like "social discomfort":). We hashed through this and that, and I eventually found myself visiting the endocrinologist. She, however, was pretty much a professional bitch. Without much regards to repercussions, she felt it an ethical necessity to report everything to the insurance company. Code#1011(or whatever)--transsexuality. This really didn't bother me all that much, until a short time later when I found out just how much access any company has to its employee's insurance records. For the most part, "complete and total". This was also a time when that particular company dumped our one human resources representative (an increasingly common practice I've noticed...(shurg) better for the company if the employee's don't know their own rights, right?). At that point, I had no idea who in the company was accessing what. Was I about to get called in to the president's office? or my boss? for a little "discussion" about my personal life??

Little more history...up to that point I had pretty much spent about 25 years "in the closet". Most of that time I had even spent most of my time trying to be closeted from even myself. Not really a suprise frankly (or even rare, really, many TG's spend years doing things like joining the military, or starting families in attempts to "force" themselves to be "normal"), considering I had grown up in the middle of nowhere Massachusetts. There was no one who even claimed to be gay in my entire high school...the first time I even *heard* about someone who was transgendered was through Ann Landers (actually, in retrospect, I do remember my parents talking about all the hoo-haw about both Renee Richards and Billie Jean King, sometime when I was around 4-6yo....didn't really register back then though). No real wonder, frankly, that 1/3rd of all teenage suicides are gays and lesbians. As much as we might forget this living in the DC area, gays and lesbians are still considered freaks in most of the country. TG's? Gotta be complete basket cases. High schools, especially, lets face it, are hellholes for being "different". The solution? Squash it wayyyyyy down real good.

Anyway, back to '95. Basically, here I was after doing 25 years of squashin' and I was just getting pretty much tired of it all. I had "come out" to everyone I considered to be a good friend at the time, and was starting to try and figure out the best way to do it with my job and parents. All of a sudden the insurance company was all ready to do the work for me. While I didn't agree with insurance companies' methods then (and I still don't)...I did realize one important thing: fuck it, I don't care. If I was going to get fired or evicted based on being transgendered (which, btw, is still entirely legal in most of the US save for some cities such as San Francisco), then that's what was gonna have to happen. When a friend acts like a complete asshole, I pretty much let 'em and just stop associating with them. Why should I act any different towards an employer or landlord who is choosing to act like a complete asshole? Granted, that can cause more problems for me than if I take the option to just hide (and, for the record, its not something that I volunteer up front to most people...who cares? I'm not going to great lengths to bury it though), but I've already found that censoring myself causes way more problems for myself than anything else. To some extent, further, quite frankly, I owe it to myself and other people to not live in fear. Let's face the facts, society is pretty fucked up. The Matthew Shephard incident was just one highly publicized example of what's happenening all the time. The more people who are public, the more gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered kids realize that they're not alone....cliche, but true.

Ok, maybe I'm off track and getting ranty at this point. What does all this really have to do with ranting about your job online? Er, probably not much (sorry Red:). But on the other hand, I have found from personal experience, avoiding living the "life of quiet desperation", often holds nothing but benefits.