Acceptance blunted me. Acceptance daunted me. Acceptance disoriented me. Rejection, I would have been alright with. Rejection I could withstand, understand, respond to, because it so closely mirrored the discomfort and dissonance within myself. No, it was kindness, simple and understated, that did me in.
On October 18th, 2023, precisely two years into my time at PartnerStack, I came out as trans. Not using the word per se, but most every indication surrounding that heavy, shamed term. “I use they/them pronouns.” “I don’t like being called guy, dude, or sir.” “I don’t expect instant perfection with using my pronouns.”
And, the response was hearts. Six heart responses in my group of product managers, five in my cross-functional team of engineers and designers. Hearts. No messages. No nothing. No mention during the team meeting that morning. No replies to the thread. No getting fired. No getting demoted. Just quietness, and a swift emergence of other posts and threads. Decisions to make, designs to review. I felt alone, and unsure. What had happened?
In person, of course, the office hummed with activity. Laughter, conversations, happy reunions of old office pals. I dared not emerge out of my desk, make eye contact, or — dear God — talk to anybody who read my messages. Stupid messages. What did the hearts mean, anyways? Why didn’t everybody respond with them? God, Nicholas — probably the most masculine person in the entire group — gave it a heart reaction now. Was he suddenly okay with me?
I got away from my desk, away from the people. I needed to clear my head. Settling onto a couch nearby allowed me the clarity to confide in a trans-femme friend about my anxieties. No response. No responses from coworkers, either, still. I just quit all my apps — Slack, email, Instagram — and put on my music and focussed on writing a document.
I liked writing, one of the pieces of the job that made me feel like myself every time I returned to it. Time passed, and I found myself feeling like I was almost rising out of my seat. Even if my team hadn’t written in explicit support, what about it? Why was I limiting myself by a rejection that didn’t necessarily exist? I lapsed again into an easy feminine confidence, a symbolic “so what?”