Let’s start just before the beginning. When I lost my previous job (the company stopped all operations in my region), I lost the job where I came out as transgender. I finally came out to them after months of doubt, because only then I felt safe enough, in a team that was like a second family to me. Losing that job also meant losing a safe space. I decided that finding a new safe space would be my top priority when looking for a new job.

The job searching process was more difficult than I naively expected it to be. Where employers expected a guy to walk in at the first interview, instead they got a person with female features, but a male name. This may have been a tad confusing for people who are used to the gender binary.

So then I started putting my gender on my resume. I listed it as non-binary, fully aware that most people would skim over or fully skip it, but at least there was something on paper to warn them. If they knew what it meant.

Cue job opening for the new job. The job advert was written more or less the same way most job openings in my field are: not too formal, informative and to the point. I knew I would be a good fit on most of the requirements, just like I was when applying to dozens of jobs before. However, a few sentences stood out to me:

We’re a company of people from all sorts of education and backgrounds. Each with our own talents and flaws.(…) We welcome people of all backgrounds, ages, genders and orientations to apply for this position. Join us if you value a company where you can feel safe(…).

After going through the website and company team page that was obviously written by the team themselves and not by a copywriter (definitely not too serious, lots of tongue-in-cheekiness), I knew I had to apply. This was a great chance and I told myself I should definitely not blow this. No pressure!

So what did I do? Instead of writing my standard application letter, I wrote a rather informal email, that — in hindsight — might have sounded a bit desperate, but came from the heart, and attached my resume-with-weird-gender-mention. I told them why I would be the perfect fit and that I wanted to work at a company that valued their weird geeks for who they are. I joked about not responding by pigeon post because my cat would eat it.

When I got a reply, I was amazed. The person responding didn’t ask about anything job-related yet. Instead he asked what pronouns I wanted him to use when he would be discussing me with the team. Mind=blown.

The interviewing process was just as great. My gender was literally a non-issue, as it should be, but hardly ever is.

Skip forward one week and I’m writing my introduction to the rest of the team. Casually adding my trans-identity only to the last paragraph, mentioning that I want the team to use “they/them” pronouns, and ending in style with some cat tax.

In the weeks since then, not once has anyone misgendered me, or asked inappropriate questions. Not just that, but I found out that someone got into a row with an external party about the ridiculousness of registering my biological sex in their database.

My company is standing up for me, without even asking if they should. I am accepted, not just tolerated. I feel very fortunate and privileged, and at the same time I know that this should not be as uncommon as it is.

Everyone should be this safe, this welcome at the place they work at. I can only hope that this is soon the case for all trans people out there. For employers who want to create this kind of environment, here’s the TL;DR: