Hi,
Firstly may I thank Crewing Gimp and Steady EDI for their helpful suggestions. Mr Angry of Purley also makes some good points. I fully appreciate what you are saying but rest assured I do know exactly how the banter in an Ops Room works.
In reply to Plans 123, no this is not my imagination, this is actually happening. My situation apart, I know of at least one case where a person was constructively dismissed for transitioning. Had KLM uk kept going, I would have been fine. KLM as the Parent company (Dutch) , were fairly enlightened on all of this. I had served them faithfully for 21 years and was well respected. I would have got a load of banter, that is to be expected. I am thick skinned, I can cope with that. Unfortunately during the year of my planned transition all ground staff were made redundant. At that stage I had not transitioned and I got myself another job without difficulty.
As someone so delicately put it in an earlier posting, what I've got in my pants should not come into it and indeed I never refer to my status when applying for a job. Unfortunately, as you all must know, the UK Airline Operations Community is a relatively small and close-knit group. It is impossible to apply for a job within this community without encountering someone who knows of your previous life, either directly or through a colleague. Contrast this to if I had pursued a career with a Building Society or such like. In most cases I could quite easily have shiped myself off to another part of the Country and been totally anonymous. Unfortunately, in the Airline Ops World there is nowhere to hide.
As to ei-flyer, I feel that you are judging people such as I by the unfavourable image that is served up by the media (and if you are not then I appologise). Contrary to popular belief, people such as I don't merely slip on a frock and then declare ourselves female. To get to where I am I have undergone an intensive course of femaising hormone treatment which will continue until the day I die. I have to date undergone 250 hours of painful facial electrolysis in order to permanently remove facial hair. I have undergone three major surgical operations, one to my face and the other two to my body. I have had to undertake extensive voice coaching and deportment coaching. My build was such that I didn't look bad in anycase, now I look great and I sound believeable and hence my boyfriend does not know!!!!!!!!!!!!
And I have financed all of this myself, to date in excess of £30,000.
But to return to the orginal point. The hardest part of all of this has not been all the procedures listed above, has not been the fact that in the early days I was spat at and sworn at and on two occasions beaten up. This goes with the territory, I made my choice and this is what I had to live with.
No the hardest part has been the fact that I have been denied and continue to be denied the opportunity to earn a living in a field in which I am eminently qualified. And why, all because I took the brave decision to be truthful to myself. On top of all the emotional strain of this difficult journey has been the added struggle of fighting to make ends meet and keep the ballifs away from the door.
I estimate that it will be another whole generation before people such as I can just get on with our lives and apply for jobs without predjudice. In some sectors in this country this has started to happen. it would be nice to think that the Airline Industry, which is always percieved as being forward thinking, could also emerge from the Dark Ages and start to embrace this culture. However, I am not holding my breath.
Kirsty
